Rail and Stile Orientation

Do the outer stiles on a cabinet always go full height or can they sit on the rails like the inner stiles?

This is for a stand alone TV cabinet, not kitchen cabs.

What is the reason for the outer stile to go full height? Aesthetics or structural?

oh absolutely - it's entirely design specific. i change it up all the time depending on what i'm making. typically the outside stiles run long, especially if they meet a corner at a miter, and the top is covered by something. but, that's not a hard and fast rule, it depends on the piece...

-- dz

Aesthetics with the caveat that the construction must also be supportive of the job and load it might carry. There's no "wrong" way, IMHO. I think that you'll find it to be more common that stiles tend to be full height and in some cases, they are also the "legs" of a construction which transfer the weight of the case/cabinet to the ground.

Go with whatever you like and gets the job done.
One advantage with long stiles is they can make end grain less visible if it bothers you. We usually can't see both top and bottom of a cabinet door at the same time.

In addition to the above & in my mind only - - it's easier having them go full length.
It's more natural that way. I don't have to think about it.

When I'm making the same thing, over and over, the repetitive work puts my brain to sleep and i go on auto pilot sort of.
The natural order of things, in my mind, is that rails run between stiles and stiles run full length top to bottom.

Change that and I'll mess up a bunch of them before it kicks in.

It's probably some kind of OCD thing.

I always go with outer stiles at full length and inner stiles go between the rails. I do it so I don't see end grain on the sides. As mentioned, it probably doesn't matter.

I believe it was James Krenov who would run his rails full length and in the case of a pair of doors, the rails came out of one length so that the grain ran continuously from one door to the next.