The distance from your countertop to the bottom of your wall cabinets

[lights19]

23 inches - we're in the middle of renovations now, and this was our choice. We have eight foot ceilings and little square footage, so we brought the wall cabinets all the way up.

[slkinsey]

Without opening my home office copy of Architectural Graphics Standards I can assure you that 18" to the underside of the wall mounted cabinet is pretty much the norm for a 36" counter top in a room with an 8' ceiling. . .

I wonder how much this has to do with things. I grew up in turn of the 20th century construction and live today in a building that is a little more than 100 years old. Rooms with 8-foot ceilings seem positively cave-like to me. It's been a while since I measured, but I'm pretty sure that our apartment has 12-foot ceilings. This means that there is not only ample room between the countertops and the upper cabinets, but there is a good 3 feet (at least) between the top of the upper cabinets and the ceiling. On the other hand, if you have 8-foot ceilings and want to have standard sized three-shelf cabinets, the cabinets probably have to go all the way to the ceiling and the space between the countertop and the bottom of the upper cabinets probably has to be pretty short.