A two tone shaker cabinets package is one of the easiest places for a project to go wrong, because the drawing can look perfect and the finished kitchen can still be wrong: the two tones reversed, the door profile substituted, or the hardware changed at the last minute. If you are specifying shaker-profile doors in two colours and the cabinetry is being manufactured off site, the submittal is the one document where you can lock everything down before metal edge and cabinet box are ever cut. Below is the list we work from on our own custom kitchen cabinetry for villas, apartments and hotel projects.

What a product submittal actually is

A submittal is the package a manufacturer or supplier returns for the design team to approve before production starts. On a cabinetry package it is not a brochure and not a quotation, even though the two often travel together. The quotation says what you are buying and what it costs. The submittal says exactly what will be built, and it is the document you sign off on. For a built-in kitchen run, it usually comes back as a set of elevations, a finish schedule, a materials list and a hardware list, together with the openings and services the surrounding trades have to work to.

The reason it matters more on a two tone scheme than on a single-colour one is that a two tone run carries twice as many decisions, and most of them are relative rather than absolute. Where does the lighter colour stop? Which doors are the feature pair and which are the field? Is the tall bank the dark tone or the wall units? A single sentence in a specification does not hold all of that. The submittal does.

1. Drawings at a scale you can actually check

Send back elevations of every wall run, not a perspective sketch, and put dimensions on them. For shaker doors specifically, ask for a detail of the door itself at a larger scale: the width of each rail and stile, the depth of the routed profile, and whether the centre panel is flat or raised. A 1:50 elevation of a whole kitchen will happily hide the difference between a slim contemporary shaker frame and a chunky traditional one, and the difference is exactly what the designer cares about.

We work to project dimensions rather than a fixed module range, so on our side the submittal drawing is the thing that fixes those dimensions; a made-to-measure package without signed elevations is simply an unwritten order. If the kitchen includes tall appliance housings, an island or an integrated fridge, those elevations need to appear too, with the appliance cavities and their ventilation gaps drawn rather than assumed.

2. A finish schedule that names both tones properly

This is where two tone projects fail most often, and it is worth being pedantic about. For every cabinet group, the finish schedule should show the colour or decor code, the paint or lacquer system, and the sheen level. Two clients can both want a grey shaker kitchen and mean very different things: a cool light grey wall unit over a warm dark base, or the other way around, in matt rather than satin. Codes and sheen remove the argument; words like "charcoal" and "off-white" do not.

Then state which elements are which tone. Base carcasses, door fronts, drawer fronts, open shelving, the tall bank, the pelmet and the trims: each one either matches the light tone, matches the dark tone, or is called out as a third finish. On our painted shaker cabinets the door fronts and the carcass are specified separately for exactly this reason, because a sprayed front and a foil-wrapped box read differently under kitchen lighting even when the colour is nominally the same.

One practical note for batch orders: if the run will be produced in more than one batch, say so in the finish schedule and ask for a retained production sample from each batch. Paint and lacquer colours can shift subtly between batches, and on a two tone scheme a small shift in the lighter colour shows up against the dark one far sooner than you would expect.

3. Materials, construction and edge detail

The materials list should name the door substrate, the door face treatment, the carcass board and its thickness, and the edge treatment on every visible edge. For shaker doors that usually means a routed door in one substrate with a sprayed or wrapped face; what matters on the submittal is that it is stated rather than left to the workshop. Carcass board thickness, the type of joining, and whether the base units are on adjustable legs or plinths all change how the run sits level against a floor that is never quite flat.

Internal fit-out belongs in the submittal too. Shelf depths and spans, drawer sizes and where they sit in each unit, pantry and pull-out configurations, cutlery trays, bin housings and any integrated lighting channels. These are cheap to change on paper and expensive to change on site, and if they are not on the drawing, the standard internal configuration is what arrives. Our custom built-in kitchen cabinets are supplied with the internal partitions and cabinet hardware specified per project, which means the internal layout is a line item on the submittal, not an assumption.

