It sounds so pretty to have a nice glass door cab for your wineglasses, one that you can see from the LR. From the photos I've seen, there usually are glass shelves if there is one of those "puck" type lights at the top inside of the cabinet. But I did see one a while back where they had left wood shelves and ran a strip of lights down the front inside corners of the cabinets, just inside the door frames,(I think they may have been something like rope lights). It gave a very nice even light even though the shelves were wood. I think you would have to have face frame cabinets for that to work. At night, an unlighted glass door could look rather dark like black glass, and that might or might not fit with your design plan.

I have a lot of Italian Deruta dishes and potterty that I wanted to display so I did one glass cabinet at the end of the cabinet run by my peninsula and dining area. I did not use glass shelves or put a light in it, but it's painted creamy white and there's a recessed can light right in front of it that kinda lights it up. I used seedy glass that you can see through but still has some pattern to it. I also put two glass cabinets in my hutch with seedy glass, on either side of a bookcase cabinet. I also did not use glass shelves or lights, but again there's two can lights in front of the glass cabs that kinda light them up. But the hutch wood is a chestnut color and it does seem a little dark at night without any lights in the cabinets. It became a budget issue for me, but I think lights would be nice if you can afford it, especially in a darker wood cabinet.

I have one on either side of my range hood and one on either side of higher cabinets that are centered over the coffee bar. The glass is "antiqued," but doesn't cause the objects to be fuzzy. The range hood doors have a design to mirror the design in the window over the sink. The shelves are wood. There are recessed lights very near the glass doors but no lights inside and some of the light from the recessed lights shines inside the doors. It doesn't look like black glass at all.

At our last home, the previous owners had remodeled the kitchen and there was a glass cabinet at the end of a run that opened to the dining area and living room. It was a very small house and a small galley kitchen. The cabinets were not lit and I never thought that they needed to be. There seemed to be plenty of light to see inside the cabinet. It was clear glass. Here is a picture.

When we were remodeling our kitchen in our existing home, I found a picture that became my inspiration photo for how I wanted the inside of my new glass-door cabinets lit. I found this photo online somewhere and I love how it is lit. Here is that picture:

I have glass doors on a low breakfront at the end of my island and also on the uppers in my dry bar. The rest of my kitchen has solid doors. I knew I didn't want glass shelves, so we had the face frame of the glass door cabs routed with a channel to hold lights that illuminate the entire cabinet. I hope it turns out like my inspiration photo! Here are some pics of our cabinets and you can see how on the dry bar the inside of the cabinet seems dark in contrast to the under-cabinet lighting even though we do have one recessed "eye-ball" pointing towards the cabinets. The breakfront on the island is low, so it definitely needs in-cabinet lighting. Can't wait until we get that part done. :)

wendy - LOVE your open floor plan, your cabinets, your hutch, etc. etc. etc!!!

I have two glass cabinets on either side of my range hood similar to mamalynn (for china and glassware storage) and glass doors on the top part of my hutch. The cabinets have strip lighting, no glass shelves. At first I wasn't going to install them but the electrician said it wouldn't be a huge difference since they were already running electric for undercounter lights so we went ahead with them. I absolutely love how it looks with the lights on and I'm glad we installed them.

Here are 2 photos of the cabinets on either side of the hood - the first one is with the lights on and the second one is without the lights. If you don't think there's much difference, then maybe you'll feel that you don't need/want lights. (I don't have any photos of my hutch with the lights NOT on for you to see the difference because I always have them turned on.)

{{gwi:1579273}}

close up with lights on

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Thank you everyone for all the pics.
Does anyone have a pic of the inside showing how the lighting works with the wood shelves?
Although I think I can imigine the routing around the door, it would be alot easier to show the gc what I would like (if it's possible)
It sounds from your experiences that really any number of glass cabinets can work. So even if I can only have 1,2 or 3 it would probably look nice in my small space.
Again thank you
Suz

Thanks country_smile! As you can see, I am still working on getting these pictures scaled down! ha ha. It was late when I posted! :)

Swspitfire, I took a picture of the channel I was talking about. Turns out it is along the inside of the box (right at the front) not on the face frame. We plan to put lights on both sides of each cabinet rather than on just one side. I thought it would illuminate more evenly that way.

You can see our wires are in there, which will get cut down once we install the strip lights into the cabs.

I originally picked out LED tape lights, but there was a concern with expense (approx. $40/foot). Here is what I was looking at:
http://www.lumens.com/s.aspx?search_freetext=wac+invisiled&key_id=WACInvisiled&ad_id=ADW

Next, a local lighting dealer suggested a different type of LED strip light (approx. $78/foot...yikes!):
http://www.lightbulbmarket.com/powercorecoveledlightbulbs

So, although everything is wired and connected to switches, etc., we still haven't purchased the lights due to expense. My husband may pick up some cheapie rope lights and put them in there to see how that works.

Swspitfile, what type of strip lighting are you using in your cabinets? Maybe I need some new ideas! :)

Thanks for the pictures of the wiring-seems very do-able.
Also cali_wendy, I think you meant to ask country_smile about her strip lighting. I do not have that item chosen (yet)
Suz