I am building a six foot wide section of cabinets. For various reasons I need to break them into 3 separate units. Do you think all the doors should be the same width or would it look weird if door widths were different. Appreciate your thoughts.
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Replies
It's an esthetic choice but I would go with symmetry. If all 3 are not the same I would make the outer 2 the same size no matter what you do with the middle one.
I'm a fan of a wider center unit with double doors. The end doors can open to either side and be out of the way, but a wide center door sticks out too much when open & always seems in the way. 2 smaller doors are what I like. You can adjust the size of the 3 cab boxes to work the proportions.
Design is tough. At least, it is for me.
Safe is to keep them all the same.
The "golden ratio" may be a pleasing number to guide splitting them up.
I'd probably go with what MJ said: a wider center that's 1.6 times the width of the outer ones.
There are endless ways to apply the ratio, though.
I always do scale drawings of this stuff and play around until I like how it looks. It's a low investment and gives an idea.
I wish I had the patience and skill to do models on a computer, but that also takes a LOT more time.
A more important consideration is what functions do you want the cabinets to perform. Are they in a bathroom vs a kitchen or in an office or even a garage / shop. Storing pots/pans vs cutting boards, office supplies, tools.- etc. Will they require drawers. Will they have pullout trays. Two 18” ends with a double door 36” center cabinet offers a lot of utility. Depending on the design (shaker, etc.) all of your doors / drawers might be the same except for hinging on the doors. Good luck. I used to teach Kitchen design and the toughest thing to get right was “How are the cabinets going to be used”. What do you want to store in them. Once you have that established the layout and design will fall into place. You might only need to build three 24” units and be done with it. If your design uses a face frame then it can be all one unit. Good luck.