In this blog post, I’ll explain in detail how I make shaker-style plywood doors for everything from wardrobes to cabinets to internal rooms. Shaker-style doors have simple square or rectangular indents. Due to their clean, straight lines, they look quite modern and can be DIYed fairly easily.
THE DESIGN
My basic shaker-style door design always requires a plain rectangular door to which you then apply shaker panelling. To simplify, the design is as follows:
Note that the vertical panelling strips are applied first, and the horizontal ones fit in between them.
With a design like this, there are a few things you need to consider, including:
- How thick should the overall door be
- How thick should the shaker panelling be, and how thick should the basic door be
- How you will finish the edges of the door to hide the raw plywood edges
Door thickness
The overall thickness of the door will depend on the type of door you are building. For example, a basic internal door usually measures around 35mm thick. While cabinet doors usually measure around 18mm thick.
Shaker panelling thickness
There isn’t a hard rule for how thick the shaker panelling should be. It really depends on your preference. Doors that are thinner overall tend to have thinner panelling, while thicker doors tend to have slightly thicker panelling. I use 5mm plywood for my panelling on all door types. I like the more delicate look you get with thinner panelling, and it’s also slightly cheaper than something like 9mm plywood.
Whatever you decide on, make sure it fits with your overall door thickness: overall door thickness minus panelling thickness equals your basic door thickness. For example, if you want 12mm panelling on a cabinet door, your basic door would have to be only 6mm (assuming a standard 18mm door), which is structurally just not going to work.
Finishing the door edges
As the shaker panelling will be glued and pinned to the basic door, this will be very noticeable along the edges of the finished door. There are a few ways you can hide that join and the best way will depend on your budget, time availability and how you want to finish the door (paintgrade or staingrade). For doors, your options are:
- Use wood filler to fill the join and sand it down a few times over – good for solid painted doors only
- Use edge banding – good for both stained and painted finishes
I have used both methods to finish doors, and I personally had better success with the multilayer filling and sanding. When using edge banding, I found it a bit faffy to get to stick properly, but it may have been the product quality and my lack of experience using it that was the problem. If you are staining your door, edge banding is really your only option unless you opt to just leave the door edges exposed (which could be an option if you have an internal door rather than an overlay door).
STEP 1: BUILD THE BASIC DOOR
Once you have considered your door design and worked out the sizing, it’s time to build the basic door.
Thicker doors
Thicker doors tend to be required when making a door for a room entrance. A basic internal door is around 35mm thick. Sometimes, they are thicker, depending on the purpose of the door. Remember, your basic door thickness will need to be the overall door thickness minus the shaker panelling thickness.
If that calculation produces a fairly thick door, you need to consider how heavy it will be when finished. If you’re making it out of plywood, you might want to choose a hollow design. A hollow door design involves building a frame out of solid wood, to which you then nail thin plywood sheets on the back and front. Here is a basic design of a hollow door, which is very similar to how I built an internal door for my boiler cupboard.
Thinner doors
For thinner doors, such as cabinet doors, you are likely to just need to cut the right thickness of plywood down to size. For my cabinet doors, I tend to make the basic door out of 12mm thick plywood and then add 5mm shaker-style panelling, making the door around 17mm thick.
STEP 2: CUT THE SHAKER PANELLING
During the design phase, you decided on the thickness of the shaker panelling. Now, you need to decide on its width. Again, this is a matter of personal preference. The wider your panelling is, the less the basic door will peek through from underneath it, and vice versa.
When choosing the width, consider the whole furniture unit, i.e., the number of doors it has and whether they are all the same size. Even for a cabinet with multiple door sizes, the shaker-style panelling will look best when it’s all the same width. So, the width you choose must be suitable for each of your doors.
I personally choose a width that is roughly a fifth of my total door width. I find this leaves a nice size portion of the door exposed, and it looks quite balanced.
I highly recommend that the piece of plywood you use for your panelling be cut to width using a reliable, precise tool such as a good-quality table saw. I always get mine cut into strips at my local B&Q store, as my table saw is rubbish up to theirs.
STEP 3: ATTACH THE SHAKER PANELLING
Once all the panelling is cut to width, you can begin measuring the required lengths and attaching them. I always attach the panelling using wood glue and small pins.
Begin by attaching your vertical strips and then the top and bottom horizontal strips. If your door is long, you can play around with additional horizontal strips for a funky design.
STEP 4: FINISH THE DOOR
Once your panelling is attached and the wood glue has dried, you can begin the finishing touches. Whether you’re painting or staining the door, you will likely need to give the whole door a good sand. Then, take a look at any areas that might need filling and go from there.
