Kitchen Cabinet Styles
When it comes to kitchen remodeling, one of the first material selections you’ll make is your cabinets. To help with your decision, we’ve narrowed down a few options for you to choose from for your home. Here are some of the most common kitchen cabinet styles:
Shaker Cabinets
The shaker style cabinet design originated during the American colonial era and was characterized by their simplicity and functional aesthetic. Considered as one of the most popular cabinet design styles, a shaker cabinet door design is composed of a five-piece door with a recessed panel. Shaker style cabinets are very simple, clean, which makes them highly suitable not only for traditional inspired kitchens but for modern and contemporary kitchen settings.
Flat Panel Cabinet
Flat-panel kitchen cabinets are characterized by a clean, sleek, and unornamented design. This cabinet style has doors and drawers with a flat center panel, rather than being contoured or raised. It is stylish and makes a great match for modern and contemporary kitchen styles. Although flat panel kitchen cabinets have a sleek, clean and modern appeal, they are also highly suited for traditional and transitional kitchen styles.
Inset Cabinets
An inset kitchen cabinet style is characterized by a design in which the drawers and doors fully fit inside the cabinet face frame openings. Typically, most kitchen cabinet styles use the “overlay” construction in which the doors and drawers are slightly larger than the openings in the frame, thus they appear to be slightly raised. With such, the doors and drawers also seem to be constructed in an overlapping manner. But with the inset cabinet style, the construction method and design is entirely the opposite.
The cabinet doors and drawers are inside the opening, with only minimal spacing between the components, hence the term “inset”. Compared to other kitchen cabinet styles, the inset kitchen cabinet design gives a full view of the cabinet frame. The inset kitchen cabinet style took its inspiration from the Victorian and Georgian periods were skilled craftsmen and artisans were extremely popular. As one can notice, this kitchen cabinet door design requires precise skills and a refined construction method to manufacture. Thus, they are often more expensive and often fall on the high-end range.
Raised Panel Cabinets
The raised panel kitchen cabinet style is characterized by a door design in which the center panel is raised above the rest of the cabinet door and ornamented with a surrounding recessed border, contour or profile. Raised panel kitchen cabinets are more detailed compared to recessed panel cabinets.
This type of kitchen cabinet style is commonly used for traditional and transitional style kitchens. It is usually found in rustic and country inspired homes and kitchens. Its appearance can be ornate or simple and can vary depending on which period style it gains inspiration from. One form of raised panel kitchen cabinets is the cathedral cabinet door or the raised arch design (which is also classified under the traditional kitchen cabinet style).
Recessed Panel Cabinets
Recessed panel kitchen cabinets are the opposite of raised panel kitchen cabinets. The primary difference between the two styles is the height of the center panel of the cabinet door face. The recessed panel cabinet style is characterized by a door design in which the flat center panel is recessed below the rest of the cabinet door and ornamented with a surrounding raised border, contour or profile. Shaker cabinet design can be classified under the recessed panel kitchen cabinet style and is considered as one of the most prominently used kitchen cabinet styles.
Compared to the raised kitchen cabinet style, the recessed kitchen cabinet design has a more sleek appearance, making it more suitable for modern and contemporary kitchen decor styles. Its simplicity allows it to blend well with contemporary-inspired interiors and can work even in transitional and traditional kitchen settings.
Glass Insert Cabinets
The glass insert kitchen cabinet style makes use of a glass panel instead of a full solid wood cabinet door face. Also known as the glass framed door, this type of kitchen cabinet design can use either clear glass, smoked or frosted glass, colored glass or textured glass. The most common type of glass panel used for this design is the clear glass which allows the users to see the contents of the cabinets without having to open the door. Alternatively, frosted glass can be used if you want to keep clutter out of sight while still providing variation in the finishes and breaking off the heaviness of solid wood cabinetry. Frosted glass is also more commonly used for more modern and contemporary designs. This type of kitchen cabinet design also provides an open feel to kitchens, making them more airy and bright.