Door Styles and Profiles
The door and drawer fronts styles, along with the finish, are what give cabinets most of their appeal. There are a wide variety of styles and profiles which are mixed and matched to create literally hundreds of different possible combinations. While many of the door styles and profiles are very similar from company to company, they are typically unique and as such it is difficult to mix doors from different companies.
For example, every company will offer a square raised panel maple door. However, the exact dimensions of the router used to profile the outside, inside and panel may be unique to a particular manufacturer having had their router bit custom manufactured. It might look very similar to others, but could be just slightly different enough that on close inspection, you notice the difference between two different companies.
In this section, we describe the general characteristics of the styles and profiles of our doors (drawer fronts are similar) and provide some pictures so they can be compared to one another.
Door Styles
Doors constructed of real hardwood fall into one of three general categories:
- Recessed panels
- Raised panels
- Solid slab
| Recessed panel door is a door constructed of 5 pieces - 4 outside rails and stiles and a center panel. Recessed panel doors refer to any door in which the middle panel in the door is inset, or recessed and flat, in comparison to the outer rails of the door. The outside and inside edge of the rails can have a variety of profiles, but the panel itself is flat. |  |
| Raised panel door is also a door constructed of 5 pieces - 4 outside rails and stile and a center panel. However, the raised panel srefer to any door in which the middle panel in the door is made of material approximately the same thickness as the outer rails of the door. The outside and inside edge of the rails can have a variety of profiles, as can the edge of the raised panel. |  |
| A solid or slab door is one which has no inset or patterns and the door is simply a flat, single thickness with no inside profile. This type of door tends to be used infrequently in solid hardwoods due to the increased potential for warping. The recessed and raised panel doors with their 5 piece construction tend to make the door more structurally stable and reduce the chance of warping. Solid slab doors are more commonly made from MDF and finished in a colored lacquer finish. |  |
Within the raised and recessed panel profiles, the most common door styles that customers select are the Square, Slow Arch and Cathedral. These 3 styles are common to both recessed and raised panel doors types. All of the Shaker styles are unique to recessed panels as a Shaker is simply a specific style of recessed panel door. There are certainly other types of door styles not illustrated here and we can source those unique styles as well based on customer demand.
| Square | Slow Arch | Cathedral | Shaker | Mission Shaker | V-groove Shaker |
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Doors constructed from MDF and finished in a colored lacquer also fall into the same general types of raised, recessed and solid slabs. However, all of these a types actually start as a solid slab and are routered to create the inside profiles to make them look like a raised or recessed panel. We offer the same basic styles - Square, Slow Arch, Cathedral and Shaker - in our solid MDF doors.
| Square | Slow Arch | Cathedral | Shaker |
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(coming soon) |
Outside Rail and Stile Edge Profile
For our hardwood doors, we offer 11 standard outside edge rail profiles as shown in the picture.
These outside edge profiles can be selected with any combination of the inside edge and panel profiles (for a raised panel door); however some combinations do tend to look better together and are used more commonly than others.
For our MDF doors, we currently have two basic outside edge profiles - a bullnose and shallow concave profile.
[photo coming soon]
Inside Rail and Stile Edge Profile
For our hardwood doors, we offer 5 standard inside edge rail and stile profiles as shown below.
These inside edge profiles can be selected with any combination of the outside edge and panel profiles (for a raised panel door); however some combinations do tend to look better together and are used more commonly than others.
For our MDF doors the profile on the inside edge and the panel (there are no rails or stiles per se in a solid MDF door) are the same but are simply mirror images of one another. We have 3 standard profiles - the single ogee, double ogee and bullnose. Each are shown below
[photo coming soon]
Raised Panel Profile
For our hardwood doors, we offer 8 standard panel edge profiles as shown below.
These panel edge profiles can be selected with any combination of the inside and outside rail edge profiles (for a raised panel door); however some combinations do tend to look better together and are used more commonly than others.
Custom Doors
The styles and door profiles outlined describe our standard offering, but if you have a specific door style not in this section, we can easily source your chosen style from other manufacturers we deal with on a less frequent basis. Alternatively just let us know where you found the doors you would like and we can make arrangements to deal with that company.