How to work with a cabinet designer: what to expect

Most clients who come to Pannello for the first time have not worked with a custom cabinetry designer before. They have replaced countertops, selected paint colors, and hired a contractor, but the cabinetry design process — with its elevation drawings, shop drawings, material specifications, and field measures — is unfamiliar territory.

This is what the process looks like from the client side, and what you can do at each stage to make the project go more smoothly.

What to bring to the first consultation

The first meeting is a conversation, not a presentation. You do not need a design board, a Houzz folder, or a completed brief. What helps is a clear sense of how the room currently fails — what is not working about the existing kitchen, closet, or bathroom — and some sense of how you use the space.

For a kitchen consultation: know how many people cook simultaneously, what your primary cooking method is (range vs. induction, how often you use the oven), whether you want panel-ready appliances or visible appliance faces, and roughly how much of the kitchen is used for daily work vs. occasional cooking.

For a closet consultation: bring a rough count of hanging garments by type — long dresses, suits, jackets, folded shirts — because this determines the ratio of long hanging to double-rod to drawer and shelf sections. A wardrobe with 40 long dresses and one suit has a different layout than a wardrobe with 20 suits and no long hanging at all.

For a bathroom consultation: know whether the plumbing rough-in can move or is fixed, what the ceiling height is, and whether you want a wall-hung or floor-standing format.

Bring photographs of rooms you like — from magazines, from Instagram, from projects you have seen in person — but be prepared to describe what specifically you like about them, not just the overall effect. “I like how clean this looks” is less useful than “I like that there is no visible hardware anywhere on these cabinets.”

The field measure phase

The designer will request a site visit to measure the room. This is not a courtesy call — it is a technical requirement. The shop drawings that the fabrication team builds from are based on the measured dimensions of your specific room, not on a nominal floor plan.

During the field measure, the designer will document dimensions you have probably never thought about: the actual width of the room at floor level vs. ceiling level (these are different in older DC homes where walls are not plumb), the location of plumbing rough-ins to within a centimeter, the height of the window sill from the floor, and whether the floor is level across the full width of the room.

Your role during the field measure is to make the relevant parts of the room accessible. Move what is currently there if you can. If the existing cabinets cannot be moved before the measure, the designer will work around them — but the more the room is accessible, the more accurate the measure.

Reading and reviewing shop drawings

After the field measure, the designer produces elevation drawings — wall-by-wall technical drawings of what the finished room will look like, drawn to the measured dimensions. These are not rendered perspective views; they are two-dimensional drawings with dimensions labeled.

The most important thing to verify in an elevation drawing is the relationship between elements at the same height. In a kitchen: does the refrigerator panel align with the top of the adjacent tall pantry column? Is the window centered in the upper cabinet run, or does the run wrap asymmetrically — and if it does, is that intentional? Does the island overhang dimension allow comfortable seating on both sides?

Changes at the elevation drawing stage are straightforward and typically free. A cabinet moved 6 inches to the left, an island dimension adjusted, a pantry section changed from three doors to two — these are all drawing changes that take a few hours.

Changes after the shop drawings are issued to fabrication are a different matter. Shop drawings are the cut list that the fabrication team works from. A dimension change after shop drawings are issued means re-cutting material, and re-cutting material costs time and money. Review the elevation drawings carefully.

Material selection

Material selection — finish, door profile, hardware — happens in the showroom before the shop drawings are issued. The sequence matters: the finish choice affects the shop drawing specifications (matte lacquer requires different edge banding than wood veneer), and the hardware choice affects the door hole pattern.

When selecting materials in the showroom, handle the samples under the lighting conditions of your actual room. A matte white lacquer sample looks different under Pannello showroom lighting than it will look in a Georgetown rowhouse kitchen with north-facing windows and warm incandescent fixtures. Bring a phone or camera, take photographs of the samples you are considering, and look at them in your phone’s display under your home’s light.

If you are working with an interior designer, the designer typically attends the material selection meeting. If you are not working with a designer, the Pannello design team provides material direction — not as a substitute for your preferences, but as a check against combinations that read correctly in isolation but do not hold together in a room.

What to ask for in writing

Before fabrication begins, confirm in writing: the finish specification (material name, color reference, and sheen level), the hardware specification (brand, model, and finish — e.g., Blum Clip-Top Blumotion in matte nickel), the counter material and thickness if Pannello is supplying the counter, and the installation date.

The installation date matters for planning: if you are coordinating cabinetry with a flooring contractor, a painter, or a plumber doing rough-in changes, the cabinet installation date is the anchor that everything else schedules around. In a DC rowhouse, cabinetry typically installs after flooring is complete and before painting is finished.

Ask what the punch list process looks like — how defects or adjustment items discovered during installation are handled, and what the timeline for resolving them is. At Pannello, the designer who drew the project walks the installation before the project is closed.

The relationship with your interior designer

If you are working with an interior designer, the relationship between the designer and the cabinetry shop needs to be clear before the project starts. Some designers direct material selection entirely and provide detailed specifications. Others set a direction and want the cabinetry designer to develop the details. Most DC designers have a preferred way of working, and it is worth clarifying at the outset.

Pannello’s standard process with designer clients: the designer provides the design direction and approves all material and finish selections; Pannello produces the technical drawings and shop drawings; the designer reviews and approves the drawings before fabrication. Both parties sign off on the shop drawings. This eliminates the category of problem where a cabinet is built to the wrong specification because the design intent was not translated into the technical document correctly.

The cabinetry designer and the interior designer are not the same role, but they need to be in communication for the project to produce what the client expects. If you have questions about how the process works before committing to a first meeting, the FAQ covers the most common ones. When you are ready to move forward, book a design consultation — it is the right first step regardless of whether you are bringing an interior designer or working directly with our custom cabinet team.