What Are Modular Kitchen Cabinets? | eHow

Whether they are small kitchen cabinets in an apartment or an office break room, or a large custom kitchen in a home, kitchen cabinets store the items and groceries that you need to have to cook meals and enjoy time with family. There are two main types of kitchen cabinets -- modular kitchen cabinets, which are also sometimes referred to as semi-custom kitchen cabinets, and custom kitchen cabinets. Custom cabinets are purpose-built from scratch for a specific job. Modular or semi-custom kitchen cabinets, on the other hand, have some different characteristics.

Modular cabinets may be pre-built or they may come in knocked-down form and require some assembly, but they are made to fit together. This means that you can pick any style of cabinet and they should automatically fit snugly next to any other type or style of cabinet of the same make. Cabinets can be built beforehand and stored until they are needed by a customer.

Modular cabinets may be simple off-the-shelf designs, such as white laminated cabinets with basic doors, or they may be semi custom, where they are built on an assembly line to the customer's specifications after an order has been placed. This can mean they may have a variety of different door styles or stain colors, but they will all still interface and fit with each other during construction. However, because they are modular and produced from general basic guidelines, they are not going to be fully custom. This could result in having to install a smaller filler strip in the kitchen if, for example, your wall allows for 63 inches of cabinet space but the modular cabinet line only offers cabinets at 15, 24 or 30 inches wide.

Modular cabinets can be stand-alone, or they can be used together. This might mean in theory that all three sides of a modular cabinet are stained when they leave the factory, so that if that cabinet is used as the end cabinet in the kitchen design, a trim panel will not have to cover bare wood. Since the manufacturer does not know how the cabinet will be utilized, they make the cabinet so that it will fit the most common situations.

Despite all of the features of modular cabinets, there are some disadvantages. The availability of a cabinet to fit an odd-sized area might be a problem with modular cabinets that are made in common sizes. Also, there may be a lack of possible door styles or colors if the manufacturer does not have a wide range to choose from.