 |
| Glendale |
The most common door overlay that clients have in their homes before remodeling is the classic overlay or partial overlay. The verbiage depends on the cabinet manufacturer itself but it looks like the door style on the left.
This type of door style allows for routing out on both the drawers and the doors for finger pulls rather than needing hardware and it also tends to be a less expensive door style. As the name suggests, it only partially covers the face frame of the cabinet that you are ordering. If you are looking to have a butt door cabinet (the cabinet doors actually butt up against each other removing the need for a center stile---the 3" piece of wood that is in the center of many cabinets) then I would advise against using the partial overlay doors because the reveals will not be consistent across the kitchen. Over the years, however, this particular overlay has been losing popularity and as a result many manufacturers have fewer and fewer options to choose this type of overlay. That being said, many custom and near custom manufacturers where you can choose your door style and also choose the overlay will allow you more options if this is the overlay that you really like.
 |
| Ramsey |
The most popular overlay style that I sell is the full overlay style like the one shown at the right. This means that the door and drawer heads almost completely cover the face frame of the cabinet and will absolutely require the use of hardware in order to open these types of cabinets. As mentioned previously, this door overlay has become more and more prevalent and there are some manufacturers who will have full overlay represent over 90% of their cabinet offerings. The downfalls to these type of doors really come into play during installation. Without having any space on the top of the wall cabinets to install molding, you will often have to do slightly shorter height wall cabinets if you are looking for crown molding and additionally, when installing these types of cabinets with a wall to the left or right you will need to use fillers. If no filler is used, you could run into a situation where the door or drawer does not open all of the way because it runs into door frame molding or even just an uneven wall. Additionally, with full overlay doors with hardware and a wall next to the cabinet you could run into a situation where the knobs are actually leaving marks in the wall if you do not use the proper width fillers.
 |
| Wabash Beaded Inset |
Inset overlay (as shown to the left) has been showing up more and more in the magazines over the last few years and has been gaining in relative popularity as a result. Inset doors mean exactly that, the door itself is inset into the face frame of the cabinet rather than sitting on top of the frame. There are multiple considerations that one must take into account when designing with the inset doors especially dealing with how cabinets will look next to each other and even what the end panels of exposed cabinets will look like. You will tend to only find inset doors as options within cabinet lines that are near or full custom cabinets. There is a certain amount of finesse required to not only construct these cabinets but also design with them. These cabinets can be the most difficult to really get to look right but can also be some of the most seamless looks and high end looks that you can find when doing a kitchen remodel.
Door overlays may not make or break your decision on what types of cabinets to order but this, hopefully, is just one more explanation of how and why you may choose an overlay. Think carefully as you are looking at your space and your door style to what you like the look of best and what works best with how you use your kitchen---do you really want to have hardware or are you worried that it will catch on you? Are you looking for the least expensive options or are you looking for a furniture level built in look? Asking yourself these questions and others will help you design your dream kitchen.
All photos of doors from Brighton Cabinetry
