IKEA is a household name for home décor and furnishings, but also for their kitchen cabinet system. Beyond just furniture, IKEA is known for durable products, long warranties, and affordable prices, which make IKEA kitchens a popular choice for homeowners on a budget. When designing your IKEA kitchen if you’re looking to make it look more custom while maintaining a reasonable budget, Nieu Cabinet Doors provides color and style options beyond the standard IKEA offerings, to elevate your space and get the custom kitchen of your dreams.
Why are IKEA kitchen cabinets so popular?
IKEA is known for their durable products, excellent warranties, and low prices. In the cabinetry space, they’re known for being one of the few companies that allows you to order your kitchen completely modularly. What does that mean? You can order IKEA cabinet boxes only, and source custom doors, drawers, panels, and accessories to enhance your look.
White shaker cabinet doors brighten your space and are great for resale.
Expand the Design Possibilities of IKEA Kitchen Cabinets
Although IKEA has a variety of cabinet door styles and colors to choose from, they offer one or two colors in each style. You might find you love a certain color, or have your heart set on a style, but that color + style don’t match up to make your dream kitchen. By going with custom doors for IKEA cabinets, you can widen the range of options to find kitchen cabinet doors you adore.
Cabinet Doors for IKEA Sektion and Akurum Systems
In 2015, IKEA discontinued their line of kitchen cabinets called “Akurum” and replaced them with “Sektion” kitchen cabinets. While IKEA continues to sell a variety of doors for Sektion systems, customers with an older IKEA kitchen are often worried they have to completely replace their kitchen just to update the doors. No need to worry!
If you are refacing an IKEA kitchen, we can work together to get new doors in the style and color of your choice. For refacing an IKEA Akurum kitchen, we will need you to measure your doors, drawer faces, filler and panels using this video to help. For either kitchen system, if you have your IKEA plans, don’t be shy to share them with us.
Custom Doors for IKEA Kitchens
Nieu Cabinet Doors offers made to measure, custom cabinet doors for kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, and more. For a DIY homeowner, our products can service refacing projects, or entirely new kitchens. If you have some good assembly skills and just need doors to upgrade your IKEA cabinets, we’re proud to offer custom doors for you to achieve your dream space. Simply send us your IKEA kitchen plans, and we can make your custom doors.
When ordering your IKEA kitchen, you’ll need to order it without facings – which means doors, drawer fronts, panels, toekick, filler and trim. If you’d like to order our dovetail drawer boxes instead of the IKEA drawer selection, leave those off your IKEA order and get in touch.
Grey Shaker Cabinet Doors
Custom cabinet doors for IKEA vanities, media systems, and wardrobes
The beauty of custom made products is that you can repeat a cabinet door style throughout your home to create a seamless, cohesive look. With entirely made to measure cabinet doors, we are able to make high quality, custom doors for IKEA Godmorgon (bathroom vanities), IKEA Besta (media systems), and even IKEA PAX (wardrobes).
Have fun with your kitchen renovation plans by mixing styles and colors throughout your home, or use one door style in various colors to tailor the look to the specific taste of each room. If you’re curious if you can tackle a project, why not start small with a washroom or laundry room before tackling your new IKEA kitchen?
Here’s a quick comparison of which common IKEA door styles are most similar to Nieu doors. All Nieu door styles are available in 10 standard colors, or we’re happy to do a custom paint job for a small additional fee, just let us know.
Grimslov door, available in off-white only = Nieu Shaker cabinet door
Bodbyn door, available in three colors = Nieu Raised cabinet door
Akstad door, available in one color = Nieu Stepped Shaker or Framed cabinet door
How to use the IKEA kitchen planner to order your new kitchen
Using the IKEA kitchen planner tool, design your kitchen using the doors provided within the planning tool. You’ll need to start with dimensions of your room, doors and windows, and any other objects. The tool does a great job of walking you through the steps to start building your design.
1. Start by inputting the dimensions of your appliances, either new or existing
2. Insert your sink cabinet, and any corner cabinets you may need.
3. Work within the remaining area to insert all of your base cabinets around your appliances, sink, and corner cabinets.
4. Move onto upper cabinets following the same process as above.
5. When you’re happy with your design, make sure to carefully double check your measurements and save your plans.
6. Send us a copy of your IKEA planner PDF, called “Itemlist” in the tool.
7. When ordering your IKEA cabinets: make sure to remove all of the following: doors, drawer fronts, toekick, end panels, filler and trim. You can also ask at your local IKEA store if you are placing your order in person.
8. Please note if you are ordering our custom dovetail drawer boxes, you’ll need to remove the drawers from your IKEA order.
IKEA Kitchens Made Custom
To summarize, if you’re looking for durability, IKEA kitchen cabinet boxes are a great choice. For the custom kitchen of your dreams, enhancing the style and color options available to you with custom doors means that a kitchen from the magazines doesn’t have to be out of budget!
