So it seems that all the rage right now is kinda rage-inducing. Everyone wants their cabinets to be white oak (like the flooring), very pale (like the flooring), and very uniform from piece to piece (like the flooring). Not like a paint, because you can still see enough grain and subtle color variation to recognize it as a natural wood, but still definitely bleached and toned, and quite consistent from piece to piece. Just like a pack of hotdogs.

Unlike their flooring, however, their cabinets aren't going to be produced using the hot-dog manufacturing method where everything is going to be chemically bleached into an unrecognizable color and then re-colored with varying shades of colorants so that every piece comes out the same uniform color as the next.

White oak, no matter what grade or style we order, shows up like it's always shown up--- some is light, some is dark. Some looks reddish, some looks grayish. Some looks caramel. NONE, and I do mean NONE of it shows up homogenous from one board to the next.

All I can figure is that, to meet this demand, we're going to have to get good at bleaching, so that we retain the natural grain of the wood and a "little" of the natural color, but at least it's all busted down to a somewhat lighter color, and then we get good at wiping stains and/or shaded toner coats.

We do have a flatline sprayer here, but running raised panel and shaker doors through such a shading process doesn't really give the same results as spraying flat flooring.

Does anyone have any success at this, large scale (ie, consistent color, across 50-100 cabinets), and willing to share their experiences?

Not running the same scale or type of product as you but we have been fighting the same fight with the pale - but natural-ish - white oak look. Have had some good results with flooring finish - in particular the Loba 2k product that is pretty pale on its own but also has a whitener that you can add to the clear to add a subtle overall whitish cast that lets the wood show through. It definitely still helps to start with more uniform lighter shade material.

Take samples of white oak to the customer, and then take white oak veneer with you. You could buy enough veneer to do a kitchen from the same tree with excellent color matching. They have to decide then if they want the color matching or natural wood. Here's two, you have to choose one.

Of course you could search out a hardwood dealer that keeps his timber in boles as they were sawed. Just explain the big markup in cost to your customer.

Gents, you make good points. Unfortunately the size we are at, we are not set up for doing our own layups on sheetstock (no veneer press or similar) nor for making our own hardwood doors, we typically bring in our doors from companies like Conestoga and Walzcraft.

Both of those options would require more floorspace than we are able to commit to them (I couldn't add another 4x8 work table to my facility right now if I wanted to).

I also suspect that a lot of these flooring companies aren't spending a ton of time grading the wood like this. I imagine it's graded somewhat for color, but then gets bleached. I'm looking at an entire 60 unit beachfront condo go up and the flooring, while "rustic" looking, has more color uniformity across all the packs of flooring than I've seen across any bunk of white oak A grade plywood.

White oak has been the rage for quite awhile here in SoCal. Are you sure the flooring isn't faux oak laminate? I've more than a few clients who've complained about uneveness of white oak coloring. In the end I wish I've would've pushed a laminate on them. More monotone and durable. They think they want "real wood" until they start seeing the different grains and figuring. They get even more ticked when you tell them, well you wanted a light color and you're going to be at the mercy of the grain/figuring of the wood.

No these are definitely wood, most of them are that engineered plywood type flooring with a 3-5m thick layer of white oak on the top. You can see where the finished is dribbled around the edges and that it almost always has a pigment toner mixed in the clearcoat.

But your point is well made about the laminate stuff, some of it is pretty realistic looking. It's what I put in my own kitchen except I didn't do white oak, I used one that looks more like aged cherry (darker brown).

There are several items we've used to great success from Conestoga, their Roble Aurora color has bailed us out on several jobs when the clients were happy with slab doors, but if they want a specific bead/panel then we're back to spraying hardwood.

I would disagree with your statement that the flooring companies are not grading for color or having their material graded for color from the mill. I pull from a large mill that has their own logging subcontractors, sawing, and drying, with anywhere from 3-5 million board feet of dry hardwood in their warehouse at any given time and likely 3-4x that in-process (air drying/in kiln/etc) and about 90% of their production is shipped overseas (asia/south pacific) to be manufactured into whatever configuration and shipped back to US consumers.

They have material being graded for everything from color to grain uniformity, width, and so on. Orders are typically several container loads at a minimum and if the customer is willing to pay they will ship consistent material to whatever specification they are paid to meet all undoubtedly inspected and expected to have some percentage (likely very low) of reject.

While Im sure there is some sort of finish magic happening in addition to heavily graded material or additional in-house grading, I highly doubt there is enough cash in the flooring world for high variability bleaching finishing of highly varied raw material (color). There is no simple line-fed process that is going to take a carmel piece of white oak and a white piece of white oak and send them though the wonka-lator and out the other end comes dead uniform material.

The issue of course is even at your scale your likely not at a capacity to purchase enough material from a mill for this service and have a competitive price. That said, the cost it will add to do any form of bleaching in house and the effect it may have on your brought-in doors would seem to be an issue.

Guessing you already have, but I would be reaching out to conestoga and waltzcraft and explaining your situation as its clear from here alone your not the only one fighting the fight. See if they can offer more color uniformity at an upcharge. That or start searching for a white oak source that will grade material for you for color (perhaps one that its feeding the flooring and will peel you off material as they are already doing it) and find a door manufacturer to ship that material to, and to yourself.

In addition, reach out to whoever the flooring manufacturer is on your jobs and see if you can strike up a conversation with a production manager or someone else that can give you some input on their process. No doubt explaining to them that your simply trying to match your cabinetry to their flooring, while they may not give you all the nitty gritty, may bear some very valuable fruit.

Most people in this business understand the headaches and will ususally be at least a little bit helpful.