I installed them a while back going back 5-6 years, and did a few kitchens, one was painted one stained, and I had no complaints.

GN Builders - Thanks for your feedback.

I used Wood-mode Mahogany stained cabinets in 2018 and I was very happy with the quality. We ended up selling/moving in 2020 so no feedback on long term durability.

chips - Thanks for the feedback. Did you get full inset or overlay?

Wood-Mode closed their doors suddenly in the spring of 2019, and the assets were purchased by an independent buyer a few months later. He reopened the company and hired back a lot of the employees. Hopefully, the quality is the same as it was prior to 2019, but I worry a little bit about cost-cutting measures impacting quality and the overall stability of the company in the long term or at least through a warranty period.

Mine were full overlay. It was a Spanish style house so the cabinets were stained and a more detailed door style ... when everyone in LA was installing white shaker kitchens!

My Wood-mode paneled SZ fridge & freezer. I like to do extended end panels with the full overlay, so you get an "inset" look.

This is my current kitchen, done by a local custom shop, but it shows what I mean by extended end panels that cover the sides of the full overlay doors/drawers.

Chispa - Thank you for sharing the photos. Your SZ “armoire” is absolutely gorgeous. The full overlay panels are a good option. Beautiful custom cabinets, as well. My only concern with local custom cabinets is that the paint might not hold up as well as a factory applied paint finish.

Mabsy, a painted finish will never be as durable as a stained finish. I definitely already have some wear on the top of the white trash cabinet, but never noticed any on the stained trash cabinet.

Chispa- I know that you are correct about a painted finish showing wear more easily, especially a white painted finish, but I have been envisioning a white kitchen for a very long time and don’t think I want to give up on that idea. I don’t know if it is true, but suppliers such as Wood-Mode claim that their factory applied painted finish will be much more resilient to damage than any painted finish done by a local custom cabinet builder. At this point, however, my understanding is that locally built custom cabinets will be much less expensive than a product such as Wood-Mode, so I’ll need to weigh durability of the paint finish when making my decision.

I just installed a Wood-Mode white kitchen but it is full overlay. Quality is fantastic and I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out.

I just received my painted inset wood mode cabinets. They were beautiful out of the packaging. However while waiting for install, we noticed that separation is occurring on the face plates. My emphatic directive was that the face plates be seamless, if that was not possible then I would need to have my cabinets custom made. I was assured that wood mode could create a seamless face by building the boxes as one long unit so add not to have seams between boxes. I am in the process of working with their West Coast rep, however it looks like they are trying to pass this off as "normal contraction and expansion". Odd, because they agreed to build the fronts without seams so there would be possible separation. My project is now at a standstill while awaiting this rep's arrival to my job site in two weeks. Seemingly to tell me it's normal and there isn't anything to do about it. I'll be consulting with my attorney tomorrow in hopes to have this resolved properly. I would absolutely not advise using wood mode for an inset painted cabinet at this time. Also, a top quality custom cabinet package was half the cost, and would have been seamless as promised. It just would not have had the baked on paint job.

Chautzi - This is awful! I am so disappointed to read this. I have been leaning toward Wood Mode inset cabinets, but the seamless face frame is one of the reasons that I thought they would be a good choice. The fact that yours are already showing the seams is such bad news. I’ll be interested to know how this turns out for you, but I agree with you that it’s doubtful they will say that they will redo the face frames for you. I’m so sorry you have to deal with this and appreciate you sharing this disappointing information.

It hardly seems right to click the "Like" button on your comments, Chautzi. B-( What a horrible position for you to be in. And this is after just a short time, BEFORE installation! Are these cracks horizontal, between doors, or vertical, looking from top to bottom along the edges of drawers? Not that it matters... this is awful, no matter where they are in the face frame.

It also looks as if there are fairly large gaps around the doors or drawers? Does it seem that way to you?

The separation is occurring both horizontally and vertically, it appears they glued the wood together for the face plates both ways which is kinda shocking. My rep has bumped this up to the next higher rep, who has not responded to my emails all week. I consulted with an attorney today, so that's the next step. Such a bummer.

