7 Kitchen Cabinet Door Styles Perfect For Your Kitchen Remodel

Picture this: you're rebuilding your kitchen and revamping it from the ground up. After pulling out all the old cabinets and fixtures and selecting your new modern appliances, you’re coming down to the small details. It’s time to choose the little things such as cabinet hardware, the upholstery for your chic new barstools, and what color the smart lighting will shine at different times of the day.

Most importantly you’ll have to choose what your cabinets will look like and what kind of kitchen door style and finish you will want them to have. Your cabinet doors will be with you for many years, so it’s important to ensure you get the ones that fit your budget, are durable, and are compatible with your tastes.

Choosing cabinet doors that you aren’t happy with will leave you with a mistake that stares you in the eye every morning when you walk into the kitchen to make a coffee. By contrast, choosing the right cabinet doors for your kitchen will ensure that stunning cabinet door designs and high-quality workmanship greet you every time you look up at your cabinets.

Speaking of aesthetics, the main thing to consider when choosing cabinet doors is design, and there are some popular designs to choose from.  

1. Cathedral Design

Arch-style cabinets have a classical look.

This is also known as the arch-style, and it is a cabinet door design that attempts to emulate the distinctive Gothic arch feature found in monumental cathedrals. In some variants of the design, the arch can be indented and steeper, and in others, it is less pronounced for a more subtle design.

This ornate design is perfect for a kitchen with high ceilings. However, this style of cabinet isn’t the most popular and so may not be the best choice for those hoping to sell their home as cathedral-style cabinet doors can reduce the desirability of your kitchen.  

2. Flat Standard

Flat cabinets embody the beauty of minimalism.

This simple cabinet door design is a minimalist one and will work well in most contemporary kitchens. Flat cabinet doors are also known as slab doors and their featureless design has been quite popular in Europe for decades. They are available in basically all kinds of wood including cheaper laminates.

On its own, the design is perfect for giving your kitchen a non-fussy and uncluttered look. If you decide to add prominent hardware and knobs they will stand out, allowing you to highlight the quality of your hardware. 

3. Beadboard Design 

Beadboard style cabinets can emulate the farmhouse style.

Beadboard refers to a cabinet door design that is also sometimes referred to as tongue and groove. It is a very common way of styling wood panels in which the panel is made up of several smaller plank strips, forming grooves or ridges that are the “beads” in the beadboard design.

This design can also be replicated with a solid plank of wood that has ridges carved into it. In either case, beadboard cabinet doors replicate the rustic farmhouse aesthetic that has greatly increased in popularity in recent years. This makes for a simple and relaxing design that few other cabinet door designs can replicate.   

4. Glass Panel Design 

Add depth to a small kitchen with glass-paneled cabinets.

A smaller kitchen needs some clever tricks to make it feel bigger. One way to do this is by improving lighting, but another solution is by changing your cabinet doors. Specifically, glass cabinet doors are an option worth considering since they will help your kitchen feel airier by adding depth to the space.

Plus, glass-paneled doors make it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for, saving time and keeping your nerves from fraying as you rush about. It also doesn’t hurt that glass panels open the door to exciting new decorative options such as stained glass and diamond panels.  

5. Shaker Doors

Enjoy handcrafted quality with shaker cabinetry.

The Shakers rejected opulence and excessive ornamentation but valued high-quality handmade workmanship. So it’s no surprise that shaker kitchen doors are often high-quality pieces with relatively simple cabinet door designs. This makes for a timeless design that is a mainstay in many kitchens.

While many traditional kitchen door styles have fallen out of favor, Shaker-style cabinet doors have increased in popularity, and this is partly due to how easy it is to adapt to various designs. Shaker kitchen doors can be made to fit any aesthetic from industrial to country farmhouse. Despite their simple aesthetic, shaker doors can be on the pricier side, especially if you go with handmade options. 

6. Cabinet Production Configurations 

Custom cabinets help personalize your kitchen.

While kitchen door styles are important, the configuration is as well. In the world of cabinetmaking, there are three main configurations for cabinets: semi-custom, custom, and stock design. All three come with distinct advantages and drawbacks that make them well suited to some kitchens and less at home in others. 

Semi-Custom

Semi-custom cabinets are generally considered the middling cabinet option when it comes to price and build quality. As their name implies they are a mixture of prefabricated parts and customized components. The price is mainly determined by what materials you choose and how many of the cabinets you want to be custom components.

This gives you more control over the final price and will also ensure that you get your cabinets installed sooner since prefabrication is always faster than custom building. For your cabinet doors, this means that you can either choose completely prefab options that will be cheaper or you can opt for some custom-made stuff components as well. 

Custom

With custom cabinets, you have total freedom in what materials you want the cabinets to be made of, what dimensions you need, and what cabinet door design style you prefer. Every detail, from the hardware to the paint and finish is up to you. With virtually limitless options, this means that your cabinet doors can be designed exactly to your specifications.

The main downside here is of course cost since your custom cabinets will be more expensive than a prefab set. Also, custom cabinets take longer to build, so you’ll wait longer as well before you can take delivery of the finished product. 

Stock Design 

When all you need are the basics, stock cabinetry is a smart way to go for a few reasons. For one, it is far more affordable than other options, and the prefab nature of stock cabinets means that you can take delivery immediately and get to work installing your new fixtures.

This will give you fewer options to play around with when it comes to cabinet doors, since stock cabinets typically come in a limited range of cabinet door designs. However, many stock cabinets are made to high standards and so whatever you choose will be quite long-lasting, meaning you get good value for your investment.  

7. Full overlay and standard overlay 

Close panel gaps with full overlay cabinet doors.

Finally, another detail you’ll have to think about is what kind of overlay you want your cabinet doors to have. This is not only a matter of aesthetics but it will also impact functionality. Your two main choices are standard overlay and full overlay cabinet doors. 

Full Overlay 

These cabinet types are designed to give you full access to all the inside volume of a kitchen cabinet, maximizing the room you get for storage, installing drawers, etc. This is achieved by designing the doors to fully overlay the box of the cabinet, leaving no more than a half-inch between cabinet units.

This makes for a seamless line of cabinets free of any misalignments or unsightly gaps. The only real disadvantage of this type of overlay is that it can be hard to work with if your kitchen space is limited. A cabinetmaker has to make sure that the drawers and doors don’t take up each other’s travel space, and this can be difficult to do in corners and where space is limited. 

Standard Overlay 

This is a type of overlay you have likely seen in many places, since it was the most popular overlay style for decades prior to the rise of full overlay cabinets. With this configuration, the cabinet door will not cover the entire face of the cabinet. Instead, it covers the box only partially, leaving significant gaps between doors.

This won’t allow for much in the way of sleek minimalism, but it is a good choice if you are looking for a more traditional or rustic look. Plus, this configuration also allows for more ornamentation and embellishments in your cabinet door design.