The only considerations are which look you prefer, and if there is a price difference, how that affects your budget. I wanted my drawers to match my cabinets since I got almost all drawers on the bottoms.

Things to consider if you choose the 5-piece instead of the slab: the actual size of the drawer front and the rails and stiles...How much panel will there be left and will you like it? Will it be large enough to look nice? Will there be room enough for your pull if you'd planned to put them in the center? For us it was those things, plus budget. There was a minimum charge (the equivalent of 2 sq ft of drawer front, which was about twice the size of most of them) for the 5-piece drawer fronts.

Since I went with nearly all doors, I wanted everything to match. I am really happy I did....it looks awesome!!

rhome stated exactly what I was going to respond. How deep is your top drawer? If it's smaller then the others, I might tend to use a slab front.

IMO large drawers, especially, look much better paneled. Smaller ones can look good in both styles.

Anne

Thanks all. My top drawers are smaller than the rest - they are 6 1/4" tall. I didn't think about the pull not fitting. I'll probably be using cup pulls but haven't completely decided yet. Would cup pulls fit with a 5-piece drawer of that size?

For us it was one of those last minute decisions. Seriously, I was at the homestore ordering cabinets when DH and I made the decision to go with all 5 piece drawers. I'm really happy with the way they look.

However, I plan to use cup pulls, centered in the panels, and they don't fit on the top drawer panel. So, I've had to order extra knobs for the top drawers, and cup pulls will go on the rest. I'm okay with the look, but was a little bummed at first that I couldn't do all cup pulls. If you have the cup pull you are planning to use, I would recommend finding a display with the 5-piece top drawers and trying it out to see if it fits. That way you know exactly what you are getting and can plan accordingly.

We went w/all drawers matching. Since we used drawer pulls and not cup pulls, we didn't have an issue. My top drawers are 6-1/2" tall.

24" wide, 3-Drawer cabinet:

36" wide, 3-drawer cabinet:

This picture shows a closeup of the pull (ignore the 8" annotation, someone had asked how I spaced my pulls).

On small drawers, even if there is room for the pull in the center of a 5-piece, it may be awkward to use the pull there on a small drawer. I noticed this in a cabinet show room - the rails made using the pull uncomfortable as they scraped against the backs of your fingers as you reached in to the pull.

One of the considerations for us was what was accurate for real Shaker style. In all the historic Shaker furniture (i.e. furniture that was made by Shakers) that I've seen, the drawers are slab and only the doors are 5 piece. They believed in simple design and did 5-piece on the doors because it is more practical for large surfaces with solid wood. It allows for the expansion and contraction of the wood inside the frame with the weather. On the smaller surface of the drawers, slab was practical and simpler. Therefore we only did 5-piece on the doors and the very deep drawers (8" or deeper) and did slab on the smaller drawer fronts. For the large drawers, we put the cup pulls on the top rail of the drawer - I like that look and since these are usually the bottom drawer, it is a more convenient height.

Our house is MCM but we didn't want to do slab which would be a bit too simple for our taste (and too like the cabinets that we had taken out) but we still wanted to keep the look simple. A shaker look with slabs for the drawer fronts and a simple 5-piece for the doors fit that.

If your top drawers are too shallow for cup pulls, consider using knobs for the top drawers & cup pulls for the rest...like Sherrilea did.

Sherrilea's Finished Kitchen in the FKB:
http://finishedkitchens.blogspot.com/2006/10/sherrileas-kitchen.html

Sherrilea's Kitchen Pictures (see the 3rd picture down on the left):
http://web.mac.com/sherri.p/iWeb/Kitchen/Before%20%26%20After.html

I think the decision might hinge a bit on the kind of effect you are trying to achieve with the white Shaker cabinets. If you are looking for a luxury effect, paneled are probably the most a propos. If you are seeking a simpler look -- in my case, to approximate what would have been built-in in the late 1920s -- slab fronts look modest and neat.

(In addition to this link, I have a great pic of a new painted Shaker kitchen with slab fronts on all-drawer base cabinets. Unfortunately, I have no record of where I downloaded it from, but I can email it to you if you are interested.)

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}

I have a cabinet that is 9" wide and one that is 12" wide. Both of them have a drawer. On the 9" drawer the area in the center to put hardware is less that 2"! On the 12" drawer the area is less than 5". I am happy with the paneled drawer fronts everywhere else. But on these two drawers I wish I had gone with slab. Hindsight is 20/20.

I did all five-piece. I was getting a drawer unit with large lower drawers which I wanted to be five-piece to match the cabinet doors, and to do that, I had to have all the upper drawers be five-piece also. After I ordered them, I realized that there might be a problem - I had ordered a wide shaker style with 3" rails and stiles, and the upper drawers were only 6" high. I had no idea what that was going to look like, or if they were going to come out as slab after all!

What they did is make the uppers have 2" rails with a 2" panel. I think it looks great, and my handles look good right in the middle of the panel. ;-)

{{!gwi}}

After reading Charlikin's post, I measured my drawer & door rails.

The rails on the doors are 3" (upper & base cabs)

The rails on the drawers (all depths) are 2-1/4" with a 2" panel in the middle.

I never noticed the difference! Not even where there are doors next to drawers in the base cabs!

If you just look and don't study, do you notice? I notice now if I study it, but not if I just look at it.

The rails and stiles on my drawers are smaller than on the doors too, but I sure never noticed. I like the look of panel drawer fronts so much better than slab front. But whatever you chose, be consistent. I think all slab or all panel looks much better then trying to mix them.

It is much easier and faster to clean a slab front drawer. A damp sponge with dish soap does the job quickly and easily. A five part drawer with its changes in elevation adds lots of knooks and crannies for grease and dust to accumulate. In a work room, which a kitchen is, I always vote in favor of a choice that minimizes the amount of time or energy I need to spend cleaning.

The look of a drawer is greatly affected by the choice of knobs and pulls. If going for a craftsman look with a slab drawer front choose from a variety of oil rubbed bronze pulls with backsplashes such as bin pulls, bail pulls and mission pulls. These will read as mission as long as you stick with the dark oiled bronze look. Rejuvenation hardware has tons of options as do many other websites just type in craftsman-or- mission hardware.