Kitchen door thickness?

[sploo]

I'm shortly going to embark on a project of making a load of doors for our kitchen cabinets. Style will be a simple frame and panel, with the rails and styles probably 7cm wide. We haven't yet decided on painted poplar/tulipwood or oiled American black walnut.

There will be a few taller/thinner doors (e.g. 20 x 80cm, 60 x 80cm, 60 x 100cm), but mostly it'll be 60 x 40cm drawer fronts.

I was looking at two thicknesses - ~20mm with a 6mm panel, and ~22mm with a 9mm panel. In Sketchup, I much preferred the thicker option, but having made a couple of prototypes (well, one corner of a door in each of walnut and poplar, in 22mm thickness) I'm wondering if the 22mm is too chunky.

Would 22mm thick rails and styles be considered too deep for this sort of simple Shaker style door? Difficult to be certain until the kitchen is full of them, but by then it would be too late!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'd have thought 22mm too heavy and even 20mm heavy enough.

 

[morturn]

I have recently done some 22mm think look with 9mm panels. I like the look of them, however they are quite taller than the ones you have planned

 

[sploo]

Thanks both. Perhaps I need to stop being lazy and make up a couple of full size prototypes of each thickness in something cheap like pine.

 

[Doug71]

Are the doors inset in a frame or overlay style?

If inset in a frame thicker doors make it look a higher quality job.

With overlay we are used to seeing 18mm thick doors so thinner doors look right to us.

If you are replacing thinner overlay doors with thicker ones there can be issues with the hinges.

Doug

 

[clanger]

Hiya,
I have just made similar doors myself out of Euro Oak. I made mine with 19mm thick rails and stiles and 18mm panels (flush on the front and inset by 1mm on the back). The top rail and stiles are 50 mm deep and the bottom rail is 75mm. These proportions worked well for all doors from the smallest wall cupboard to the largest doors under the sink.

One thing that I have found is that the Blum softclose hinges struggle a bit with the large under sink doors - I suspect that is due to the think panels.

I hope that this helps.

Chris

 

[AJGrupp]

Doors frame 75 mm x 21 mm:

 

[MikeG.]

Mine are ex 38mm finishing at about 32. This means there is enough guts to have bridle joints where stiles meet rails, and it gives a decent feel of solidity to them. When you open one there is no question in your mind that you are opening something made of solid wood rather than MDF.