There are many styles to choose from when you opt to design Chicago Custom Cabinets. In many cases, the obvious choice will jump right out at you. The style of your kitchen design will also funnel you towards specific cabinet door styles.

Chicago custom cabinets are the platinum standard in kitchen cabinetry. They are hand-crafted, measure, cut and built to your personal design specifications, made from the highest-quality materials and constructed to last a lifetime.

Designing a kitchen can feel like the proverbial peeling of an onion. You peel away one layer and there's another one there to greet you. In the case of design, it can seem as if each time you make a decision, that decision leads to two more questions...and it continues like that for some time.

One of the questions you'll be asked early in your kitchen remodeling journey is whether you want framed or frameless cabinets. Both are options when you order Chicago custom cabinets and both are beautiful additions to your kitchen design.

Frameless cabinets are all the rage right now due to their clean look and tendency to blend with both modern and contemporary kitchen designs. There is one exception to this rule, however, and that is inset cabinetry.

When it comes to selecting Chicago custom cabinets for a kitchen remodel, it boils down to three options: framed, frameless and inset. The first two styles were covered in previous blogs. You can read them by clicking Framed Cabinet Design or Frameless Cabinet Design.

In this post, however, we'll cover the popular comeback of inset cabinet designs, which actually originated during the Georgian and Victorian eras (18th and 19th centuries).

Framed cabinets were the American standard until just about a decade ago or so. Then, the European-inspired frameless cabinet option hit the market and now everybody wants to know whether framed or frameless cabinets are "better".

Well, let us back up a bit; it's a rare modernist who will choose framed cabinetry, but transitionalist and traditionalists have their decision making work cut out for them.

Until the last decade or so, Chicago custom cabinets were all built using cabinet frames. A framed cabinet is exactly that; when you open the cabinet door, you see rails and stiles forming a 1-1/2 inch face frame. It looks just like a picture frame. These frames were used to bolster the strength of the cabinet body and create a sturdy foundation upon which we attached the cabinet doors.

How do the costs of custom cabinets vary from the price of stock cabinets? And is the price difference really worth it?

Here are two of the most commonly asked questions we get here at Kitchens and Baths Unlimited when our clients are starting to put their remodeling budget together. You won't be surprised to learn that in general, stock cabinets are the cheapest, semi-custom are the next rung up the price ladder and fully-custom cabinets are usually the most expensive. However, there are always exceptions, especially when you are budgeting between semi-custom and custom cabinetry.

There are cases where a cabinet design by a high-quality cabinet shop will be cheaper or comparable to semi-custom, depending on the line you are looking at. The size of your kitchen and your individual "bells and whistles" are often the determining factor.

For more information about the specific structural differences, advantages and disadvantages to the available options, read our blog, What's the Difference Between Custom, Semi-Custom and Stock Cabinetry?

What's the Cost Comparison of Custom Cabinets to Stock Cabinets?

Remember when master bedroom closets were typical wall closets, just a little longer? Then walk-in closets became all the rage. The larger space and extra closet rungs were major bonuses, of course. However, in the end, we all just ended up with a big cavernous space that got piled up with a bunch of junk. Oops!