Slab Cabinet Door Styles
Canyon Creek offers a wide variety of cabinet door styles, from Classic Shaker to traditional styles with raised center panels, mitered frames, and more. Visit our Door Styles and Construction article to learn more about how doors are made. This article will focus on slab doors and the various materials available.
Slab doors (also known as Euro, flat panel or contemporary styles) are completely flat, with no ornamentation or “frame” around the panel. This clean, minimalist look is very popular in smaller kitchens and homes with an overall modern aesthetic. Slab cabinet doors are a great choice when you want to direct the eye to the view outside, focus on an architectural detail, or highlight a stunning countertop. In addition, the sleek surface is easy to keep clean, with no decorative details or construction seams to catch dust or debris.
Slab doors can be solid wood, or more typically, veneer, with thin sheets of real wood or engineered material that are applied to a particleboard or plywood substrate. Veneer doors will have a slender strip of wood or other material applied to the edge to give a smooth finish and hide the substrate.
Visitors to our website are often curious about the differences in slab door styles, and why we offer so many when they seemingly all look so similar. Let’s clear that up!
WOOD VENEER
The wood doors below are available in most of our wood species and stain colors.
Dover (Millennia & Cornerstone), Vista (Katana). Clean-lined slabs with particleboard or plywood substrate, edge banded with .5mm real wood material to give a square, crisp outer profile. The wood grain on the cabinet doors will be vertical, with horizontal grain drawer fronts on Dover and vertical fronts on Vista. The wood grain is not sequentially matched within cabinets or from cabinet-to-cabinet.
Nova (Millennia). Similar to Dover/Vista above, Nova is constructed with a particleboard or plywood core, edge banded with .5mm real wood material for a square, sharp outer profile. The key difference is that Nova features vertical matching wood grain on doors and drawer fronts. The veneer is cut by the cabinet, so grain is sequentially matched within each cabinet (but not cabinet-to-cabinet).
SOLID WOOD
Copenhagen is available in most of our wood species and stain colors, and also painted.
Copenhagen (Millennia & Cornerstone). Solid, edge-glued wood construction typically features 3-5 staves of varying wood grain patterns. Unique among slab styles, the solid wood construction provides the option to select different edge profiles. The door will have vertical grain and drawer fronts with horizontal grain. It is important to understand that solid wood is subject to expansion and contraction based on the environment in which the doors reside (high humidity, temperature swings, etc.), so it is critical to keep the home temperature and humidity consistent. In extreme conditions, larger solid wood slab doors may expand, contract, and/or warp. This is why tall cabinets have two doors battened together. (Copenhagen cabinets are not sequentially grain matched.)
Grain matching. We are often asked if we offer grain matching on slab doors throughout a kitchen, meaning all doors and drawer fronts will match from side-to-side and/or vertically. While this is a stunning look, it is prone to a high amount of waste due to cut requirements. In the event a door or drawer front needs to be replaced anywhere along the manufacturing process, it can be very costly and these new parts will almost certainly not match. For these reasons, we choose not to provide this option.
SURFACES
Engineered materials in a variety of finishes have become a popular alternative to wood. The styles below are available in our Millennia premium frameless line and Katana (KTN) value frameless as noted.
Corson & Trinity (KTN), Tiburon. TSS, or Thermo Structured Surface, features a textured wood grain or patterned face that is thermally fused and heat stamped to a particleboard core. Matching edge banding provides a clean, sharp profile to these doors. TSS is an affordable, durable, easy-care material available in a wide range of colors and patterns.
Fahrenheit. High Gloss (HG) Acrylic is edge banded with a 1mm matching or a contrasting aluminum material. Fahrenheit is often used an accent in a kitchen with TSS, painted or stained cabinet doors.
Palermo, Siena, Apex. Foil doors for Millennia are offered in High Gloss or Super Matte finishes. These materials wrap around the door and are trimmed at the back edge, with a complementary low-pressure laminate panel on the back. This provides a softer edge to the face of the door.
Alpine. Laminate doors are an affordable, durable, and low-maintenance option often found in laundry rooms, mudrooms and other high-use areas. Alpine is available in standard colors, multiple upgrade options and a wide range of finishes through our special product request (SPR) program.
Pacifica & Paragon (KTN). High Gloss laminate styles with a matching or aluminum-look edge band are offered in six colors to provide an eye-catching complement to Katana stained and painted cabinet doors.