4. Hardware and interfaces

Hinges, drawer slides, handles and knobs, legs, brackets, and any integrated or recessed pull system should be listed by model, not by category. On a two tone shaker kitchen the hardware is doing a lot of visual work. The same door in a light grey reads differently with brushed brass handles than it does with black ones, so a substitution here changes the look more than a colour change does. If the designer is supplying handles themselves, put that on the submittal as well, along with the fixing centres the doors have to be drilled for.

Appliances and worktops are the other two interfaces. The submittal should carry the appliance schedule with cut-out dimensions and clearances, and the worktop thickness with the resulting edge relationship to the door frame. A thick stone worktop over a slim shaker frame, or a thin one over a deep carcass, is a visible detail that only gets decided if someone writes it down.

5. Site conditions, tolerances and services

Kitchen cabinetry is installed against walls, floors and ceilings that are rarely square or level, so the submittal should record the site dimensions the units were designed to, the date they were taken, and the tolerance being allowed for scribing and trimming. If the units are being made to measured sizes off site, as ours are, this is the section that protects both sides: it says what we built to, and it says who is responsible for bringing the opening to that size.

Record the plumbing, electrical and extraction routes the carcass has to clear, including where sockets sit relative to the worktop and where the extractor duct runs. A tall housing positioned to hide a soil stack, or an island with a hob and no planned duct route, is a coordination problem that the submittal should surface weeks before it becomes a site problem.

6. Samples, approvals and the sign-off trail

Physical samples should be listed in the submittal as items to be approved, not extras to be sent later: a door front sample showing both the profile and both finishes, a hardware sample, and a worktop or splashback sample where those are in scope. For painted and lacquered fronts, review the sample under the actual kitchen lighting rather than under workshop lights before you sign anything.

Then close the loop in writing. Every submittal we return is issued with a revision number and a date, and the approval that comes back against that revision is what releases production. Any change after that point goes through as a revised submittal with a new revision number, whether it is a darker base tone, an extra drawer bank or a different handle. It is slower in the short term and much cheaper in the long term, because everyone is approving a document rather than remembering a conversation.

7. Delivery, packaging and sequence

For a cabinetry package that is shipping internationally, the submittal should end with the practical delivery information: how the units are packed and protected, how they are labelled against the elevation numbers on the drawings, the container or pallet arrangement, and the delivery sequence if the run is being produced in stages. Labels that match drawing numbers pay for themselves on the day the units land, because the fitter can work from the same numbering the designer approved.

A quick pre-production checklist

• Elevations for every wall run, dimensioned, plus a large-scale shaker door profile detail
• Both tones named by code, with the paint or lacquer system and sheen level stated
• Every element assigned to a tone: doors, carcasses, shelving, tall bank, trims
• Door substrate, face treatment, carcass board and all visible edge treatments
• Internal fit-out drawn: shelf spans, drawer positions, pull-outs, lighting channels
• Hardware listed by model and finish, including designer-supplied pulls
• Appliance schedule with cut-outs and clearances; worktop thickness and edge relationship
• Measured site dimensions with date taken, and the tolerance being allowed
• Services routes and socket positions relative to the units
• Samples listed for approval, reviewed under real kitchen lighting
• Revision number, date and written approval against that revision
• Packaging, labelling to drawing numbers and delivery sequence

What to send us

If you are sourcing a two tone shaker kitchen for a villa, apartment or hotel fit-out, send the layout or drawings you have, the finish references you want and the appliance schedule. We will come back with the submittal package above: elevations, finish schedule, and materials and hardware lists, for your review before anything is produced. Because the doors, carcasses and internal layout are all made to the project rather than to a fixed catalogue, the submittal is where the specification gets frozen, and once it is signed the production drawings follow directly from it. You can start from our light grey shaker style kitchen cabinets to see how a two tone shaker scheme and its integrated appliances are documented, or send us your project enquiry directly and we will price and submit against your drawings.