My house-wide trim color, including the original built-ins, is BM White Chocolate. Everything is newly painted in oil-based satin, doors, trim, all. White chocolate is less yellow than Linen White, but it is definitely OFF white.

My kitchen cabs will not have custom paint.

I know the baked on factory finish will age differently than will the woodwork in the rest of the house.

I don't really like the standard green or blue that the factory offers, and I have lots of yellow elsehwere that is not the same flavor of yellow that cabco offers.

So white or whitish is it.

They have a whitish that almost matches the trim color.

An advisor over on the Home Dec board says I should go for contrast. That would mean using the starkest white cabs available.

I'm thinking that could work well because the white would appear deliberate and the almost match could look simply off or dirty.

Floor is fir, tops will be stainless and soapstone. Also stripped a couple of windows in the room so there's wood tone above, too. Kitchen has four panelled doors painted BM white chocolate.

Choices are: almost match the trim, slightly lighter than the trim but looks ok for now, or stark white.

Your opinion, please?

Here's what we did.

House trim is BM super white, everywhere. We selected a white cabinet color that we loved - which is very close but not exactly the same. We purchased the crown ourselves, so that it would match the crown in the house, and the KD took it and finished it along with the cabinets. We sent enough crown for the kitchen area so that all the crown in the area would match the cabinets.

That left the window and door casing and baseboards. Those we are painting our house trim color, BM super white. Likewise with the built-in bench, bookcases, etc.

We have a door right beside the cabinets which will be painted the house trim color, will match the casing, but the crown above will be the cabinet white.

So far we are loving the result.

However.

What I should have done, to eliminate all this angst - is to choose a cabinet company that allowed a BM color of my choosing.

What I did not want was a glaze, or an off-white, or yellow-ish cabinet color, beside our white trim. That made the crown complicated, so I steered clear of that and went with white, which is what I really wanted anyway.