When embarking on a new kitchen remodel with your kitchen and bath designer, selecting cabinet door styles lays the foundation for your aesthetic and functionality. Dreaming up your perfect kitchen means deciding on a cabinet style to set the tone. Your cabinetry choice impacts how functional, beautiful, and livable your kitchen feels for years to come. Luckily options galore exist — from streamlined contemporary fronts to glass facades sparkling light around traditional solid wood bases.
Let’s explore how fundamental kitchen cabinet styles establish the look and function that best fits your home and lifestyle. Before you know it, inspiration and ideas emerge for crafting your picture-perfect kitchen design.
Timeless Shaker Style
Shaker-style kitchen cabinets reign supreme thanks to their simple lines and timeless versatility. These wood cabinets feature flat recessed panel doors and distinctive square framing for a consistent custom look. Their streamlined design pairs well with other styles, adapting to both contemporary and more traditional kitchens. Use shaker cabinets for full systems or mix them with special touches like glass fronts.
Light + Airy Glass Cabinets
Incorporating glass front cabinets amplifies openness with transparency and sheen. Glass doors showcase contents while feeling less imposing than solid wood fronts at eye level. Use glass fronts strategically near windows or to break up banks of cabinetry. Try open shelving flanked by glass doors as a focal point or over a farmhouse sink. Include glass inserts or leaded designs for added dimension. Glass fronts work anywhere – position them above the sink, along the backsplash, or mix them with the shaker doors and base cabinets for textural intrigue.
Charming Beadboard Cabinets
Beadboard cabinet fronts add cottage character through their distinctive vertical grooved pattern. Play up the country kitchen vibe by pairing classic white beadboard lower cabinets with natural wood uppers. Or use beadboard backs as pretty interior wallpaper inside glass door cabinets.
Elegant Raised Panel Cabinet Doors
Traditional raised panel cabinets exude gracious warmth with their lush dimensional facades. Featuring inset doors with intricate beveled edges, the raised center panel panels create nuanced shadow lines. Surrounding wood frames contrast the detailed central door. This classic cabinet style complements traditional architecture while its solid carpentry adds architectural allure.
Creative Painted Finishes
Paint is a powerful tool for refreshing cabinets or unifying mismatched existing cabinetry. Beyond classic white, today’s hues like navy, emerald green, and matte black feel current. Use neutrals on lower cabinets to ground bold or dark-painted uppers for contrast. Think outside the box by mixing sheens too – high-gloss paint pops against nearby flat finishes.
Traditional Cabinets Styling
Classic inset cabinetry with molded edges combines architectural details for a built-to-last aesthetic. Intricately carved ornamentation, beveled glass detailing, and turned wood bun feet continue the traditional old-world design of traditional cabinetry. Painting even lower-grade cabinetry transforms boxes into custom-style builtins grounded in heritage carpentry.
Rustic Farmhouse Cabinets
Modern farmhouse borrows from the past to create fresh rustic charm. Signature touches like visible wood grains, accent hardware pulls and open shelving make the modern farmhouse aesthetic feel both raw and current. White shaker cabinets gain country character paired with reclaimed barn wood butcher block counters and cozy messy painting.
Sleek Slab Cabinetry
The hottest contemporary cabinet option is the minimalist flat panel door style or slab panel door. Super streamlined without recessed detailing, flat panel cabinets lend a Euro aesthetic with their ultra-clean styling. Their seamless slab door design creates an unbroken line, often handleless, fitting modern or industrial spaces beautifully.
Comfy Cottage Kitchens
Think casual charm with cottage cabinets sporting playful colors and intimately scaled detailing. Pretty pastels gain country appeal with visible wood grains. Extend cottage style to open shelving for dishware displays. Carved feet and scalloped drawer edges up the whimsy factor of semi-custom cabinets.
Striking Feature Shelving
Advances in lighting and hardware help specialty storage solutions shine. Frameless cabinetry allows adjustable shelves and smart interior organization while hiding function behind facade doors. Try slide-out vertical concealed cabinets for a striking uncluttered appearance.
