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Frameless Kitchen Cabinets: What You Gain and Give Up · USA Cabinet Store Remodeling Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome back to the USA Cabinet Store Remodeling
• 0:07
  Podcast. I'm Chris and today we are taking on
• 0:12
  frameless cabinets. You will also hear them called
• 0:15
  full access or European. Jessica, I want to start
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  somewhere slightly unusual because almost every
• 0:23
  article written about this argues about storage
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  and you told me that is the wrong argument. It
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  is the wrong argument, and I will give you the
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  whole answer before we even get into it. What
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  you gain with Frameless is access. On a base
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  cabinet, you get roughly an inch and a half to
• 0:39
  an inch and three quarters more opening, and
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  you can run a drawer up to 36 inches wide with
• 0:44
  no center style down the middle of it. What you
• 0:48
  give up is about 8 to 15 percent on the price
• 0:50
  of the boxes, any possibility of inset doors,
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  and three smaller things nobody raises in a showroom.
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  But the thing that actually decides whether Frameless
• 1:00
  works for you is your walls. Okay, we are absolutely
• 1:03
  coming back to the walls. But first, why is the
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  storage argument bad? That is the wholesale pitch
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  for Frameless. Because the published numbers
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  do not agree with each other, and not by a little.
• 1:15
  Mainline Kitchen Design does the math and gets
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  about 8 % more per drawer. But no more than 4
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  % across a whole kitchen, because your wall cabinets
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  lose nothing to a face frame. Then you have KCMA.
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  The Trade Association, saying frameless gives
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  you about 20 % more storage. 4 % against 20%.
• 1:35
  Same question, five times apart. So somebody's
• 1:39
  wrong. Nobody is lying, actually. They are measuring
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  different things and both calling it storage.
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  Mainline is computing volume across the whole
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  kitchen, where the uppers drag the average down.
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  KCMA looks like it is describing the opening
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  at the face of a base cabinet, where the loss
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  is real and large. And here is the part I would
• 1:58
  want a listener to hold on to. KCMA does not
• 2:01
  publish a method for that 20%. So if a salesperson
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  quotes you one confident number, they have read
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  one page. Then what is the honest version of
• 2:10
  the benefit? Because there clearly is one. The
• 2:13
  honest version is not a percentage at all. It
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  is that a frameless cabinet takes a drawer or
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  a rollout pantry up to 36 inches wide with no
• 2:21
  center partition. On framed construction, you
• 2:25
  generally need a center style past about 24 inches,
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  and that style sits right in the middle of the
• 2:31
  opening. That is not cubic inches. That is whether
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  a sheet pan goes in flat, whether your stand
• 2:37
  mixer comes out without turning it sideways,
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  and whether a pantry pullout is one usable bin
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  or two narrow ones. All right, the walls. Explain
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  why that is the real decision. Think of a face
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  frame as a tolerance budget. It gives every single
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  door its own local reference, and it lets an
• 2:54
  installer hide a wall that is out of plumb behind
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  a style. Frameless spends that budget on access
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  instead. So in a new build on square walls, you
• 3:03
  get the access essentially for free. In a 1920s
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  row house, you are now asking somebody to hit
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  a tolerance that the industry standard actually
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  publishes a number for. And KCMA says it outright.
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  that frameless leaves very little tolerance for
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  uneven walls, floors, or cabinet alignment. There
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  is a published number for this? Give me the number.
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  There is. The Finnish Carpentry Standard, ANSI
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  AWI 0620, says cabinets shall be installed plumb
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  and level within an eighth of an inch over eight
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  feet of run. It caps a frameless reveal, that
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  gap you see between the doors, at about an eighth
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  of an inch. And then a blum hinge gives you plus
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  or minus two millimeters of side adjustment afterwards
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  to fix things. Now put those together. The hinge
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  can absorb a normal reveal error. What it cannot
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  absorb is a box that went in racked. Define racked
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  for somebody who has never installed a cabinet.
