Welcome to Stainless Cabinets
Stainless cabinets provide a distinctive, attractive, and durable alternative to wood and laminate-type cabinetry. These cabinets are a practical, cost-effective way to update a home, and to make your room look bigger and brighter.
The benefits of stainless steel cabinets include:
- Fingerprint and scratch-resistant
- Corrosion resistant
- Easy to sanitize
- Unharmed by smoke, termites, or flood
- Will not mold or warp in temperature extremes or humidity
- Will not chip, fade or rust
- Adaptable to any color scheme or décor
- Sleek look is elegant and sophisticated
- Limited or lifetime warranties
How Do Stainless Cabinets Compareto Cabinets Made of Wood?
Many different woods are used to produce cabinets: ash, birch, cherry, ebony, hickory, mahogany, maple, oak, pine, and walnut. All of these woods vary in weight, density, texture, porosity, tone or color, grain type, and the ability to accept stain uniformly.
Wood cabinets can be purchased from a stock selection, or be custom-built. A stock cabinet will likely be made of a less expensive wood, such as pine or plywood, and will possibly use staples for joinery. A custom-made cabinet will usually be a high quality and more expensive wood, and can become very costly to purchase.
The problems associated with using wood cabinets include:
- The importance and difficulty of matching wood grain during construction and installation.
- The difficulty of matching stains after installation, when pieces are damaged and must be replaced.
- Some woods will yellow or fade over time when exposed to sunlight.
- The number of wood options available can make choosing the right wood and wood tone for the cabinets in your home an overwhelming decision.
What are Laminate-Type Cabinets and How do They Compare to Stainless Steel Cabinets?
Cabinets can also be built using laminate or thermafoil construction. A laminate material consists of three layers that are saturated with resin: a paper base, a printed and colored layer, and a protective, transparent top layer. Heat and pressure is used to fuse these 3 layers to a substrate, or base material. Thermafoil is vinyl fused to a substrate with heat and pressure.
A substrate may be solid wood, or it may be an engineered wood product such as:
- Particle Board: wood chips or shavings pressed into board form and bonded with resin.
- Medium-Density Fiberboard: wood fibers combined with wax and resin and pressed into board shape.
- Plywood: wood sheets glued or cemented together.
The benefits of laminate-type cabinets:
- Laminate cabinets (such as melamine), and thermafoil cabinets are usually readily available, particularly at home centers.
- Both are considered to be affordable and easy to clean.
The risks associated with laminate-type cabinets:
- Melamine can chip at the corners and at the edges, while Thermafoil is prone to blistering, bubbling, and peeling.
- For both material surfaces, dents and scratches can break the moisture barrier of the protective top layer, and this will lead to moisture damage. If an engineered wood product has been used as the substrate, the damage will result in swelling and crumbling of the substrate, and this is difficult to repair.
- Neither type of laminate cabinet is as strong as a wood, or especially a stainless steel, cabinet.
Now that you know how stainless steel cabinets stack up agains other materials, lets take a look at where you might utilize stainless cabinets in your home or workspace.