Austin Elite Cabinets makes inset cabinets in Austin, TX, and is Travis County's trusted specialist in inset cabinetry, specializing in flush-fit face-frame doors, hand-fitted drawer fronts and inset cabinet runs sized for seasonal wood movement. We offer mortise hinges and solid wood frame-and-panel doors.
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Our team provides even reveals on every opening, delivering heirloom-grade kitchens for homeowners and precise, long-lived millwork for both residential and commercial projects. Because inset work leaves no margin for error, the same crew that takes your in-home measure hangs every door, the shop drawings you approve show each reveal, and the finished work is backed by a written warranty.
From planing a single door to a consistent gap against the frame to building and installing a full inset kitchen, our team handles every detail. Serving Austin, Rollingwood, Sunset Valley and The Hills, we bring furniture-grade fitting to homes where the details are the point.
Why Austin Elite
No catalogue boxes and no handoffs. The people who measure your room are the people who build and install it.
Most cabinets use overlay doors that sit on the front of the box and cover the opening. Inset cabinets do the opposite. The door fits inside the face frame and closes flush with it, the same way a room door closes inside its jamb.
That is why inset is considered a special and less conventional category of framed cabinet. It is also why inset kitchens have the look they do: a clean grid of frame and door, with a fine shadow line around every opening. Custom cabinet work is where inset doors are usually offered, and it is the natural choice when a kitchen needs to match period furniture or an older home's style.
There is a detail you feel before you notice it. When an inset door closes, the air trapped between door and frame cushions it, so the door slows gently in the last inch. That soft braking is one hallmark of well-made inset construction, and it only happens when the fit is right.
Inset doors demand more precise alignment than overlay doors, and the alignment has to hold up with use. The gap around the door, called the reveal, is where that precision lives.
Austin sits in a transition zone between the dry Southwest and the humid Southeast, and its humidity is notably changeable. A run of dry days can flip to muggy ones when the wind swings to the east or southeast. Solid wood swells and shrinks with those swings, and a door fitted too tight in a dry week can bind in a humid one.
Woodworking references put a typical inset reveal at about a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch on the sides, with slightly more at the top and bottom, where wood moves most. We set the reveal for the species, the door width and the season the doors are fitted in, then show it on the drawings so you know what to expect.
Mortise, or butt, hinges are set into the door and frame, with the knuckle showing. They are the traditional look for inset work. Concealed cup hinges hide inside the cabinet and adjust with three screws for depth, height and side gap, which makes fine tuning easy later. Either way, the reveal is set so the door keeps clearing its frame through the year, and a hinge adjustment, rather than a rebuild, is what corrects a door if the house settles or the seasons push it out of line.
Full-overlay doors cover nearly all of the face frame when closed, so the kitchen reads as a wall of doors. Frameless cabinets look similar. Inset shows the frame on purpose.
There is a practical trade-off. With inset, the door sits inside the frame, so the frame stile stays in the opening when the door is open. A typical face frame is about an inch and a half wide, and in framed construction a drawer has to clear it, which can make it around two inches narrower than the space inside the box. On a run of narrow cabinets, that loss is noticeable.
We reduce it two ways. Built as one continuous run rather than as separate boxes, the frame uses a single stile between openings instead of two doubled together. And we plan wider drawer banks where storage matters most, keeping narrow doors for spots like spice pull-outs where the width barely matters.
If the look you want is flush but the storage math worries you, we can draw the kitchen both ways so you compare interior widths side by side.
Because the door sits inside the frame, its edges are always on display. That rewards careful joinery and a finish that wraps every edge.
For paint, we spray a primer, color coats and a protective top coat for an even surface. For stain, we sample your species first, because oak and maple take the same stain very differently. Species also shapes the budget, with cherry generally sitting above maple, and maple above oak.
Inset costs more than overlay, and it is fair to say why. The factors that set your quote:
For an honest number, call us for a free in-home measure. You get a written quote based on your kitchen, not a guess.
Inset suits kitchens, and also the rooms around them: a butler's pantry, a bar, a library wall or a bathroom vanity that should feel like furniture. It is at home in a traditional house and in a new build that wants old-world detail.
In Rollingwood, where 1950s ranches are being torn down and rebuilt, new homes often want the handcrafted character that inset brings. Sunset Valley's ranch homes on large lots suit a relaxed, framed kitchen. In The Hills, a gated golf community with many homes from the 1990s and 2000s, an inset kitchen is a common way to move past an original builder layout. West Lake Hills and Barton Creek kitchens fit the same pattern.
We also serve Austin, Shady Hollow, Lost Creek, Steiner Ranch, Lakeway and Volente. Call to schedule a free in-home measure.
The process
Four steps, and nothing is built until you have signed off on the drawings and the price.
We measure the room, talk through how you use it and look at door styles and finishes together.
You get shop drawings and one written price. Nothing is built until you sign off on both.
Boxes, doors and panels are made to the dimensions taken in your home, not to catalogue sizes.
The same crew installs, levels, scribes to your walls and adjusts every door and drawer before we leave.
Questions
If you want the flush, furniture look and plan to stay in the home, many owners feel they are. The extra cost is mostly fitting labor. We can draw inset and overlay versions so you compare the look and the storage before deciding.
They can if the reveal is too tight. We size reveals for the species, door width and season, so the gap has room for the wood to move, and the hinges allow fine adjustment if a door ever needs it.
Longer than overlay, because each door is fitted to its opening. You receive a written schedule once you approve the shop drawings.
Usually not without replacing the boxes, since inset needs a face frame sized for the doors to sit inside. We look at your existing cabinets at the measure and tell you what is realistic.
Slightly, because the frame stays in the opening. We limit the loss with single stiles between openings and wider drawer banks where you store the most.
We cover Austin, Rollingwood, Sunset Valley, The Hills, West Lake Hills, Barton Creek, Shady Hollow, Volente, Steiner Ranch, Lakeway and Lost Creek. Call to confirm your address.
Yes. Our inset work comes with a written warranty.
We measure the room, check walls and floors for level and square, and talk through door style, hinge type, species and finish. You then receive shop drawings with the reveals marked and a written quote.
Free in-home design visit across Austin and the west side. We call you back to set a time.
Calls only, we do not receive text messages.
