The Gloss White kitchen is perhaps the ultimate in contemporary kitchen design. They give a very clean look that can look stunning, if planned and fitted in the right way. However, the choice of door you use and the countertop you put on it will greatly influence the look, so do your homework when choosing the door and the retailer.

The different types of White Gloss Kitchens?

There is more than one type of glossy finish for a kitchen door. The most common on the market are (in order of lowest cost first):

1. Melamine (also known as high pressure laminate – HPL)

2. Vinyl (PVC)

3.Acrylic

4. High gloss lacquer

Which is the best? Well, as with most things in life, this depends on your budget and expectations. In general, the glossier the finish, the higher the cost. Most of the doors on the market are made of melamine or PVC.

Melamine is the lowest cost type of door and as a result is the least shiny. PVC is probably the most common on the market at the moment and has the main advantage of being able to ‘wrap’ around the door giving a uniform finish, ie the door does not need to be edged.

If you want a finish that is like glass, you should go for acrylic or lacquer.

Acrylic doors are literally sheets of acrylic (sometimes known as plexiglass) attached to an MDF door. This gives it a finish like a piece of glass and it looks fabulous. Naturally, the price of these doors will be higher than that of PVC, but the finish is noticeably better. A disadvantage of this type of door is that it has to be edged on all four sides. Most people don’t care (or even notice!), but if you’re a perfectionist, then a lacquered door is probably what you want.

Lacquered doors create a finish close to glass, painting MDF doors the same way a car is painted: a base coat of color finished with a lacquer to give a high gloss finish.

countertops

The common choice is to install black granite countertops, due to the simple nature of the contrast. Black and white works because you can bring in any other color without conflict issues. Of course, this is not to say that any other color won’t work, you just need to plan ahead for the rest of the kitchen.

With wood and laminate finishes, the current trend right now is to have tops in a dark walnut or wenge finish. With bamboo-style laminates, finishes are also becoming more popular.

As for Corian, very dark colors are not recommended for kitchens as they show scratches clearly, but mixed colors such as burnt amber are fine and the new pastel shades of Corian would look stunning on a bright white surface. .

Which one you choose is, of course, up to you.