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liesl13

Ok to mix stainless and black appliances?

Leslie M
10 years ago

I did my kitchen over with classic cherry shaker cabinets almost 20 years ago, and had black appliances with a white existing refrigerator. Had to replace the microwave/hood and dishwasher and went with black again to match. Then last year I had to replace the cooktop and oven, and went with black glass. Got a free dishwasher in black glass with it. Now the microwave needs replacing and I hate my refrigerator, and I'm wondering if I could do a black/stainless microwave and a stainless fridge, since that is what everyone seems to want. Probably we would sell before anything needs replacing again. I live in a 100-year old house in a good neighborhood in an upstate NY city where I'll never get all the money we have sunk into our house back. I guess I would go with black but for some reason dislike black refrigerators. Made a big mistake 20 years ago not allowing for a wider refrigerator, so I am limited in choices for that. Back then, stainless wasn't such a big thing. Maybe I watch too much HGTV:) The cooktop, oven and dishwasher are completely black and are all Jenn-Air.

Comments (4)

  • User
    10 years ago

    Buyers want "move in ready" clean, and inoffensive, and prefer matched to unmatched. Matching brands isn't as important as matching colors. I wouldn't do stainless unless you anticipate replacing all of the appliances with stainless, and I wouldn't do that unless they were all in the 10 year range getting ready to die. There's better places to spend money if you're getting ready to move.

  • Leslie M
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thanks, I think you're right and appreciate the advice.

  • jwvideo
    10 years ago

    I would agree with hollysprings if I knew you were planning on selling and moving in the near future.

    But If you are talking about moving in 5 or 10 or 15 years, heck, get a white fridge if that is what you like.

    When you get ready to sell your home, swap in a used, working black fridge and take the white or SS unit with you for the garage or basement or maybe even for replacing whatever is in the new home. Heck, you could even have it painted a gloss black when you get ready to move. The auto-body shop in my town recently quoted somebody a price of $150 for doing that. I'm told that there's a business in the area that will come to your house or business and repaint things like filing cabinets, refrigerators and other large metal objects. They put a kind of tent around it, hook an electrode to the object, spray a couple of coats, clean up and are gone in a few hours.

    FYI: most stainless fridges now only have stainless doors. The cabinet are black or (sometimes) gray. Something to consider if you hate black fridges.

    The effect of appliances on real estate value has a lot of local peculiarities and variations. One thing I've noticed with sales around my neighborhood of mostly 100+ y.o. houses --- seems that numbers of the new buyers want to replace fridges and DWs that are more than 6 years old, particularly if those appliances are black. Stoves and MWs, not so much unless they do a complete kitchen gut job. New Fridge and DW appliances, and sometimes range hoods, come in with stainless finishes which they seem to like with black/stainless stoevs and MWs. The stuff that is taken out goes to the used appliance outlets where musch of seems to get resold pretty quickly. Might check around your area to see if there is something similar going on there.

    That makes it easier to get what you would prefer as opposed to speculating about what somebody might want a few years from now.

    This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, Jan 9, 14 at 17:17

  • chitownkat
    10 years ago

    My stove is stainless with black glass on the doors. (GE profile PGS950SEFSS). The rest of my appliances are black. Did not want stainless fridge or dishwasher and the stove only came in stainless (which looks great). One person has commented on it but it does not bother me in the least.