This kitchen cabinet style — a flat-panel door covered in melamine (or maybe some were done with laminate? I don’t know for sure), with full-width wood finger pulls at the top — golly, there were a lot of these.
If you need a replacement — or maybe, you’re ready to lead this 1980s revival in your kitchen or how about a craft room? — you can still get replacements.
Jan. 2021 update: Old source looks discontinued… but I found a source — WalzCraft.
This company really seems to have this market covered. It looks like there are three designs and each available in three melamine colors/finishes — white, almond, and maple.
These are such a blast from the past! I’m thinking they’d be great for a funky 1970s kitchen too!
Again: 1980s style melamine kitchen cabinet doors with wood trim — by WalzCraft.
ineffablespace says
Unfortunately some of the modifications I have seen done to these doors in an attempt to update them has had the effect of transforming them from ubiquitous and bland or clumsy looking cabinet doors to jacked up bland and clumsy looking cabinet doors.
Some of the fixes are good, many of them are not so good. Everybody can tell that they are still this door: the profile is very distinctive.
I think the problem is that their most common color, “almond” was never really a design winner. If these had been available in colored laminate, I think people might not h— them so much.
RAnderson says
Oh no! I know I’m not ready for these to come back, but thanks for a good resource for those who are! This is truly one “dated” (that dreaded word!) look that really deserves the adjective, imo. It sure didn’t help that these style of cabinets were usually constructed of ivory laminate over cheap particle board and found in every apartment, like, forever, often in less than wonderful settings. Still… can’t see folks in 10 yrs trying to revisit this particular ’80s trend!
L says
I appreciate ineffablespace’s comment because I’m one of those who does have a “visceral negative reaction”, and it really is all about context. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the design. However, a huge ’80s-’90s boom of apartment complexes and townhouses in my area resulted in this becoming virtually the only cabinet style available to a majority of renters. It remains nearly inescapable for anyone renting between the extreme opposite high and low end properties. So for me, I don’t feel laminate cabinets are ready for a comeback because they’ve not yet gone away.
Robin, WA says
It might be kind of cool to add a retro looking laminate to these for a hobby room or laundry room. I wonder how hard that would be…
lexi says
This reminds me of all the Techline furniture my aunt and her architect husband tastefully decorated their house with when I was young. It can look good when done right! They used a lot of white laminate in their mid-century home and it always looked so clean and modern and really fit with the house.
ineffablespace says
I never disliked these cabinets as much as some people, and now a lot of people have a really almost visceral negative reaction toward these.
I think it was because they were really common for a period of time and you’d see versions of this in everything from high end late-modernist-contemporary, to the most depressing low budget townhouse.
And people make their associations from the more negative examples like the small galley kitchen where everything was “almond” and it was lit by a single fluorescent troffer in the ceiling. Sometimes this doorstyle could be really depressing, but it’s mostly that the whole context was not so pretty.
But I’ve seen these in large contemporary time capsules where they look good. And walnut with a different color laminate or a paint color could be really great. I have seen what was probably a custom variation regionally where the top drawer faces were wood and the counter runs were radiused so there was a sinuous band of wood running around the kitchen. It was handsome.
I am not sure that people are quite ready for this one to come back….this may be similar to “pink bathroom” 10-15 years ago, people respond negatively to the description, not to what it actually looks like in the space.
Retroski says
Soo 80s. I was not even a fan of them even then. But like someone said above if you painted the wood line a color or painted the door and wood line contrasting colors, then it would look pretty cool beyond the bleh 80s-style door shown above. Like Ben Carson?? did in that cool 70s’s style apartment in NY when he made the kitchen white and lime green.
NY time-capsule he decorated.
Pam Kueber says
Ben Sander 🙂 https://retrorenovation.com/2015/12/08/1970s-bathroom-kitchen-design/
Brooke says
ugh, I painted my 80’s laminate/oak cabinet doors so I didn’t have to live with them until we could afford to replace our kitchen. Once painted I actually don’t mind the shape of them so they’ll be good for the next 5-8 years.
We went with avocado green lowers and white uppers and replaced the blue laminate countertop with grey laminate. Painting really made a difference on how I feel about the kitchen!
I also recommend looking on local selling sites (Craigslist/kijiji etc) . We were planning to add some extra cabinets and I was looking for matching doors to my existing kitchen and found an entire kitchen’s worth of doors on kijiji.
Unfortunately, since they were free the people giving them away didn’t want us to take the time to measure anything and none of the doors ended up working once we got them home. Long story short, make sure you measure and know exactly what you need when you go to pick doors up 🙂
Brooke says
I don’t have a photo of the whole kitchen since we haven’t finished dealing with the floors but here’s how we updated our cabinets.
It’s temporary until we can afford to replace the kitchen with something more mid-mod (most likely teak door fronts, though I’m still split between doing a bright colour on the bottom and teak uppers or doing all wood)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BOaFMGzDTKb/?taken-by=stream1313
cathie says
I have these without the wood trim – 20 years, still going strong. I just re-painted them and with new knobs they’re good as new. And being just a plain flat panel with no moulding, they’re super-easy to keep clean. But I’m not sure why anyone would want replacements for the ones pictured here, they’re horrible! All I ever see is how to paint/wallpaper over or some other decorating trick to make them look completely different.
midmichigan says
Exactly, Pam. These were wildly popular for the “Euro” look. Also one of the first to utilize the hidden hinges too. Arctic White was usually the laminate along with a hardwood edge pull. Very 80s! Great resourcing post!
Robin, WA says
I rented an apartment that had these in salmon pink with matching salmon pink countertops. It was kind of salmon pink overload.
Dan says
I have yet to visit ReStore that they didn’t have stacks of these.
Robin, WA says
Yep.