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  A cabinet screwed tight to a wall that bows will
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  twist to follow that wall. Once the box is twisted,
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  its face is not in one plane anymore, and no
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  amount of hinge adjustment brings the door line
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  back. That is the entire frameless installation
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  argument in one sentence. And there is a hard
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  limit on how much you can cheat it. Because the
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  partitions have to stay parallel to the sidewalls.
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  Or your drawer slides stop working. You can fudge
• 4:24
  a door. You cannot fudge a drawer slide. So frameless
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  is harder to install. That is the takeaway. Actually,
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  I would put it differently. And this came from
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  an installer who does this for a living. Frameless
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  is not harder to install. It is harder to install
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  badly. With a face frame and overlay doors, you
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  have infinite vertical adjustment. So somebody
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  rushing can hang 25 cabinets in a day and nobody
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  sees it. Try that with Frameless and the doors
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  are all over the place. If your installer is
• 4:54
  good, Frameless takes a variable away. If your
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  installer is cheap, Frameless finds out. That
• 5:01
  is a great line. So what do you ask the person
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  bidding the job? Two questions. How many frameless
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  kitchens have you installed and do you hang them
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  off a leveled rail? Somebody who has done it
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  answers instantly and then starts telling you
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  about your floor. Somebody who has not will talk
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  about your walls. And one more rule for older
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  houses. Never run a cabinet tight to the ceiling.
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  Leave a crown or a filler that can be scribed
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  because ceilings are not level and there is nothing
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  to trim off a frameless box. You mentioned three
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  things nobody raises in a showroom. What are
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  those? First, the front edge you see between
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  the doors is the box, not a finished frame. It
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  is the edge banding, in whatever color the interior
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  is. So if you pick a dark door on a line with
• 5:46
  a white interior, you get a pale line around
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  every opening. Not a defect. Plenty of people
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  like the contrast. But it is a design decision
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  a spec sheet is making for you. Second, crown
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  molding and under cabinet lighting need something
• 6:00
  to land on. And with no face frame, that means
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  build up strips and light rails. Those are a
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  line on your quote, and they are exactly the
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  kind of item that gets cut from a bid and argued
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  about later. Third, that banded edge is what
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  takes the knocks a solid wood frame would otherwise
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  absorb. None of which sounds fatal. None of it
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  is. It is the difference between choosing frameless
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  with your eyes open and finding out in month
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  two. Ask to see your door color against your
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  box color on a display. Get the trim and the
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  lighting itemized, and look at what the front
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  edge of that box is actually made of. Last thing,
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  if somebody is shopping two frameless lines,
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  what separates them? Usually the box and the
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  back panel is the line worth reading twice. Take
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  Fabuwood, who we deal with. Illume uses 3 quarter
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  inch engineered furniture board with a quarter
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  inch back. Ovella, which launched in November
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  of 2025, uses 3 quarter inch plywood with a half
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  inch back that is grooved into the side panels.
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  Now remember what we said goes wrong with frameless.
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  Racking. A half inch back grooved into the sides
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  braces against that far better than a quarter
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  inch back set into rails. That is a real reason
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  to spend up. Especially in an older house. And
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  especially if you are not certain about your
• 7:15
  installer. And if somebody wants inset doors?
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  Then this is the wrong construction. And I want
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  to be precise about why. Because we corrected
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  ourselves on this. It is not that frameless inset
• 7:26
  is impossible. Bloom catalogs inset hinges for
• 7:30
  frameless boxes, and the European 32mm system
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  publishes an inset dimension, so it was designed
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  for it. Custom shops build it. What is true is
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  a fact about the market, not about physics. Every
• 7:43
  semi -custom frameless line we could find is
• 7:45
  full overlay only, ours included. So wanting
• 7:49
  inset means choosing a face frame, or choosing
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  a custom shop. Perfect place to stop. If you
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  want the full version of this, with the standards,
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  the numbers, and the sources, it is written up
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  at isaacabinets .com. Or bring your measurements
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  and the age of your house into any of our showrooms,
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  and we will tell you honestly whether we would
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  put Frameless in it. Jessica, thank you. Anytime.
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  And genuinely, go put a level on the wall before
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  you fall in love with a door.