Blog

Kitchen Cabinet Hardware – Choose Right One

There are no doubt some important choices to make when choosing new kitchen cabinets, including the style, color and more. These decisions take time, planning, and money. Afterwards, you may feel like the hard part is done and the most important decisions have been made. Well, there are still more questions to tackle in your planning process. We’re talking about kitchen cabinet hardware. You know–the knobs and pulls on cabinet doors and drawers. It’s not as simple as choosing between the two, especially when each comes in never-ending different shapes, sizes, styles, colors, and materials. Don’t sweat it! Here’s how to choose the right kitchen cabinet hardware:

Knob Or Pull?

The first question you need to ask is “To use knobs or pulls?” Knobs are usually smaller and cheaper than pulls, but harder to use than pulls. A common choice is knobs on cabinets and pulls on drawers.

Choose A Style-Fitting Style

As one of the smallest design choices you have to make in your kitchen, it’s pretty impressive the number of different styles that exist within kitchen cabinet hardware. For knobs, you can choose from styles including hive, fairview crystal, knurled, radcliffe, dish, mid century, ruth, summit, and more. For pulls, your style choices include pacific, card file, midvale, talbot, edgecliff, alberta, ledge, and more. Whatever your choices, your knob style should complement your pull style, and both should complement your cabinet style and overall look of your space.

Visual Interest: Shape, Color, Detail

Both knobs and pulls offer their own set of shapes, sizes, and customizable design details, and with the freedom to choose all knobs, all pulls, or a mix of both across your cabinet doors and drawers, there are endless ways to generate visual interest in your hardware. We only suggest not mixing both knobs and pulls separately within door and drawer hardware. Otherwise, all you need to do is mix and match until you’ve achieved your vision.

Form Follows Function?

The early-20th century design principle that the shape of an object should relate to its intended function or purpose is useful when choosing kitchen cabinet hardware. Whether you’re going with knobs, pulls, or a mix of both, it would help to think about whether the hardware is for a drawer or door, what shapes make the hardware most accessible, and where the hardware is placed based so that it fulfills its purpose.

Pick The Right Finish

It’s no coincidence that you’re not finished with the process of choosing the right kitchen cabinet hardware until you’ve chosen the right finish for your hardware. Finishes can add contrast, alter the tone of other colors and aspects of a kitchen, and be the cherry on top of your overall design style. For example, brass finishes complement warmer tones while matte black finishes work well with darker tones and industrial looking appliances.