How to choose kitchen cabinets

Cabinets are usually the biggest single line in a kitchen, and they are the part you physically touch every day. Most people start by choosing a door they liked in a photograph and work backwards from there. It is worth doing in the other order, because the decisions underneath the door are the ones you cannot change later.

Here is the order we would take them in.

1. Start with the box, because it decides everything above it

There are three constructions and they behave differently. A framed cabinet has a face frame across the front of the box, which is the traditional American build and the most forgiving in an older house. A frameless cabinet has no frame, so the doors sit edge to edge and you get noticeably more usable opening, which is why it reads as the modern look. Inset sets the door flush inside the frame, which is the most exacting to build and the most expensive, and it looks like furniture rather than like cabinetry.

We carry all three, plus outdoor cabinetry for a covered kitchen. The reason this comes first is that the construction limits which door styles and which hinges are even available to you, so choosing it after the door means going back and starting again.

2. Then the door style, and see it as a door

This is where most of the looking happens, and it is also where a screen is least trustworthy. A shaker in one line is not a shaker in the next: the rail width, the inside profile and the edge all differ, and those differences are invisible in a catalogue photograph taken in somebody else's lighting.

It is worse than that, because the lines do not even name doors the same way. Waypoint numbers its doors. Designers Choice names them after towns. Nobody can put those side by side on a manufacturer's own website, so we photographed every door we hold and put them on one set of shelves you can filter: 216 door styles, sortable by look, by door shape and by finish. Filter to what you want, then come and touch the three you shortlisted.

Read that browser correctly and it shows the photographs we hold, not everything a line can be ordered in. Waypoint photographs every combination, so its 21 finishes are real choices you can see on the door. Designers Choice is photographed in unfinished maple only, so those cards show the shape rather than the color, and every one is stocked in the full finish range. A line reading zero means no photograph, not no door. Ask and we will pull the book.

3. Finish, which is a durability decision as much as a color one

We carry stained, painted, laminate and Duraform finishes. Stain shows the wood and hides wear well, which is why it survives a busy family kitchen. Paint gives you the color you actually want and shows every knock at the edges, particularly on a light color over a dark grain. Laminate and Duraform wrap the door, which makes them the easy answer next to a sink or in a mudroom.

Colorado adds one wrinkle. The air here is dry and real wood moves with humidity, so on a painted five-piece door that can eventually show as a hairline at the joints. It is normal and not a defect, but if that idea bothers you, look at a slab or a wrapped door instead.

4. Drawers or doors, decided by what you actually own

People ask us for all drawer bases more than for anything else on this list, and they are usually right to. A door gives you one deep cave that you kneel down and reach into. A drawer brings the contents out to you, so you can see what you have, which is the whole reason a drawer kitchen stays tidy. Deep drawers hold pots better than a door cabinet ever will.

The counterweight is cost: drawers cost more than doors, every time. So this is not all or nothing. Put drawers where you reach every day, which is usually the run either side of the range, and keep doors where the tall and rarely used things live. Rollouts behind a door are the middle option and they are cheaper than a full drawer bank.

Soft close on doors and drawers comes as standard on what we carry, so that is not a line you need to negotiate.

5. Custom or semi-custom

Semi-custom means a catalogue of sizes and options that covers most kitchens well and costs less. Full custom means the cabinet is built to your dimension, for an odd wall, a non-standard ceiling, or something no catalogue has. We carry both, and for most kitchens the honest answer is semi-custom with one or two custom pieces where the room is awkward.

Islands, pantries and built-ins are where custom usually earns its money, because those are the pieces most likely to be a size nobody stocks.

6. Ask whether you need new boxes at all

If your existing layout works and the boxes are sound, replacing the doors and drawer fronts is a real option and we have done it. There are two of those jobs in our kitchen gallery, one where the boxes were the originals and the layout never moved, and one that started as a refacing and grew. It is worth asking about before you price a full replacement, because the answer sometimes saves you a great deal of money and several weeks.

It is not always the answer. In one of those jobs the original cabinets were not worth keeping, so the perimeter was replaced instead. Somebody has to look at that rather than guess.

7. See the combination, then draw the room

A kitchen is a door, a finish, a counter, a backsplash and a handle standing next to each other. Any one can look right alone and wrong together, and photographs taken in five different lights will not tell you. Our Littleton showroom carries 87 manufacturers across cabinets, countertops, tile, flooring, vanities, fixtures and hardware, so you can hold the whole combination in one place.

Then we draw your kitchen in 3D before you commit. That is the cheapest possible moment to discover that the island you wanted leaves eleven inches of walkway.

You do not have to hand us the whole kitchen

Three ways to do this and all three are normal here. Buy the cabinets and install them yourself. Buy them and hand them to your own contractor. Or let us handle the whole kitchen from the first sketch to the last outlet cover. Same showroom and the same pricing either way.

We design and install across the southwest Denver metro, so Lakewood, Littleton, Ken Caryl, Columbine and the rest of it are all a short drive from the Belleview showroom.

Related: Kitchen remodelingBrowse cabinets