Top quality cabinets are similar to finely finished furniture – they are made with the best materials, the highest standards, and last the test of time. Over the last 40 years, the cabinet industry has been completely transformed to give you more options than ever before. Selecting custom cabinet designs is a precise process, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Working with a professional design team means custom cabinets become more accessible and are easier to make a vision into a reality in any kitchen or bathroom.
Cabinets should be more than just a box of shelves nailed to a wall. Custom options allow you to combine drawers, shelves, racks, baskets, bins and more to create the ultimate in storage and style for the most important areas in your home. With custom cabinet options designed specifically for you, you can finally have kitchen drawers worthy of your chef knife collection and pull out drawers that are big enough to put items when you don’t have space for a mudroom.
Cabinet Types
Choosing between custom cabinets or stock cabinetry is enough to make your head spin. Each has their pros and cons in both materials and storage. You can buy custom and stock bathroom and kitchen cabinets that are both high in quality and customizable for your space, but it’s important to know the difference between each option.
- Stock Cabinets: These are readymade, pre-manufactured cabinets mass-produced and ready to ship when ordered. They can be purchased individually or in modular units. These are affordable, easy to find, and able to deliver quickly. However, these are only available in standard sizing and you have a somewhat limited selection of cabinet types and door styles.
- Semi-Custom: They start as stock cabinets, and then get a mini makeover with extra details and finishes. With semi-custom cabinets, clients can change some of the dimensions and styling to make them seem like custom cabinets without the fully custom price tag.
- Custom Cabinets: Having cabinets built to your specifications means they can be anything you want them to be. They are custom fitted to your exact space. Because of this, custom cabinets are labor-intensive and take longer to complete. However, with custom cabinets, you get complete control of what you want, made just how you want, making the investment worth it.
Benefits of Custom Cabinets
Many times, cabinets are the centerpiece of both kitchen and bathroom design. When having your kitchen designed, your designer will create the right layout so that items such as your custom cabinets can be the perfect storage solution combined with the correct style and finish for your lifestyle.
Custom cabinet design offers complete flexibility, unique sizing, a wide array of wood types, finishes, and a large number of design elements. Using custom cabinets allows us to customize them to the space we have to work with, leaving us with limitless possibilities. Do you need your cabinets extra tall? That is not a problem. Do you need your drawers to be extra deep? You can have that with custom cabinets. Are you looking for answers on how to create extra space in your smaller kitchen? Having custom drawers built into a roll-away island could be the answer.
Custom measurements are just the beginning of the benefits that come with custom or semi-custom kitchen or bathroom cabinets. The only limits are your imagination and what we can draw on paper.
- Custom shops tend to use superior materials, hardware, and construction methods, which make these cabinets built to last rather than manufactured on assembly lines.
- The average person stock cabinets are designed for stands around 5’ 8”. If you’re closer to 5’2” or hovering around six feet tall, custom options create a solution that works for you without having to use a step stool or stooping to find your cereal in the morning.
- Custom cabinets are often more environmentally friendly because they use local or domestic hardwoods.
- Stock bathroom or kitchen cabinets require the use of fillers to fill in empty spaces left behind after standard sizing. Fillers usually end up being wasted space. Custom cabinets use every inch of space without losing precious square footage.
Because carpenters are not always skilled designers, it is essential to have the benefits of both, and that’s where we come in. AKG Design Studio creates a unique custom cabinet design experience. We pair clients with potential partners who specialize in building custom cabinets while still overseeing the design, colors, materials, and layout segments of the overall process.
Kitchen Cabinets
Whether you’re looking for something more traditional, farmhouse chic, or sleek and modern, genius design combined with quality materials go way beyond plain old kitchen cupboards.
- Hidden details like mesh inserts, etched glass, or open shelves keep your kitchen cabinets from looking dull and ordinary.
- Custom carpenters can create a unique island that fits the space of your kitchen while providing additional storage other than the pre-manufactured counterparts.
- Door panels can be made to match the cabinetry while hiding appliances such as the dishwasher and fridge.
- When space is limited, kitchen cabinets can utilize otherwise unused areas, such as adding cabinets near the ceiling or the floor, which can create hidden storage and unique styling.
We suggest choosing cabinetry for your lifestyle. For the serious cook, open shelving is perfect when access and function need to take center stage. For entertainers, custom cabinets with beautiful finishes and unique details make the kitchen a comfortable, social space.
Bathroom Cabinets
Storage is vital in any area, but bathroom cabinets must serve as storage powerhouses of the home. Whether you’re working in a tiny powder room or a luxurious master bathroom, a custom cabinet design can be part of the main attraction.
- Free-standing bathroom custom cabinets give the bathroom an elegant look.
- Another idea is to split up a giant unnecessary mirror with two smaller mirrors while adding custom storage cabinetry or shelving in the middle.
- Smaller, shallow drawers often provide more usable storage for small bathroom items like toothpaste, makeup, and hair products.
- Using frosted glass on cabinets rather than solid wood breaks up the space while still giving you privacy to hide your unmentionable products.
Bathroom cabinets can create areas of both storage and style in the bathroom. Color, style, wood, drawers, cabinets, pulls and handles all come together to build a beautiful and functional center of your bath.
AKG Design Studio and Partners
We are honored to work with those in Great Falls, McLean, Arlington, Alexandria, Reston, and other surrounding areas in Northern VA. Creating a custom bathroom or kitchen designed for your lifestyle is what AKG Design Studio does while partnering with some of the best cabinet partners in the industry. We encourage you to see for yourself, by looking through our gallery.