The gaps around the doors / drawers seem ok to me, they need a little balancing but I guess that's adjustable. Here is a photo before the separation was noticable, they are pretty otherwise!

BTW I paid $143k for kitchen, butler, and primary bathroom. I figure around $1000 per linear foot.

For what it's worth, my finish carpenter said when he used to build cabinets, they had a paint process that was bulletproof. Wish I had been working with him prior to pulling the trigger on wood mode!

Chautzi- Did you have Wood Mode use MDF for your door panels? I’m just curious. I realize that doesn’t have anything to do with the cracked seams that you are seeing. I am being told that there will be too much shrinkage between the frame of the doors and the panels if the panels aren’t made with MDF.
And I have also been told that there will be shrinkage if our house doesn’t have humidification system, which is difficult to accomplish in a house with forced hot water heat via baseboards (so no air ducts). I live in an extremely dry region, with average humidity of just 50%. I’ve had my heart set on inset cabinets for years and this is making me really nervous about going forward with any line of inset cabinets, not just Wood Mode.

This is what my order states:

• Door Style & Wood: Wood-Mode’s Flush Inset Madison Recessed Square maple door with maple veneered MDF recessed panels.

I didn't consider humidty when deciding on inset doors, but it makes sense that it could be an issue. Wood mode does not do the faceplate in MDF, so if the doors were MDF and didn't expand or contract but the face frame is wood then the gap could get weird. Maybe a custom cabinet in all MDF doors and faceplates would solve it? Also in hindsight, repainting cabinets in a few years seems like a better option than having cracks and separation with literally no way to mitigate since the the wood mode finish is baked on. Of course custom has all sorts of things that can go wrong also--my parents have done it at 2 houses and both had unforseen issues. So hard to think of everything!

My thinking has been the same as yours, that the factory paint finish would be more durable than a local custom cabinet builder painting the cabinets in a spray booth, even with a high quality paint finish. Our general contractor is a big fan of custom built cabinets, partly because they are often a lot less expensive than lines such as Wood Mode, but when I talked to his former customers who went with those, they all said that the cabinet construction was well done, but they all had chipping quite soon after installation, which worries me enough that I thought it would be much better to go with what I thought was a high-quality manufacturer such as Wood Mode. Wood Mode also happens to be the only manufacturer available to my independent kitchen designer, which she thinks is a good fit for what I want. I talked with her about your experience yesterday. She said that there are people, at least in our metro area, who can do a good job with touching up factory made cabinets and said that it's usually best to wait a couple of months after installation, by which time most seam failures will show up. Of course, that's not what anyone wants to have happen with brand new, high-end cabinets. Your experience has sent me into a bit of a tailspin. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, at this point, but I will need to make a decision in the next few weeks. If you have a few minutes to come back to this discussion after you talk with the rep, I'll be interested in what sort of resolution they offer you and what you decide to do.

@mabsy Something to consider- It is not uncommon to have custom made cabinets professionally painted, not by the the cabinet maker but by a separate professional painter. I have no experience with wood mode but have had cabinets repainted by a professional painter, doors and drawer faces sprayed in a booth, frames sprayed in place. The finish by the professional painter has held up better than the factory finish of our last painted cabinets. But, even with the best finish possible, inset cabinets are at a higher risk to show chips and dings. I had originally wanted to get white painted inset cabinets in our last house but the custom cabinet maker talked my into cherry and I never regretted the decision, especially because the bottom edges just under the door managed to get knocked more frequently than I realized. With close attention one could see the dings in the cherry but, had they been painted white, they would have stood out much more.

s m - I know you are so right about inevitably dinging painted white inset cabinets. I have had so many years to envision my new kitchen and I’ve always wanted white inset cabinets. :-) Thank you for your advice. I know that I should reconsider…. Can I give up on my dream kitchen? Different topic, but I have already let go of my dream of a gas range with infrared grill, because my husband felt strongly about switching from gas to induction for health reasons. That decision (or, rather, the indecision associated with that) held us up for weeks. Now, I need to decide if I should abandon the choice of white inset cabinets.

