A cabinet in a staff room gets opened more times in a year than a kitchen cupboard does in ten. That single fact drives most of what separates commercial casework from residential work, and almost none of it is visible from across the room.
These are not adjectives, they are defined grades, and they describe workmanship, materials and installation tolerance on the surfaces that stay visible after fitting. The practical difference is how tight the gaps are, how flush the joints sit, and what the exposed material is allowed to be.
Economy is the minimum, and it is meant for woodwork out of public view: plant rooms, storage, back of house. Custom sits in the middle and is the default in the standards, which is why it covers most of a school, a clinic or an office without anyone needing to argue about it.
Premium is the top grade and is used selectively rather than throughout, on the pieces people stand a foot away from: reception counters, boardrooms, executive areas. See the commercial hub, office and retail and custom cabinetry.
Recent work
How it works
How the Build Is Specified
Start from the named grade
The grade in the drawings sets the tolerances and the exposed materials. Everything downstream follows from it, so it is the first thing we read and the first thing we price.
Match hardware to traffic
A back-of-house cupboard and a public-facing drawer do not need the same slide. Cycle ratings get chosen per location rather than applied uniformly to make a quote look impressive.
Detail the edges and surfaces
Thicker banding and reactive adhesive where hands and trolleys land, hard-wearing surfaces on counters. These details cost little and decide how the room looks in year five.
Allow for accessible units
Where a counter has to be usable seated, the height and the clear knee space are set from the code, and exposed pipework under the sink is covered rather than left.
Under the finish
Where the Extra Money Actually Goes
Hardware first. Commercial drawer slides are tested to a minimum of fifty thousand open and close cycles, and the standard covering cabinet hardware puts hinges, pulls and slides through operational, cycle, strength and finish testing. A staff room drawer will exhaust residential hardware in a few years.
Then edges. Commercial work uses a thicker edge band, typically three millimetre, bonded with a reactive polyurethane adhesive that seals the edge against moisture and stops it lifting. Thin banding on a public counter peels at the corner first, and then it never stops peeling.
Surfaces get chosen for impact rather than appearance, which is why high pressure laminate turns up so often on counters that take trolleys and elbows. None of this is visible in a photograph, and all of it is visible in year five, which is the only fair test of a commercial fit-out. See hardware, slab doors and worktops.
Specification
Other commercial work
The Rest of Our Commercial Work
Casework specification is here. These are the project types it gets built for.
Grades, hardware, edges and what makes a commercial cabinet different.
Broadly, but the differences are specific: hardware rated for cycle counts, thicker edge treatment bonded with reactive adhesive, and surfaces chosen for impact. The carcass joinery itself is familiar.
Fifty thousand cycles is the accepted minimum for commercial use. Higher-traffic locations justify more. The relevant hardware standard also tests strength and finish, not only cycles.
Because thin banding fails at the corner where a trolley or a hip catches it, and once it lifts it keeps lifting. Thicker banding with a reactive polyurethane adhesive resists that and seals against moisture.
Impact and abuse resistance on surfaces that take daily punishment. It is the reason it appears on service counters and break room worktops far more often than it appears in houses.
Custom covers most of a building and is the standards' default. Premium is worth reserving for the few pieces people examine closely. Economy is appropriate out of public view.
Around 34 inches to the top, with roughly 27 inches of clear knee height, 30 inches of width and 11 inches of depth beneath it. Confirm against your local code, which governs.
Yes. Hot supply and waste under an accessible lavatory get insulated or panelled so a seated user cannot contact them. It is a small detail that fails inspection when it is missed.
Send the drawings and we will price the grade they name, flag anywhere the spec and the budget disagree, and match hardware ratings to how each location actually gets used.
