Our new Reeded and Slatted Panels are the return of texture, dimension, shadow, and a little drama, cut to your space.
Run your hand along a picket fence, a corduroy sleeve, the spines of a full bookshelf. Odds are you already did without intending to. Some surfaces simply ask to be touched. We’ve spent too long deprived of tactile surfaces and were surrounded by flat cabinets, flat counters, flat walls, and various kinds of flat screens.
That era is winding down. Texture and dimension are having a moment in kitchen design, and everyone’s reaching for sensory surfaces. Woodgrain’s 2026 trends roundup puts fluted and reeded millwork near the top of the list, saying it can “add quiet drama to minimalist environments.”
Fabuwood Creative Director Kerrie Kelly dives into the trend in her latest Instagram segment, and it’s a better ninety seconds than whatever you were about to scroll into. Watch it →
Meet our new Reeded and Slatted Panels Long, linear, dimensional millwork designed to go anywhere a flat surface has been quietly boring you.
Inspired by the ancients, the Renaissance and Neoclassical periods designed reeding into their architecture and carried it onto their furniture, all of it tracing back to the flutes first carved into Doric and Ionic columns, which caught the Mediterranean sun and gave all that marble a vertical lift. The Jazz Age understood it too: Art Deco poured reeding onto everything from elevator doors to cocktail cabinets, because nothing announces arrival quite like a wall that plays with light.
Reeded, Not Fluted (Yes, There’s a Difference)
Reeded, beaded, slatted, fluted… these labels get tossed around a lot in the world of design. “Fluted” has become a catch-all, but the truth is there are many varieties of panel design. Here’s how to tell the grooves apart:
Fluted — grooves carved into the surface. Think of the channels running down a Greek column. The lines dip in.
Reeded — rounded (or beaded) ridges that stand out from the surface, like a row of gentle half-pipes aligned side by side. The reeded wood panels lines bulge out.
Slatted — Wider boards with deeper gaps between them. Bold and spaced-out. With the right backing they become acoustic slat wood panels, the gaps quietly taming echo in an open-plan room
V-Grooved — a narrow “V” carved into a single panel, creating the illusion of separate panels stacked together.[NM3]
Anywhere You’re Tired of Flat
Built for range, here are a few of the spaces they earn their keep:
Wrap an island and watch it become the sculpture at the center of the kitchen.
Line a wet bar or coffee bar for instant architecture in a small footprint.
Run them vertically for height and grandeur, or horizontal for a calm, wide feel.
Clad a feature wall with dimension, panels installed to size along the whole run.
Leave no edge unfinished with matching end caps, so the piece reads as resolved from every angle.
Constructed from solid wood, these interlocking panels are available in a range of finishes including those that match the tones already living in your kitchen. (They look especially right beside our latest finish Natural Oak, warm, honeyed wood.)
We spend our days sliding a finger across flat glass. Maybe that's exactly why a ridged wall feels so good, it gives the eye something to climb and the hand something to find.
Reeded and Slatted Panels come in a range of sizes, finishes, and colors, cut to your space and finished edge to edge, built for bespoke kitchens and easy to fold into your kitchen planning from the very first sketch. Tell us where the flat is. We'll add the lines.
→ Ask your local Fabuwood dealer about reeded panels.
