I had to look at my cabinets and drawers..I was thinking I had slab. I guess I sorta do. My "sides" on the drawers have a router line on them, so that the drawer's line up, but not horizontal pieces or routering on them.

Reduce both sides.

Have cabs with both versions, strongly prefer the smaller drawers with proportional sides. Cabinetmaker didn't think I knew what I was doing but admitted at an install that it was a good look. I think he had just never done it my way, but I'm pretty sure that's how Christopher Peacock does his small drawers.

We have drawers with the reduced rail (but same size stile) and I really like it. I would never have thought of it but our cabinetmaker suggested it. For our drawers it's actually our middle two drawers in a four-drawer bank (we opted to do all of our top drawers slab). It is the only four-drawer bank so the others are three-drawer and have standard rails and stiles; I think the modified rails actually help those drawers look more like the other drawers rather than less, surprisingly (because to your eye, the center panel stays about the same size, so you notice that in relation to the hardware). I also wanted the stiles in a given bank of drawers to line up vertically for aesthetics--just something that would have bugged me.

The other consideration is where you plan to mount your hardware. Our pulls are mounted on the center panel (rather than on the rail as some choose to do) and I remember our cabinetmaker saying he recommended the standard rail height if we wanted to mount hardware on the rails instead.

I didn't know what we did until I looked at a pic.

Are you absolutely committed to keeping 5-piece on the top drawers? Personally, I love the look of slab drawers on the less high top drawers with 5-piece below.

We have slab on all of our short drawers. It's a personal preference, but I don't like the look of the 5-piece on the shorter drawers.

I agree with linelle and sas95. That's what we did with our inset cabinets--slab on top, five piece on the bottom two drawers.

We also chose slab on top for our Shaker style full-overlay cabinets. When looking at both options on-line, the 5 piece on the smaller drawer on top always looked sort of busy to me...the other 2 or 3 drawers in the stacks will be 5-piece.

We also did slab on the top drawers, to have the five panel cost just over a hundred dollars a drawer so having the slabs on the top saved over $1100 in our kitchen.

Slab or 5 piece is completely personal preference. Do what YOU want. I personally hate slab. To me, it always looks like they forgot to do the top drawers in the right design.

Originally, we were planning on Shaker style cabinets and planned on doing all 5-piece drawers, reducing down the size of the horizontal piece but keeping the vertical the same as with the other drawers. Ultimately, we veered far away from that look, opting instead for slab cabinetry through the whole kitchen.

Thanks everyone for the input so far. I had looked at pictures and I strongly prefer slab drawers when paired with a beaded inset, but we ruled out beaded inset because of the additional cost.

My cabinet maker doesn't charge more for 5 piece drawers vs. slab drawers so our choices are the just reduce the top/bottom part of the 5-piece drawer so the side rails line up with the drawer or door below it in terms of width, or to reduce all 4 sides. It seems like the former option is more common, but I think I prefer the proportional option. Has anyone else done that? Any pictures?

I used to hate slab drawers. Now I love them. Who knew? In reality, I love ALL slab drawers paired with shaker doors, esp. all painted white. It's got an honest, straightforward, utilitarian look, which may not be the look you're going for.

I had thought about shrinking the dimensions for the top drawer, but in the end the top drawer was never so skinny that I needed to do that. The dimensions of our rails are the same on all of the drawers, regardless of their height. I'm very happy with it.

Not the same style as you're doing but I hope it helps. Our guy kept the vertical lines the same, and adjusted the thickness of the tops and bottoms depending on drawer size