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Shaker Door Frame Rail Width
Hi, I’m building a custom cabinet to match a house full of your cabinets (that aren’t installed yet, still wrapped in boxes), and I just need to know the width of the rails and stiles of the shaker doors. It’s usually around 2-1/2″, but I want to make sure with yours.
Thanks,
Matt -
5 Replies
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Our doors come with a stile and rail width of 2 5/8”.
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Do you have any plans to offer a thinner stile and rail – the kind some manufacturers call slim shaker style?
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How slim are you looking for?
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following…
something like this kinda?
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I checked, and the absolute minimum frame width we can offer for a frame-and-panel door is about 1 7/8″. This allows for hinge cups at the proper depth while ensuring the door remains strong enough to prevent breakage over time. At this smaller width, there may be slight warping or bowing on taller doors, but it would be minimal.
To match your reference door exactly, we would need to start with a 3/4″ thick slab plywood door and add an outside edge detail molding. The frame width in your picture appears to be 7/8″ to 1″, which is too narrow to be constructed using a traditional frame-and-panel method.
The difficulty arises from the need for a 3/4″ thick substrate to support the hinges. Since the hinge cup must be drilled just over 1/2″ deep, there must be enough material thickness to avoid drilling through the door face. Adding outside molding to mimic the 7/8″ frame width is possible, but the door would then need to be at least 7/8″ to 15/16″ thick to maintain a proper frame-to-panel distance.
At 7/8″ thick edges, our standard 1/8″ reveals between doors would cause interference. When opened, the doors would rub against adjacent ones. Reducing the door thickness isn’t an option either, as it would prevent drilling the hinge cup to the required depth.
Additionally, Blum soft-close hinges require an integrated mechanism inside the hinge cup. If the door is too thin, we’d have to switch to non-soft-close hinges, which require a different drilling pattern. Other cabinet lines get around this by increasing door gaps to 1/4″ or more, but this results in a less refined construction method.
Ultimately, this skinny door style would require significant handwork to apply the outside molding and would be too thick for standard hinges. It’s probably not the best fit for our product line, as the price, durability, and production efficiency would suffer. This design introduces complications that could slow down production and create inconsistencies in quality.
