Plywood vs Particleboard Cabinets: What Actually Matters

The materials

• Plywood — thin wood veneers glued in alternating grain directions. Strong for its weight, holds screws well, tolerates moisture far better than any composite, and is the box material of most of the lines we sell. Grades and thicknesses vary: ½-inch sides are common at the stocked level, ¾-inch in frameless lines.
• Particleboard — wood chips and resin pressed into a sheet. Inexpensive, flat and stable, but it swells if it gets wet, holds screws poorly, and crumbles at the edges if they are not sealed. The material of the cheapest cabinets, and of some very good European ones when it is dense, thick and fully edge-banded.
• MDF (medium-density fibreboard) — wood fibre and resin, finer and denser than particleboard. Dead flat and stable, which is why almost every manufacturer uses it as the centre panel of a painted door: a solid-wood panel would crack the paint at the joints as it moves with the seasons. MDF in a door panel is correct; MDF as a box is a cost cut.
• Furniture board / engineered board — the industry's name for a dense, high-grade particleboard with laminate or veneer faces and sealed edges, used in frameless European-style boxes. Durable in a dry location; still not something to put under a leaking sink.

Where it matters most

Under the sink and beside the dishwasher — the two places a cabinet gets wet — plywood is worth insisting on. For wall cabinets and dry base cabinets a thick, well-sealed furniture board box in a frameless line is perfectly durable and often flatter than plywood. For shelves, ¾-inch plywood or thick board that will not sag across a 36-inch span. For drawer boxes, solid wood dovetailed with a plywood bottom. For painted door panels, MDF — on purpose.

What each of our lines uses

Signs of a cabinet built down to a price

• Thin particleboard sides with unsealed, chalky edges you can scratch with a fingernail.
• Shelves that are ½-inch board and already bow in the display.
• Stapled or glued drawer boxes with a thin hardboard bottom.
• Hinges without soft-close or adjustment; drawer glides on the sides rather than underneath.
• A finish sprayed by the dealer instead of applied at the factory.

None of our fifteen lines does any of these, which is why the price ladder starts where it does.

Certifications worth knowing

KCMA certification (Shiloh, Eclipse, WoodConcept) means the line passed the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association's load, slam, heat and humidity tests. CARB Phase II and TSCA Title VI are formaldehyde-emission limits for composite wood — every line we sell meets them. ESP (Shiloh, Eclipse) is KCMA's environmental stewardship program. They are a baseline for durability and air quality, not a ranking.

Bottom line

Plywood under the sink and in the box, MDF in the painted door panel, solid wood in the drawers, sealed edges everywhere — that is the standard every line on our floor meets, from stocked to custom. The rest is thickness, hardware and finish, which you can judge with the doors open in the showroom. Cabinets 101 covers the whole cabinet; the catalogue pages list each line's construction.