Crown in the dumps?

Kitchen cabinets….everybody’s got ‘em.  They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and configurations.  You can get full overlay, half overlay, frameless, inset, a bevy of different door styles, and about a nonillion color options (that’s a word, trust me).  Today though, I want to skip the cabinet style discussion and take a look at something basic…how do you finish the top of your wall cabinets? 

Seems like an easy question to answer, right?  If you're interested in traditional design, you've seen the solution countless times.  Here is a kitchen I designed with Lisa Magee, my colleague at Case:

Traditional Kitchen by Bethesda Design-Build Firms Lisa Magee / Case Design/Remodeling

Pretty standard traditional design vocabulary:  A piece of crown molding a few inches tall in the same finish as the cabinets. 

But what if you weren't interested in traditional design?  What if, like me, you prefer a more modern aesthetic?  Here is another kitchen Lisa and I worked on:

Contemporary Kitchen by Bethesda Design-Build Firms TJ Monahan - Case Design/Remodeling Inc.

These wall cabinets don't have any crown at all.  One caveat if you're going the no-crown route...your framing and drywall installer really needs to make sure the bulkhead above the cabinets is level, otherwise there will be a gap between the cabinet and the drywall, and seeing that isn't good for anyone.

Here's a modern kitchen I did that includes crown:

Modern Kitchen by Bethesda Design-Build Firms TJ Monahan - Case Design/Remodeling Inc.

The top of these wall cabinets has the same few inches of trim in a matching color that the traditional kitchen above has.  However, instead of using a proper crown molding, I used a flat piece of stock.  I also had the crew install an LED light strip above the cabinets and then left a small gap under the "crown."  When the LED strip is turned on, you can see a thin band of light glowing above the cabinets. 

Here is the detail for the backlit crown from the construction set:

For fun, here are a few more modern "crown" applications I found on Houzz:

Contemporary Kitchen by Seattle Architects & Building Designers SHED Architecture & Design

Contemporary Kitchen by Bonita Springs Architects & Building Designers K2 Design Group, Inc.

Transitional Kitchen by Austin Architects & Building Designers FAB Architecture

So there you have it.  Whether your modern crown is flat, backlit, in a secondary finish, or nonexistent, the decision on how to finish the top of your cabinets is just as important as the style of your door.

Bye for now,
TJ