Almost every kitchen decision a homeowner agonizes over, color, hardware, countertop, is reversible or replaceable. The door style isn’t. It sets the character of the room, it drives a meaningful chunk of the budget, and it’s the one thing you can’t swap out later without buying new doors for the whole kitchen.
We build these every day in our Tampa shop. Here’s the honest breakdown of what each style is, what it costs relative to the others, and how it holds up once a family actually lives in the kitchen.
First, understand overlay, it matters more than the style
Before you pick a door shape, you’re picking how the door sits on the cabinet box. This single decision affects cost more than the door profile does.
Full overlay
Doors sit on top of the face frame with only a thin reveal, usually about 1/8", between them. You get a continuous, modern run of doors with almost no frame showing. This is what most people picture when they imagine a new kitchen, and it’s what we build by default.
Partial (standard) overlay
Doors are smaller than the opening, so an inch or so of face frame shows between every door. It’s the cheapest configuration because the doors are smaller and alignment tolerances are forgiving. It also reads as dated to most eyes in 2026, it’s the look of a 1990s builder kitchen.
Inset
Doors sit inside the face frame, flush with it, like a piece of fine furniture. It’s the most expensive construction by a wide margin because every door has to be fitted to its own opening within a hair, and the hinges and frames have to be dead accurate. Expect roughly 15–25% more than full overlay for the same materials.
One Florida-specific note on inset: wood moves with humidity. An inset door fitted tightly in February can bind in August if the species, moisture content, and reveal aren’t handled correctly. It’s a great look, but it’s less forgiving here than it is in Denver. Build inset with a shop that knows that.
Shaker, the default for a reason
A flat center panel inside a square-edged five-piece frame. No ornament, no profile, nothing to date it. Shaker has been the most-requested door style in American kitchens for over a decade and it hasn’t gotten tired because it’s essentially a neutral.
- Works with: virtually everything, transitional, farmhouse, coastal, modern-traditional.
- Cost: the baseline. Everything else gets priced against it.
- Cleaning: there’s one inside corner where the panel meets the frame that collects grease and dust. Not a problem, but it’s a wipe you have to actually do.
- Watch for: rail width. A 2" rail reads classic; a narrow 1 3/4"–2 1/8" rail reads more modern. Wide 2 1/2"+ rails read heavier and more traditional. Same “Shaker” name, noticeably different rooms.
Slab (flat panel), the modern option
One flat surface, no frame, no panel. Clean and architectural. Slab doors are also the easiest to wipe down, which makes them genuinely practical for households that cook hard.
The catch is that slab doors are unforgiving about material. A wide, unbroken flat surface shows every flaw, telegraphing from the substrate, grain inconsistency, a finish that isn’t perfectly level. Cheap slab doors look cheap instantly. A quality slab door is usually built on a stable engineered core with a veneer or a sprayed finish specifically because solid wood that wide wants to cup.
- Works with: modern, minimalist, European, and, in rift-sawn white oak, the warm-modern look everyone is building right now.
- Cost: similar to Shaker in paint grade; higher in a premium veneer where grain has to be matched across a run.
- Hardware note: slab doors are often paired with edge pulls or integrated finger pulls. Decide that early, it changes the door machining.
Raised panel, traditional, and polarizing
The center panel is contoured and sits proud of the frame, often with a profiled edge. This is the classic American traditional kitchen, and in the right house, a Mediterranean revival in Hyde Park, a proper formal dining space, it still looks right.
Be honest with yourself about the house, though. Raised panel in a 2015 open-plan house with 8-foot ceilings tends to read heavy and dated. It also has the most surface area to clean of any style, with profiles that hold dust.
- Cost: typically 5–15% above Shaker, depending on the profile complexity.
- Paint consideration: profiled edges hold paint build and can show hairline cracks at the joints over years of expansion. A stain or glaze hides this far better than a crisp white paint does.
Beaded inset, the high-end move
Inset construction with a small bead detail machined into the face frame around each opening. It is the most labor-intensive door-and-frame combination in common use, and it looks like it: this is furniture-grade cabinetry.
If you want the detail, budget for it honestly. Beaded inset can run 25–40% above comparable full-overlay Shaker. We’ll build it, and it’s beautiful, but nobody should be surprised by the number at the end.
Glass-front, mullion, and open shelving
Not a door style exactly, but a decision in the same conversation. A few practical realities:
- Clear glass commits you to tidiness. Whatever is in that cabinet is now part of your kitchen’s design. Most people overestimate how neat they’ll keep it.
- Reeded, fluted, and seeded glass give you light and depth without displaying your mismatched Tupperware. This is the smarter choice for most families, and it’s having a real moment right now.
- Mullion doors (divided lites) are charming and are a dust-catching nightmare. Two or three of them as accents, yes. A full kitchen of them, think hard.
- Interior lighting changes everything. If you’re doing glass fronts, run power for puck or strip lighting during the build. Retrofitting it later means drilling finished boxes.
How door style interacts with finish
These two decisions are not independent, and this is where we spend the most time with clients:
- Painted finishes suit Shaker, slab, and inset. For paint, the species underneath barely matters visually, stability and a tight grain do. Birch, maple, and poplar are all good paint-grade substrates; red oak is not, because its open grain telegraphs right through paint.
- Stained finishes suit Shaker, slab, and raised panel, but only in a species with grain worth showing. White oak, walnut, and hickory reward stain. Birch and maple can blotch under some stains unless they’re conditioned and sprayed properly.
- Two-tone kitchens (painted perimeter, stained island) work with nearly any style and are a cheap way to add depth. The island becomes the furniture piece.
Which style for which Tampa Bay home
Generalizing, but these pairings almost never go wrong:
- 1920s bungalow (Seminole Heights, Hyde Park): Shaker or beaded inset, painted, with a furniture-style island. Inset earns its cost in these houses.
- Mediterranean revival: raised panel or a heavier Shaker with a wide rail, stained or glazed.
- Coastal / waterfront (St. Pete Beach, Apollo Beach, Davis Islands): painted Shaker in a soft white or a muted blue-green, or rift white oak slab. Pay attention to hardware finish near salt air.
- New construction and condos: full-overlay slab or narrow-rail Shaker. Keeps the lines clean in an open plan.
- Mid-century ranch: slab, flat, in a warm wood tone. Don’t fight the house.
Our honest recommendation
If you’re genuinely undecided, build full-overlay Shaker with a 2" rail in a paint-grade species and spend the money you saved on the parts you’ll feel every day: soft-close undermount slides, dovetailed drawer boxes, 3/4" plywood boxes instead of particleboard, and real interior storage. Nobody has ever regretted that combination.
Spend up on inset or beaded inset when the house deserves it and the budget is genuinely there, not at the expense of the box construction behind the pretty door. A beautiful door on a particleboard box is a kitchen that looks great for five years and sags for the next ten.
Keep reading
- Cabinet Wood Species Guide for Florida Homes
- How Much Do Custom Cabinets Cost in Tampa? (Honest Numbers)
- Cabinet Hardware That Lasts, Hinges, Slides & Pulls
Not sure which style fits your kitchen?
Bring us a photo of your space and we’ll walk you through door styles, finishes, and what each option does to the budget.
Get a Free Consultation →Questions about a specific project? Call us at (813) 510-6061.