It is a complicated decision. Our kids grew up in the house that had inset cabinets and were not rough but did inadvertently bang dishes, etc. more than if it were just a couple of adults in the house. Plenty of people live with inset white cabinets and are very careful and/or have ways to touch up the dings when they happen. It is not an impossible thing to do, just something to keep in mind.

La canche has an option for both gas and induction burners on the same range, some others might as well!

With regards to chipping, here are pics from my wood mode cabinets we installed at our other house in 2022.

Also construction isn't as stellar as I hoped.

I love the look of Lacanche ranges and probably should have considered them more when making our decision.

Chautzi-Those last few photos you posted, those were Wood Mode, also? Were those chips and failures there when the cabinets were first installed or was that damage that was caused once they were in your home? Either way, that’s very disappointing! I’m sincerely wondering, why did you order Wood Mode again, since you had such a bad experience the first time? Your experiences have caused me to seriously question whether to go through with an order. And I have to wonder, if a supposedly reputable company like Wood Mode is producing inferior product, what cabinet company can be counted upon to deliver an excellent product?

Those chips happened recently just from every day use, we haven't been reckless but we aren't overly careful (I blame my husband lol). I ordered the cabinets (inset) for the new house over a year ago (January 2024) before we had chipped these.

The seams I noticed when I started really looking this week. They aren't terrible but also my cabinet package at this house was 1/3 what I paid for the new house.

I do think overall the wood mode cabs are very pretty. If you need a custom color, and go with inset, they get very expensive. If I had it to do over, I would still get inset but I'd take my chances on custom. If the paint has issues it can be redone. If they turn out to be not quite perfect, it's about half the cost so not as disappointing. And much easier to reface and switch doors down the road.

Yes the blue ones are also wood mode

My reasoning for leaning toward Wood Mode vs. custom was the same as yours: that a factory finish would be more durable. My general contractor is a fan of custom, but when I talked with his references, all of whom had done custom cabinets, every one of them said that their cabinets started chipping very quickly. However, your experience has definitely caused me to reconsider. I’m going to be exploring custom, as an option. Thank you for sharing your experience. I’ll be interested to know what kind of response you get from Wood Mode.

Latest update, the West Coast rep for wood mode visited my job site. He said the separation was normal and expected. He also stated that the word "seamless" in my contract (referring to the face plate) does not mean there would be no seam 🤷‍♀️ He said that wood mode cannot produce a seamless face plate. My contractor is now in the process of documenting all defects and paint failures for each unit. Once he started fully examining the cabinets he said that he's seen better workmanship in Home Depot cabinets. I don't know if the quality has declined in the last few years but please be aware before purchasing from company!

I’ve now installed three Wood-Mode kitchens in my homes without issue. We take good care of them and know that wood will expand and contract with mositure variations in our home and that will inevitably cause hairline separations in painted finishes. I’ve sold kitchens for 20 years (Wood-Mode and other brands) and have never heard of a manufacturer who can guarantee that that won’t happen on wood cabinetry. You can always opt for MDF doors to avoid some of the natural movement of wood. In my experience, Wood-Mode is the best and why I continue to use it in my own homes and recommend it to my customers

What was the humidity level in your house while cabinets were waiting for install. Usually those problems occur when humidity level is not stable and range 35-55 I think

Michael-- this is my second wood mode installation, the first was overlay doors. These were inset style and we specified "seamless face frames". Hairline fractures on doors and drawers was 100% expected. However the OP and I both were seeking seamless inset face frames, which wood mode apparently cannot produce.

I’ve never come across a company that makes a wood ”seamless face fame” inset product in all my years. I’m curious why that was specifically stated. That seems like a miscommunication and not necessarily a Wood-Mode issue.

Michael-- it may have been a miscommunication somewhere along the line, but it was specified in my contract by my rep so it would not have been on our end. I didn't research other companies so I'm not sure what products they are capable of producing. I was going to do custom if wood mode could not do the seamless face plates as I've seen installs without any seams.

Understood. There will always be seams with inset. It’s more a question as to where you place them.