there was a thread in the past few days about this I think. check thru the first few pages...

it's a personal choice - doesn't bother a lot of people. I wouldn't pay more myself - once your stuff gets put into the cabinets and you're busy cleaning, cooking etc you won't even notice.

some do have a different wood put on the inside of cabinets that have glass doors - or have the inside painted.

It was a thread I started, and there are helpful photos in it. Can you see cabinets in both colors in person before you decide?

Here is a link that might be useful: Wood doors, white interiors thread

Your cabinets sound exactly like mine - alder, dark finish, white melamine interior. It's never bothered me in the slightest.

Our cabinets are medium stained QS oak. The boxes are wood and painted on the inside. The shelves are painted too. Are your boxes MDF or wood? If they're wood, maybe you could get your cabinet maker to leave the melamine off and paint the interior instead. Ours is holding up very well, though it's only been two years. I think white interiors with dark stained cabinets would bother me.

I responded on the other thread. We have white interiors with dark cherry in our bathroom and white with lighter oak in our laundry room and I like them both.

We have the lighter maple interior with our medium dark mahogany cabinets in the kitchen. I also like this combination. I assumed our interiors would be the same as the cabinet doors but I'm actually glad they are lighter. It helps to make the kitchen feel brighter and I don't feel as though I'm staring into any dark holes.

The interiors of the cabinets with glass doors are stained to match the outsides of the cabinets.

Here's one of our medium dark cabinets with a lighter maple interior. I think dark stained cabinets with either light maple or white interiors are much more common than cabinets with dark stained interiors.

Thank you everyone for your helpful responses. Zelmar, thank you for the helpful info and photo. I couldn't visualize lighter wood grain on the inside and your cabinets look very nice. Cheril27, our boxes are MDF. Chiefneil, do you have any pics? Northcarolina, thanks for the info, just checked out your thread which was very helpful. I didn't think about how dark interiors would be hard to see the items inside. I'm thinking of doing the light maple interiors in the kitchen and white interiors for the rest of the house.

Found a couple pics for you.

chiefneil and anyone else with light-colored boxes and darker doors -- this is probably a dumb question, but are the undersides of your wall cabinets clad in the same color as the sides and fronts, or are they the box color? Or does it just depend on how high they are on the wall and whether there's a trim piece to hide undercab lights (and therefore block the view of the undersides)?