There is a toe kick standard, but you can do pretty much anything you want, assuming your cabinet company, installers comply. I actually went with a deeper than normal toekick on my island to give it a more modern look and a floaty feel.

I think having a toekick lets you get closer to the counter, or makes it more comfortable to be closer but I agree that toe-less pic of grl's is beautiful.

There was a thread about this a little while ago, and someone pointed out what I'd never considered before: how much toe kick you need depends on, among other things, the size of your feet and stomach! The toes of someone with an ample midriff will never reach into the toe kick area, unless his or her feet are very long. I don't have much of a belly and size 8.5 feet, so I use all but about 1" of the toe kick area. Sorry if that's TMI! :) Though I do so love the look of no toe kick, function trumps form for me.

I'm sure you have thought of this already:
but what about a decorative toe kick?
See, below, pictures from Torontotim's and Babushkacat's lovely kitchens.
They have preserved the function of the toe kick while dressing it up.

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

This post was edited by francoise47 on Fri, Dec 7, 12 at 9:30

One thing I might be concerned about is that the bottom of the cabinets may get damaged from shoes that brush against the cabinet and from water when washing the floor.

I love the no kick look but I have toe kicks on all my cabinets so I can't speak from experience but hopefully those who have done the no kick or decorative kick will chime in.

If I had a floor that had different care requirements than my cabinets -say a tile floor- I might have gone toe kick, but I'm wood on wood and I've always found that near the cabinets I had to use hand cleaning to get the gunk off my baseboards.

As far as working against the no toe kick? For me it wasn't a big deal; I could have gone either way, but I wanted to really define that one bank of cabinets.

I know this is off topic, forgive me. But I just had to tell michelle 16 I love her kitchen! I've been collecting pic of elements for my redo, you won't believe this but I was staring at her very kitchen about two minutes before I opened this post. Michelle your glass cabinets are very pret-ty. Nice open feeling. The pic I had clipped from somewhere else did not show the whole place like this posting did. Thanks for the inspiration.

Between houses, we rented an old farmhouse. That kitchen had no toe kicks. Straightaway, I learned that toekicks have a very important function in a workspace.

Love the look of the partially closed ones but decided against those, too. Didn't want the nightmare of chasing dog hair out of the nooks & crannies. Also, I go barefoot a lot & thought about the potential of hooking my little toe on one.

czecheart-thanks! and your welcome!