Versatile Frameless Styling
Frameless contemporary cabinets provide a floating built-in look ideal for a small kitchen remodel. Their durable box design allows adjustable shelving and easy cleaning while maximizing storage. Hide functionals behind flat recessed panels or fronts by using vertical rollouts or pull-out storage solutions. For added dimension try open shelves flanked by contrasting cabinetry.
Sophisticated Inset Cabinetry
Inset cabinet construction provides furniture-like built-ins thanks to doors set directly against cabinet fronts when closed. This meticulous technique delivers sophistication with antiqued-looking gaps purposefully created between drawers tall cabinets and facades. Premium inset cabinets bring high-end detail to even stock cabinetry units upgraded with custom fronts.
Louvered Kitchen Cabinets
Louvered kitchen cabinet doors and fronts offer a breezy style letting light filter while concealing contents. Try louvered designs on cabinet doors flanking the range hood to diffuse cooking steam and heat while contributing dimension. Louvers work anywhere – use them in butler pantries to showcase glassware behind fretwork styling. Alternate directions for visual fun.
Mullion Cabinet Door Styles
Mullions provide beautiful architectural styling as framed glass dividers within cabinet doors. Use mullion fronts to filter light elegantly in breakfast nooks or near kitchen windows. Try open mullion shelving above a sink for pretty functionality. For doors flanking an oven, mullion glass prevents nearby cabinets from absorbing heat while adding grace notes. Use true divided lites or clip-on grids to lend charm economically.
Easy-Care Thermofoil Cabinetry
For family kitchens, durable thermofoil cabinetry withstands messes and activity. Thermofoil heat-fuses plastic laminate onto medium-density fiberboard creating a scratch, moisture, and stain-resistant finish ideal for cabinets. Choose sleek slab styles for contemporary aesthetics or traditional thermofoil doors with molded detailing. Mix thermofoil drawers and lower cabinets while wood finishes dress up visibility.
Contemporary Minimalism
The clean look of contemporary cabinetry celebrates simplicity of form through unadorned slab doors and handleless profiles. For purist contemporary style limit upper cabinets to floating shelves while base cabinetry hides functions behind uninterrupted facades. Spotlight a textural material like quartzite countertops to prevent starkness. Combine gloss and matte finishes for added dimension.
Make a Statement with Black Kitchen Cabinets
Bold black kitchen cabinetry makes any kitchen feel dramatically up-to-date. Use black stained cabinetry island or base cabinets as a striking contrast against light counters and backsplashes. Try black accent doors combined with natural wood finishes to add striking punctuation. Black kitchen cabinets feel especially modernist paired with brass hardware pulls and marble elements for chic appeal. Lean into classic chevron floors or modern concrete floors to continue the dramatic feel.
Based on reporting in Architectural Digest, mixing up kitchen cabinet finishes elicits collected charm while wood tones and tactile materials provide warmth. Their 2023 kitchen design predictions highlight more creative blending of door styles, like accenting clean-lined shaker cabinets with antique glass fronts.
Final Thoughts
When embarking on a kitchen remodel or selecting new cabinetry, choosing the right cabinet door style impacts form and function. Clean-lined options like shaker or flat panel cabinets offer versatile streamlined aesthetics with recessed center panels surrounded by straight-edged frames. For more traditional flair, glass front and raised panel custom cabinets provide dimensional detailing. Mixing door styles, customizing sizes, and playing with paint colors or wood finishes elicits a personalized style kitchen. Keep storage needs in mind too – drawer fronts organizing cooking gear or tall pantry cabinets maximizing vertical storage.
With an array of kitchen cabinet possibilities, creating your dream aesthetic with visual interest and textures adds livability. Simply decide what look inspires you – contemporary to rustic, retro to minimalist. Then coordinate kitchen cabinet style door styles and sizes to match your lifestyle and tastes.
