Clients arrive with a door style in mind and almost never with a box in mind. That is backwards. The door is a finish; the box is the decision that determines how much the kitchen holds, how the doors sit against each other, and which hinge can be used.
There are two families in North American cabinetry, and the difference between them is a piece of hardwood about an inch and a half wide.
Face frame
A face-frame cabinet is a box with a hardwood frame glued to its front edge. The frame is typically 1 1/2 inches wide, made of stiles at the sides and rails top and bottom. The door mounts to the frame, not to the box.
The frame does three useful things. It stiffens the case against racking, which matters when a cabinet is carried up a narrow pre-war stair. It gives a surface that can be scribed and planed to a wall that is out of plumb, which in a 1919 bungalow is every wall. And it is the only construction into which a true inset door can sit.
The cost is volume. On a 24 inch base cabinet, the stiles consume roughly an inch and a half either side, so a 22 1/2 inch clear opening becomes about 20 1/2 inches. Over a run of eight base cabinets, that is a real loss.
Frameless
A frameless cabinet, sometimes called European or full-access, has no front frame. The 3/4 inch panel edges are banded and the door covers the entire front. Hinges bore directly into the case side.
The gain is about 8 to 10 percent more usable interior volume across a typical run, and a drawer box that runs nearly the full internal width because the slides mount straight to the case side. In a small kitchen that difference is not academic. It is the difference between a drawer holding your stock pot and not holding it.
The costs are two. Frameless cases need filler strips and finished end panels to deal with out-of-plumb walls, because there is no frame to scribe. And inset doors are not possible: an inset door sits inside a frame, and there is no frame.
The reveal, which is what you will actually look at
On a frameless kitchen, all doors are full overlay and the gap between adjacent doors is typically 3 millimetres, consistent everywhere. The run reads as a continuous plane of doors with fine dark lines between them. It is a modern look and it is unforgiving: any case that is out of level shows immediately in the reveal.
On a face-frame kitchen you have three options. Full overlay looks similar to frameless but with a slightly wider gap. Partial overlay leaves an inch or so of frame showing, which is the traditional American kitchen look. Inset sets the door flush with the frame, with a 3 millimetre gap all round, and is the most demanding and most expensive to build well.
How we choose
- Small kitchen, storage is the priority: frameless, every time.
- Period house, inset doors wanted, walls out of plumb: face frame.
- Long unbroken runs where a consistent plane matters: frameless.
- Matching an existing partial-overlay kitchen in an adjoining room: face frame.
- Budget under pressure and the layout already works: frameless refacing on the existing boxes.
What does not change
Both families use the same internal fittings. Full-extension undermount slides, soft-close hinges, birch drawer boxes with dovetailed corners and adjustable shelves are available on either. The hinge on a face-frame cabinet mounts to a plate rather than boring into the case side, but it is the same concealed, six-way adjustable hinge.
Both can carry any door style, any finish and any hardware, with the single exception of inset, which needs a frame.
And both are only as good as the installation. A perfectly made frameless run set on an unlevelled floor will show a tapering reveal along its length, and no amount of hinge adjustment will hide it. This is why we shim and level every case before the stone is templated, and why the template happens after cabinetry rather than from the drawing.