inset v. full overlay cabinets

carriea

14 years ago

Curious as to your collective opinions on pros and cons of inset v. full overlay cabs other than aesthetics?

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Comments (5)

sabjimata
14 years ago
You can get full overlay in frameless...and that gives you more room inside the cabinet in terms of getting stuff in and out.
Fori
14 years ago
Even in framed, overlay cabinets give your more space inside.

And if your cabinets tend to get banged up from clumsy users (bowl dents on the stiles, fork marks above the silverware drawer, etc.), overlay cabinets can hide a lot of it.

Appliances may need additional accommodation in inset cabinetry, especially integrated paneled ones.

Functionally I can't think of any reason inset cabinets are superior. I certainly would rule them out just because of that though!
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I'm considering doing frameless/fulloverlay on the main kitchen and inset in the breakfast hutch/snack area. I want more storage in the kitchen proper and the hutch to look like a piece of furniture. So, I'm definitely interested in what everyones opinion is on mixing sytles.
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Hi, I started using Conestoga back in 2010 when Casey was about the only one here who had them. I was nervous but took the plunge. Love their RTAÃ¢ÂÂs! In my last house my husband and I built this kitchen with full overlays. The finish was still perfect three years later when I sold. In the house IÃ¢ÂÂm in now we are doing inset cabinetry in the master bath. One is not harder than the other to assemble. Although I buy my cabinets from Chad at Cabinetmakerschoice the cabinetjoint has the best Conestoga assembly videos.
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Don't feel you have to enforce vertical symmetry with the need to line the coolers up with the stacked bottles. If slightly wider ones are cheaper and would work, the go with that without a qualm. And i think having them the same dimension actually weakens the overall design, a bit. You'll notice that in colored picture, the bottle stack and the cooler doors don't line up, and it still looks well-balanced. Notice, too, that there's even an optical illusion-created discordance between the stacked bottle rack on the right and the strongly vertical-orientation of the glass-paneled doors to the left on the other side of the TV. So just making those two sides match didn't result in an eye-sweet balance, no matter what the tape measure may say. In your case, I think the strong apparent verticality of the coolers' slab doors may make them seem narrower than they actually are, creating a top heavy look to the wine racks above. This violates the general sense we have that things should be bolder, and stronger-appearing on the base, and successive layers should get lighter, narrower, smaller, or whatever. In our second drawing, with the coolers moved inward, the optical-illusion of their narrowness is resolved. Also it may just be artefacts of the layout but the D-shaped raised trim pattern on the sides of the narrow lower doors strikes me as unattractive. Also door hinging should be book-matched, or disguised to look that way. HTH L.
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Inset or Full Overlay Framed Cabinets....that is the question
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Comments (12)
Adding to the above, a frameless cabinet is a box, 5 sides of the cube, with a door attached to it. A framed cabinet is a cube with a hole cut out of the 6th side -- creating a frame around the opening on that last side. In either case, the cabinet door covers the 6th side. In the case of a frameless, the door covers the entire opening and the sides of the box material. A framed cabinet has the option of covering all of that frame (full overlay) or just part of it (partial overlay). Maybe that will help you picture the difference. If a frameless cabinet is well built, it should be just as strong as a well made framed cabinet. You may also hear them called European cabinets because they have been the standard in Europe. The IKEA cabinets that seem to be a gold standard for budget cabinetry are frameless cabinets. I have maple painted Brookhaven and WoodMode cabinets as well as knotty cherry WoodMode. All of them are frameless and we love them. We got a lot more drawer space we have much better storage and usable space even though we were limited to the same footprint and took out a corner pantry.
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eandhl
14 years ago
Inset is worth it when you are doing a period kit.
michellemarie
14 years ago
I have both. My island is full overlay and the perimeter cabinets are inset. They both function as cabinets. I think it really does come down to looks. You either have your heart set on one or the other or you don't. If you feel they are equal in the looks department choose the less costly. I think my inset cabinets are prettier than the full overlay.
chicagoans
14 years ago
I'm not a fan of seeing hinges, so I like inset cabinets with concealed hinges but not so much the ones with visible hinges. (With concealed hinges you can change your knobs and pulls and not worry about matching the finish of the hinges.)

This is a bit speculative, but it seems that inset doors could require a higher quality of craftmanship because they are tightly fitted within the opening. If a door is just slightly off or a hinge is loose (causing the door to hang crooked) I think you'd notice it more with inset than overlay because you'd see the dark inside of the cabinet through the space between the door and the frame.

Neither of these would prevent me from getting inset; just things I've noticed.

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inset v. full overlay cabinets

Comments (5)

sabjimata

Fori

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