Taking on a kitchen cabinet refacing project is a cost-effective way to upgrade the aesthetic of your kitchen. It is also an ideal time to upgrade the utility of your kitchen by replacing broken or worn out drawer boxes with new, high quality, dovetail drawers with soft close undermount slides.
Drawer boxes endure a lot of abuse in a kitchen, repetitive slamming causes items to shift, eventually weaking the joints of the drawer. Dovetail drawer boxes are the most durable method of constructing drawer boxes and when paired with soft close undermount slides are a simple way yet highly functional upgrade to your kitchen.
What are dovetail drawer boxes?
Dovetail drawer boxes employ a pin and tail method of joinery to lock together the four sides of the drawer creating a very strong connection between the walls of the box. The pins are cut into the ends of one side of the box while the tails are cut into the joining piece. Adding a small amount of glue and locking the two pieces together creates a drawer box that doesn’t require screws to hold it together. Lesser drawer boxes use butt joints and either staples or screws to connect the four sides which can and will inevitably fail.
Dovetail drawer boxes also add a sense of style and artisanship to your kitchen as the jig-saw puzzle look of the joinery is visible from the sides and harkens back to the days when such joints would have been made by hand with basic tools and not the modern machines of today.
Dovetail joints have been used in all manner of construction including log houses in colonial days, stone works in India and even Egyptian furniture dating back to 3100 BC. With that sort of longevity there’s little doubt that a drawer box constructed with dovetail joinery can withstand the rigors of the 21st century kitchen.
A side view of a Nieu custom drawer showcasing the dovetail joinery of the wooden drawer box.
Are dovetail drawer boxes worth the investment?
A dovetail drawer box constructed from a birch or maple plywood coupled with a soft close undermount slide will outlive lesser drawer boxes joined with staples or screws. The single most requested upgrade when working with customers on their kitchen cabinet refacing project is upgrading builders grade melamine drawer boxes that have become wobbly or loose due to regular use.
While dovetail drawer boxes are more expensive than melamine drawers, their longevity and utility make them a worthwhile investment for any kitchen upgrade and the simple beauty of the artisan joinery acknowledges the timeless nature of good engineering.
Where can I add dovetail drawer boxes to my kitchen?
Dovetail drawer boxes can replace any drawers currently in your cabinets. It is a straightforward process of measuring your current cabinet opening, height and depth and ordering custom drawer boxes to fit. An easy upgrade to your kitchen is to convert a standard base cabinet with doors and shelves into a pot and pan drawer stack.
A pot and pan drawer stack typically consist of two deeper drawers on the bottom, usually 11’’ to 12” in height on the face, and a shallower 4” to 6″ drawer at the top. The two deep drawers are great for reorganizing pots and pans and make finding a matching lid and pot much easier than digging through standard base cabinets with shelves. The small drawer on the top usually serves as home for cutlery or as a utensil drawer for items such as spatulas and measuring cups.
Dovetail drawer boxes paired with the Stepped Shaker drawer front in Winter White.
Do dovetail drawers improve resale value?
If you are refacing your kitchen cabinets to boost the resale value of your home consider replacing your drawer boxes as well. When prospective buyers are touring your home, they will open and close both a cabinet door and drawer to check for soft close upgrades. Upgraded cabinets doors like our selection of shaker cabinet doors and dovetail drawer boxes will impress buyers and let them know that you were mindful of both quality and utility when you upgraded your kitchen.
The Summary:
Adding dovetail drawers to your refacing project provides an additional level of upgrade to your kitchen. If you’re getting started on your refacing project, use our free Design Quiz to find your style, watch our How To Measure video, and at any time Talk to an Expert if you need help. A custom looking kitchen is just a few clicks away!
Shaker kitchen cabinet doors still dominate kitchen design 246 years after a subset of the English Quakers emigrated to America seeking freedom of religious expression and worship. Known as the Shaking Quakers for their ecstatic and physical style of worship, the Shakers were a modest people whose core values included humility, simplicity, celibacy, hard work and equality between the sexes. Their values are reflected in the simple, utilitarian design language of their furniture and cabinetry. The basic door construction reflected their practical approach to life and the lack of ornamentation affirms their humble character as they chose instead to focus on the quality of both construction and materials used.
The Shaker community peaked at around 6000 members in the mid 1800’s along the East Coast of the US and was organized into commune style settlements where the collective worked to ensure the self-sufficiency of the greater group. Along with growing their own food and making tools, furniture was needed. Their religious views and practical nature entered into their work resulting in several simple yet enduring designs that have stood the test of time.
Do you ever wonder why shaker-style tables and chairs often have tapered, light weight legs?
