Ignore trends when it comes to house remodeling/beautification. Strike the word "dated" from your vocabulary. As long as everything is clean and functional, nobody will care about the color of your countertop or whether your appliances match. Spend some time browsing on mcmansion hell as an antidote to HGTV or whatever.
Sooo this.
My last 3 places have all had "dated" kitchen cabinets, and by dated, I mean hideous. But they were hideous because they were in bad shape or ugly colours. Nothing some paint or staining couldn't radically improve.
People would constantly ask me when I planned to replace my cabinets and I would look at them like they had 3 heads, open and close my cabinet doors for them, take out a can and place it back and say "they open, they close, they can hold items, why the fuck would I replace them??"
I'm very picky about the esthetics of my homes, but I lean into their age and character. I design with a combo of elements that are true to the age of the place contrasted with ultra modern elements to give each space its own personality that looks nothing like HGTV.
My condo was built in 1972 and you absolutely feel that in the design, but not like a horrible time capsule where the whole house looks 70s, just that I'm not trying to erase it's age from the design.
Like, I like mid century modern furniture as much as the next person, but I hate when designers make an entire space like a cosplay of a 60s home. That just feels contrived to me. It's also freakishly expensive.
By leaning into the age but not cosplaying the age, I can pick and choose older and more modern elements largely based on what's cheapest.
In my 110 year old house I refinished the cabinets that were custom made, probably in the 50s/60s, but I had an 8ft empty wall and needed more counter space. There was no way to match the existing cabinets, so the options were either to replace everything or have something that doesn't match.
So I went extreme to the side of not matching. I ordered a 7' stainless steel restaurant supply work table and stainless steel bars for the wall and hung all of my pots and pans Julia Child style. So one wall of the kitchen is super rustic and the other is all modern, minimalist stainless steel, which cost me about $800 and the contrast looks cool as fuck according to me, lol.
[Note that this was mid project, you can see the cabinets aren't refinished yet]