All Designs

Whether you’re in the business of selling or installing cabinetry or are a consumer looking to get some cabinets for a kitchen or bathroom, understanding the basic styles that make up cabinet choices is important. Often, professionals have a rough time explaining these to end users and homeowners looking to update a kitchen or bathroom become confused at the stylistic jargon used to describe design elements.

For instance, a contractor will know exactly what is being described when someone says ‘traditional overlay cabinet,’ but most home owners will have no idea what that means. So it may be helpful to everyone if the basic overlay designs are spelled out more clearly. This may help the contractor explain it to their clients and help homeowners looking to find an overall design concept as well.

Frameless Cabinets

As the name describes, these are cabinets with no ‘frames’ around the elements. Doors rest directly on the front edge of the cabinet box and doors and drawers will reach right up to the edge of the counter top as well. In other words, there are no ‘frames’ surrounding any of the elements of the cabinetry’s design. It makes for a beautiful, simple look, but can be exacting to install because frames usually allow a little tolerance for fudge-factor.

Face Frame Cabinets

One of the most common styles of kitchen dÈcor, these cabinets have frames of about 1-1/2 inch around each element of the cabinet. Doors and drawers will overlap this frame. The Face Frame Cabinet design is the overall style for four common overlays:

Full Overlay Cabinets

These are sort of halfway between the Frameless and Face Frame look with the face frames being almost entirely covered by the door or drawer overlays. This concept is very common in contemporary and farmhouse designs. Usually between 1/4 and 1/2 inch of the cabinet’s frame will show through the overlays.

Traditional Overlay Cabinets

This design allows for most of the frame to show ~ usually about an inch of it ~ between doors, drawers, etc. These are common in many styles of design such as rustic and country/traditional as well as those designs which call for no handles on the cabinet face ~ usually requiring finger grooves at the inside of doors and tops of drawers.

Modified Overlay Cabinets

This is a sort of halfway point between Full and Traditional Overlay designs. Typically, it will have the cabinet doors and drawer sides nearly touching in a Full Overlay style, but the tops will have a lot of frame showing in a more Traditional look. Often, finger grooves are added to drawer and cabinet tops (or bottoms, as needed for reach) to achieve a handle-less look. This style is common in rustic, modern, and mid-century looks.

Lipped Overlay Cabinets

This is a common design element, though it can be used as the overall design concept as well. Lipped overlays are drawer fronts and doors that have a recessed groove routed into the edge of the door/drawer front to allow some of the thicker front piece of rest on the cabinet’s frame with the remainder being recessed. This gives a very clean look that is becoming popular today. It’s common in throwback designs such as Shaker, Colonial, and mid-century looks.

Inset Cabinets

These are not as popular as they once were, due to both their sometimes overly-simplistic design look and their expense, but inset cabinets are still a common request ~ especially in clean, modern designs. Insets are cabinets where the entire front face is flush. In other words, doors, drawers, etc. go all the way into the frame so that the entire front of the cabinet is smooth. This is very hard to achieve because there is almost no tolerance for measurement mistakes. When done right, however, it can be beautiful.

Those are the most common of the cabinet style types that most people will encounter.

Possibly Related Posts:

• great office decorating ideas
• european kitchen design san francisco
• european kitchen design gallery
• modern studio apartments london
• studio apartment interior design ideas