As the most popular room in the house, the kitchen is often where family and friends gather. This is why having high-quality, beautiful cabinets is important. For this reason, the Good Housekeeping Institute recently released a review of the best kitchen cabinet brands you can buy right now. We’re proud to announce that Rutt was chosen for the Best Custom Cabinets category.
If there’s a capital of cabinet making in the U.S., it’s Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with its centuries-old tradition of hand-crafted millwork carried out by the region’s Amish and Mennonite communities. Rutt Cabinetry was born out of this heritage back in 1951 and it still operates that way today out of its production center in New Holland, PA. Though Rutt’s manufacturing process has taken on new technologies, its cabinets are characterized by timeless craftmanship, including the use of hand-selected lumbers and oven-cured finishes with a clear conversion varnish to protect against stains and scratches. Bottom line: Rutt cabinets are beautifully built to last.
Just ask Carolyn Forté, executive director of the Home Care & Cleaning Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute. When she redid her kitchen 30 years ago, Rutt was the only cabinet brand she considered, after she was lucky enough to visit the Pennsylvania factory and see the craftsmanship first-hand. “My kitchen is still as beautiful and functional as ever, even three decades later,” she says. “The cabinets don’t need to be replaced, but if I ever do another kitchen, I will definitely go with Rutt again.”
- Pros: Artisan-level craftsmanship, certified to Environmental Stewardship Program
To pull together their list of top cabinet brands, Good Housekeeping focused on manufacturers and millworkers with strong reputations for quality and reliability, based on the Good Housekeeping Institute experts’ many decades of home renovation product testing and reviews.
Fun fact: Way back in 1908, the GH Experiment Station, which evolved into today’s GH Institute, led the charge to set a comfortable 36-inch base cabinet-plus-countertop height, which is still the industry standard today.
For this review, Good Housekeeping assessed materials, methods of construction and available features, like internal organizers and integrated lighting. They also looked at customer service offerings, including number of showrooms and support services around design and installation. Finally, they considered warranties, since the extent to which a brand stands behind its product is always a good indication of its ability to hold up over the long haul.
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