faisal:

Buy the cabinets you like. All modern cabinets are very dimensionally stable even in humid climates. Reveals can be whatever you like, within the hinge adjustments.

As long as you have central air, your indoor climate is most likely stable enough to support inset. I have heard that if you live on the water/ocean esp where the nice breeze temps you to let the moist air in there can be expansion. I can't imagine it is enough of a concern to worry about.

Thanks Gents,

However I will be living is a place where AC may not be an option and secondly I would be using real wood so i understand that there would be some changes because of the weather.

Any thoughts ?

faisal

If you live in a desert area and you're using an evaporative cooler in the summer and wood fires in the winter, any wooden thing in your house will be destroyed in a few years.

I know this because I lived in Tucson for 4 years. All the woodwork we produced and installed were made with some sort of distressed, rustic finish. This was the common style for the area, but I quickly learned that this was as much necessity as it was for looks. It was common for us to get call backs right after the beginning of monsoon season. Doors would swell to the point the floating panel would split the stile. A 1/8" reveal would become a 1/8" overlap! The customers with evaporative coolers had it the worst. My boss had to learn to plan the design around the heating and cooling systems.

@ aidan_m. thank you. If I can understand you clearly , if the environment is not temperature or humidity controlled you DO NOT recommend to go for real wood. And this applies whether the cabinets are euro, inset or framed ?

Constant humidity is not a problem. Wood becomes dimensionally unstable when exposed to extreme fluctuations in humidity. Extreme dryness seems to be the most destructive. That's why I mentioned desert. If you live in the pacific northwest, it's not going to be much of a problem. All climates can experience high humidity from time to time. Even in a desert, it can reach 100% humidity during a rainstorm or the early morning hours. But not all places can get extremely dry. Only deserts get down below 10% humidity. When wood is exposed to fluctuations of humidity from under 10% up to 100%, this will affect the dimensional stability drastically.

Those dimensional changes are only characteristic to solid pieces of wood. Plywood does not behave this way. Neither does MDF. If your cabinets are made of veneer core plywood, or veneer over MDF, they will be just fine under these conditions. The problems I described above were pertaining to solid wood doors and drawer fronts. We never had problems with the plywood cabinet boxes warping.

Euro-style cabinets use less solid wood than face framed ones. Choose your doors and drawer fronts to utilize sheet goods as much as possible rather than solid wood.

My warning about wood in an unconditioned house is a general warning for all your furniture. The euro style cabinets are the least of your concerns. They are the best choice for this.

Thanks,maidan_m. The reason I was worried about Euro style cabinet for humid was the small reveal they keep between adjascent doors which is 1/8 inches. I am kinda thinking that any expansion here might block the free passage of doors ? The reveal of 1/8 inches as standard , I found at the follownig link.

http://www.skyvalleycabinetry.com/products/all_the_details/cabinet_drawings/SVE-Construction.pdf