Kitchen - Handleless or Overlaid Rails?

Hello everyone,

We are currently in the kitchen planning phase. Personally, I like a white, handleless kitchen best. My husband says that you can see all the fingerprints on it and therefore wants stainless steel cladding strips to open the doors.

Do you have any experience? What is easier to maintain? And do you prefer high gloss or matte?

I find fingerprints on matte surfaces worse because they are not quick to wipe away. We have high gloss with a recessed handle. You do have to clean the recessed handle sometimes, but for the same reason as handles: either they get dusty or they are sticky after a cooking/baking session. You can clean that in a minute with a damp cloth.

A recess handle is certainly somewhat easier to maintain than something like "push to open" with a completely handleless front.

However, easy to maintain are also the applied handle strips, which, by the way, can be obtained not only in stainless steel but also painted in color. And as a rule, this allows for better utilization of the cabinet height. Because recess handles take up space.

However, the attached handle strips are also low-maintenance, which, by the way, are not only available in stainless steel but also color painted.

In two different kitchen studios, we were told that the strips are only available in black or stainless steel. White would be our wish, but unfortunately, it is not available (at least not as a complete strip across the entire front).

I don’t quite understand the use of corpus height. It doesn’t take away anything from the height if I choose recessed handles, does it?

I find fingerprints on matte surfaces worse, as they can't be wiped away quickly. We have high gloss with a handle recess. You do have to clean the handle recess sometimes, but for the same reason as handles: Either they get dusty or they are sticky after a cooking/baking session. You can clean it in a minute with a damp cloth.

Thank you for your experience! That sounds good. How does it work with the refrigerator, where is the recess there?

Could you explain that a bit more or tell me which AI forum you mean?

You have probably already mentioned the forum that fits. Because it always gets mutilated here. With handleless, with or without recesses, it depends on the manufacturer, the layouts (usually different spacing of the drawers than with "normal" handles), etc. For tall cabinets, handleless often means choosing vertical handle strips, which then basically require an additional strip between the tall cabinets. Otherwise, TK combinations usually don’t work.