The inset on my white painted custom inset cabinets were made with MDF and they still shifted a little this winter. It made me regret getting custom cabinets from a cabinet maker. Now I wonder if a factory finish would have been better.

Are the rest of the cabinets real wood-frames AND all other door parts? If so, I'd strongly recommend having it ALL wood. Then, in the future, if you live there 20 years and get tired of the white, you can strip them and refinish them. You won't have that option(nor will anyone else who buys the home) if you have mdf for the inset. I'm appreciative that I only came across mdf on the bottoms of the uppers which i wasn't going to stain since they are not seen. Had my insets been mdf, I think I would have cried. Granted I was doing stained wood to stained wood, but if you use mdf, you are limiting yourself to only ever have painted cabinets.

Omg I want to beg you to do real wood!! It bothers me sooooo much that my cabinets are mdf. I'm having them painted a few weeks from now to update the look of the cabinets, but it will always bother me that they FEEL cheap and too light. I promise you that you will be so much happier in the long run!! Just my two cents:)

Light?
MDF is heavy!.
Of course, like wood, it depends upon the thickness.

If you're going to worry what happens in 20 years, you've got bigger problems than wood or MDF cabinets.
Chances are in 20 years you'll replace the doors, anyway.
Particularly when one is TKO. I think one of the side effects of that is constant change and "upgrade". (I use the term affectionately.)

On some of my 30"+ tall cabinets I have MDF panels, because they won't twist or warp. On the smaller doors, I've got wood. I'm painting everything because I like paint. The MDF doors must be of a thickness that they certainly don't feel flimsy.

As long as my frames and face frames are wood, I feel it's fine -- and durable. My opinion. :)

The inset on my white painted custom inset cabinets were made with MDF and they still shifted a little this winter. It made me regret getting custom cabinets from a cabinet maker. Now I wonder if a factory finish would have been better.

EMH107, what do you mean that "they still shifted a little this winter"? What shifted? Also, are you talking about doors where the whole door is inset in the cabinet like this

or are you meaning the center of door styles like this?

I think the OP is wondering about the center panel of doors like in the second diagram.

Nap, you can use mdf or plywood in a door construction like the one labeled "plywood flat panel door," but not the other three. MDF and plywood are composite wood products that have a good looking veneer on the outside. The profiles in #2-4 are made with a router which cuts out the shape. If you did that to mdf or plywood, you would shave away the veneer and be looking at the not-attractive insides of mdf or plywood. In the case of plywood you'd have a whole lot of splintery face. Now that I think about it, maybe you could router an mdf panel and just paint the the cut-away faces. There would be a difference in the surface quality between the finished faces and the cut-away faces. The applied veneer is meant to be a finish and the insides are not meant to be finished surfaces. If you painted the now unfinished surfaces I guess you could "cover" them, but it doesn't seem like a great idea to me.

thanks for the feedback. My gut is to go all wood. But I've been hearing that the mdf for the inset will be less likely to warp. I think I'd rather have natural materials that age and show imperfections, but a door that is warped or doesn't stay closed might be worse.

We just pulled all the doors off our cabinets, repainted and refaced. The doors, which were mdf, were really beat up after 15 years of hard use.

I think that's likely how it's going to be - the doors fall apart before the boxes. Get MDF, they'll last a bit longer.

The inset on my white painted custom inset cabinets were made with MDF and they still shifted a little this winter. It made me regret getting custom cabinets from a cabinet maker. Now I wonder if a factory finish would have been better.

The inset on my white painted custom inset cabinets were made with MDF and they still shifted a little this winter. It made me regret getting custom cabinets from a cabinet maker. Now I wonder if a factory finish would have been better.