The Shakers, as their name may indicate, liked to dance, so their furniture was built to be light weight and easily moved aside for spiritual movements and dance. Eventually, these communities made enough furniture for their own needs and having embraced early generations of power tools and the simple construction of their furniture found they could produce enough to serve larger markets. This led to the spread of Shaker products from the tight-knit Shaker communes to the surrounding towns and villages, and beyond.
What is a shaker style cabinet door?
Shaker cabinet doors are known and loved by homeowners and designers worldwide. A shaker door is comprised of four rails and a flat center panel, which distinguishes it from a raised panel door. High quality replacement cabinet doors in a shaker style can have one of the best impacts in your home to modernize your space and remodel your kitchen.
Anatomy of a Shaker Door
Shaker Cabinet Door Design
Originally, Shaker cabinet doors were made from materials found easily in America in the 1800’s such as Cherry, Oak, Birch, Pine and Maple. Shaker furniture was typically stained or painted in colours determined by the sect that made them, common colors include red, green, blue, and yellow. Symmetry of design was important and inlays or decorative mouldings were not used as such devices of design were seen as deceitful or unholy. For the Shakers, a door was beautiful due to its function in the home and because it was well made and served a purpose.
Mouldings and decorative embellishments served no purpose in a Shaker home and today designers still work in this style when designing a Shaker kitchen for your home. Many different styles of Shaker doors are available to the homeowner looking to bring some of this simple beauty into their home. Although cabinet door rail styles and widths may vary, and profiles add a bit more flair, but the basic foundation of a flat panel surrounded by four rails remains.
Today, modern shaker doors are made with new materials such as exotic woods, aluminum and glass, and American staples such as maple and oak. Engineered woods wrapped in vinyl and polyester allow for unique treatments and can add texture to a door.
At Nieu Cabinet Doors we have perfected the art of using high quality engineered MDF along with a 2-piece construction process to build custom cabinet doors. Our manufacturing techniques allow for the highest level of detailed finishing to produce the cleanest, most precise lines and profiles that would impress even a master Shaker cabinet maker.
With a variety of rail widths and styles Shaker doors remain our best-selling door style. Offering 8 versions of Shaker doors, Nieu Cabinet Doors has a Shaker style that is sure to work in your home. A Shaker cabinet door is ideal for a DIY kitchen refacing project as this style of door lends itself to a kitchen without fancy trim or ornate mouldings. It really can be as simple as removing your old cabinet doors and replacing them with new doors and hardware.
Our Shaker Cabinet Door Selection in 8 of Our Designer Curated Colors
Today, shaker cabinet are not bound by any single interpretation of the original Shaker design. Shaker doors are available in a wide variety of styles and finishes and yes, some of them even have some degree of flair or ornamentation added to the rail profiles. A shaker door can work in any home and across design styles of traditional, contemporary, and transitional palettes.
Although white is still the most popular color for a shaker door, bolder colors such as dark blues, teals and a variety of greys are finding their way into homes often as the base for a two-toned kitchen or to highlight an island or pantry wall. The simplicity of shaker means it can show the unique taste of a home without overwhelming the space, and can pair well with a statement countertop or other bold design choices.
Do shaker cabinet doors improve resale value?
If the motivation for refacing your kitchen cabinets is resale, real estate agents will confirm that a Shaker door in a neutral color offers the broadest appeal for prospective buyers. Stick with handles or pulls that are simple and minimalist in design as they will offer the most cohesive look for your Shaker kitchen.
BEFORE: Broken drawer fronts and outdate raised panel doors.
“Nieu was the perfect solution for my clients. Their kitchen was in desperate need of an update to sell their home, but they didn’t want the timeline or price tag of a full kitchen renovation. Nieu Cabinet Doors completely refreshed their kitchen quickly and cost effectively. The order process was simple and the customer service was great, especially being able to call and walk through any questions. Their home sold the first day of showings!”
– Laura Waxter, Realtor for Coldwell Banker Pittsburgh
AFTER: Kitchen transformed with our Shaker door in Winter White.
How to use shaker cabinet doors in your kitchen:
DIY kitchen cabinet refacing is a project that homeowners with even minimal carpentry skills can tackle. If your kitchen layout works, your cabinet boxes are in good shape, and you own a few basic tools, you can achieve the Shaker look for your home. The basic steps to your DIY refacing project are:
Use our online order form to estimate and order your Nieu Shaker Doors
Watch our how-to videos that cover all aspects of a DIY kitchen refacing project
Install your Nieu Shaker Doors and speak with our technical expert at any time during the install for support
When complete, raise a toast to the small group of craftspeople whose iconic design language is still relevant centuries later
Shaker cabinet doors are an iconic style that have endured centuries of design changes, and remain one of the most popular cabinetry choices in homes in 2020. Whether looking to update your kitchen to love where you live, or improve your resale value, our variations of shaker cabinet doors are sure to make you dance with joy in your Nieu kitchen.
