Edgebanding: Match the doors or match the interior? - Woodweb

Question for the cabinetmakers here that build frameless cabinets. What do you do for edge banding color on the front edge of the boxes?

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Most of the places around here seem to band with raw wood and then spray the edge to match the fronts. That seems nuts to me from a labor standpoint. It would seem to make more sense to try to get banding in the color of the front and then just band it and be done with it.

Or, does anyone band to match the interior of the cabinet? (typically pre-finished maple around here). That would seem to be far easier in terms of matching and far less labor cost than trying to match the doors. But nobody I know seems to do it that way. It that a bad idea?

I work mostly with solid wood, and don't build a lot of cabinets. So I am asking a logical question to understand why people use the approaches they do.

"Anonymous", I have no problem doing a lot of extra work if there is a good reason for it, but if not, I'll put those hours towards something worthwhile.

"Leo G" can you elaborate on why matching the edge banding to the door is "how it should be". It might be obvious to you, but it is not obvious to me.

Dan:

There is a point at which the inside of the cabinet ends and the outside of the cabinet begins. Where the plane of the interior surface terminates is as good a place as any, and as such, if you are doing full overlay frameless cabinets, this old fart thinks that the cabinet banding should match the doors.

Not doing this, at least to me, speaks to a mindset of mass production work rather than custom work, reminding me of dental and medical cabinets.

If it is custom work, then you could always ask the client, designer or architect what their preference is.

TonyF

Good point Dan, and one I never thought of. To me, how Polish does it look when the cabinet box has one color banding, and the shelves have another? I’ve never had an issue with seeing the box when the doors and drawer fronts are closed, perhaps some people have less tight tolerances. A 3/32” gap just shows a dark shadow, so if it’s painted white or dark stain walnut, I personally never felt it was an issue. I feel it gives the box more of a solid wood feel, but that’s just my opinion. Good thread.

We have done many hundreds of homes containing thousands of cabinets over the last 28 years, so on this subject I have the luxury of a large sample set of customer opinions on which to rely. My opinion for many years was maple on maple, and customer non-reaction indicated they agreed. Then at some point there was a change, and customers started to complain. Just one at first, then another and another. So the question then had to be asked. The answers went from being 75/25 in favor of maple to being 75/25 in favor of door color. Now, the standard is door color.

With competitive price and timely delivery, chimeda sincerely hope to be your supplier and partner.

Which brings up an equally important question; PVC or paint? PVC, when an adequate match is available, is unquestionably more durable. But there isn't always an adequate match, so in those cases we send the completed box to finish and they do the mask thing. In our experience, it's simpler than prefinishing the tape or flat stacking panels which both require more time and planning and introduces a deviation to the system which is worse than the additional labor.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject.

DJS

Alan,

The interesting thing about that spec is the body color is less conspicuous than the shelf edge. Perhaps because above and below the shelf it is pitch black when viewed through the center reveal of a pair of doors, it tends to be more noticeable, especially when there's a heavy contrast between the doors and the edging. With darker doors Maple edgebanding looks like a white stripe and with white doors it looks like a brown stripe. Interestingly, white pvc edging is just as noticeable when viewed through the 1/8" reveal of a pair of doors as maple edging, but the customers seem to make some sort of compromise in their minds that it is ok, because none have every complained about seeing white PVC edges with their white cabinets. Go figure.

We offered our customers the option of reducing the shelf depth by 1/2" to push it back into the shadows and this option was almost universally rejected, so we no longer bring it up.

DJS

As Alan said, the box itself is edged with the same colour as the doors, the shelves are edged with the same colour as the interior of the box.
The reason for this is the colour of the kitchen is to be all the same when you look at it. if you had white melamine boxes and black doors, you would see little white strips between your cabinet doors, especially on cabinets where people don’t know how to size and build doors to end up with 2.5 mm gaps max. Now days you have kitchens with cabinets of various colours so everything is more about design.
In reality you and the customer decide on how you build the cabinet and what colour it will be. If you all decide pink edging is the colour, then go for it. The cabinet will not fall off the wall because the edging matched the interior.

Scott,
The cabinet won't fall off the wall but a designer friend might fall in shock and sue :=).

We did a job about 26 years ago and the architect specified a 7/8" half-round trim that was 12' off the floor. The molding company was out of 7/8" so we used 1".

It was rejected as too thick. I always imagined people coming in the store and stopping in their tracks when they saw the molding 12' up and 20' away and being too thick, the crowds of people falling to the floor in shock and turning to run out, the liability risk was huge.

A-

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