Full overlay, unless you want the period look and will pay for it. Inset work sits in the $1,200 to $2,500 a foot band against $500 to $1,200 for full overlay built to your opening. The gap around an inset door shows from across the room, so the hours go into making it even.
This comes up on most of the older kitchens you ask Custom Cabinets Lynn to draw. Inset is what your house started with. Full overlay is what the last renovation put in. Inset means your door sits flush inside the frame, level with it. Full overlay means your door sits on top of the frame and covers nearly all of it.
Overlay hides things, and in a house that has moved, that is a feature rather than a compromise. A door sitting proud of the frame can be shifted sideways and up without anybody seeing it. So a run that has drifted with a settled floor still reads straight.
Inset hides nothing. Every gap around every door is visible from across the room. The frame has to be square, the door has to be square, and both have to stay that way. That is where your money goes.
Whether it stays that way comes down to your hinges. On an overlay door a hinge that has loosened gets adjusted back out of sight. On inset the same wear shows as a gap gone crooked, so the hardware matters more here than anywhere else in your kitchen.
Then there is your heating season, and this part is specific to living here. Indoor humidity drops below 20% in February and climbs into the sixties by August. Your overlay door has the whole frame to move across. An inset door has only its gap. So we set your inset gaps for the damp months, and a shop that sets them in January hands you doors that bind in August.
The per-foot bands are on our cabinet cost guide, and why doors stick in winter covers the movement itself.
Related questions
Is inset actually period-correct for a house from the 1920s?
Yes, and it is what most kitchens here started with. Crown Point Cabinetry in Claremont, New Hampshire builds inset in Shaker, Arts and Crafts and Early American, which is worth a look before you decide what your house wants.
Can I put inset doors on my existing boxes?
Only if your frames are square enough to take them, which on old cabinetry is rare. Refacing at $150 to $450 a foot keeps whatever your boxes already are. So if inset is what you want, it usually means new boxes.
Does inset lose me storage?
A little, because the door sits in the opening rather than over it. Across a whole kitchen it is not enough to change what fits. Rev-A-Shelf pull-outs give you back more space in a small kitchen than the door style ever costs you.