Cabinet Reveal: The Gap Between Doors, Defined
The reveal is the gap you can see between two cabinet fronts, or between a front and the edge of the cabinet beside it. It is the same measurement as the overlay, read from the other direction, and it is the one a person actually notices from across the room.
At a glance
| What it is | The visible gap between two fronts, or between a front and a cabinet edge |
|---|---|
| How it is measured | Across the gap, in millimetres or inches |
| Its other half | The overlay, which is the same gap counted as the wood the front covers |
| A common frameless choice | Around 3 mm, a shade over 1/8 in, held identically everywhere |
| What decides it | Your choice, then your installation. Both have to agree |
What the word means
Stand in front of a run of cabinets and the fronts are separated by thin lines of shadow. Each of those lines is a reveal. It exists for a practical reason before an aesthetic one: doors need somewhere to go as wood moves and hinges settle, and two fronts fitted with no gap will find each other on a humid week.
It is the same number as the overlay, described from the other side. The overlay is how much cabinet the front covers. The reveal is how much is left showing. Choose one and you have chosen the other.
One number, held everywhere
Here is the part that surprises people. In a finished kitchen, nobody notices that a door is 447 mm wide. Everybody notices that one gap is 3 mm and the next one is 5 mm.
The eye is very good at comparing two parallel lines and very bad at judging an absolute width, so consistency beats any particular number. Pick a reveal for the whole job, use it between every pair of fronts and at every end of every run, and the kitchen reads as deliberate. Use a different one on the tall unit because it looked better on paper and it reads as a mistake.
Uneven reveals are usually an installation problem. A box twisted by a shim, or a wall that runs away from the run, will open one gap and close the next while every door is exactly the size it was cut to. Level and align the boxes before you start adjusting hinges.
Where it shows up
The reveal is settled at the same moment as the overlay, before any front is sized, because every front in the run is smaller by the gaps around it. From there it flows into the parts list and into the sheet count, and it is one of the few numbers where a millimetre of drift is genuinely visible in the finished job.
How to size a front from an opening, in both frameless and face frame construction, is worked through in the overlay and reveals guide.
Common questions
What is a reveal on a cabinet?
The reveal is the visible gap left between two fronts, or between a front and the edge of the cabinet. It is the same measurement as the overlay, read from the other direction: the overlay is the wood the door covers, the reveal is the line of shadow it leaves.
What reveal should I use?
Pick one number and hold it across the whole job. Somewhere around 3 mm, which is a shade over 1/8 in, is a common frameless choice and it gives doors room to move without the gap reading as a mistake. The particular number matters far less than the fact that every gap in the run is the same one.
Why do reveals look uneven after installation?
Usually because the cabinets are not in the same plane rather than because a door is the wrong size. A box twisted by a shim or a wall that runs away from the run will open one gap and close the next, and the doors get blamed for it. Level the boxes and most reveal problems close on their own.
Keep reading
A CabDesign glossary entry. Check every allowance against your own hardware and a scrap before cutting a run. Back to the glossary.