We deleted the soft close feature from our drawers due to cost. However we do have the full extension glides and they are worth the money!!

Yes, they really make a difference, especially in the kitchen. The kitchen is the one place where there's a high probability of slamming drawers & doors, and the soft close prevents that. We planned to put dishes in our lower drawers, and with the soft close and Cushy Cupboard liner, we don't need dividers or inserts to hold them in place. Those inserts aren't cheap, either, and I'd rather have the soft close. It's one feature we really love.

One thing we discovered (from this forum!) is that you can have soft close on cabinet doors as well as drawers, only our cabinetmaker didn't know about them to include them. Since we did get Blum hinges, we were able to add the soft close mechanism ourselves, & they just snap on top of the Blum hinge. We ordered them online & probably for much less than from the cabinetmaker! You can add cabinet soft close that must be screwed on if you have non-Blum but European-style hinges.

However, I believe that soft close for drawers must be installed up front & can't be added later.

We have 8 kids and I just don't see slamming as that much of an issue, even in our house, so, like vwhippiechick, we opted to have full-extension without the soft close. It meant $8/drawer instead of $22/drawer. I would NOT have a kitchen without the full-extension, though. I had it before, but then haven't had it in our temporary quarters while we've been building for the last 2 years. Pure aggravation.

Certainly not a big deal if it's a budget buster, but nice to have.

You could also just use them on the upper drawers, which you'll tend to use more than the lower ones.

I've noticed that with self-but-not-soft close, things tend to migrate towards the back of the drawer a fraction of an inch ever time the drawer closes. This happens in my current kitchen, even with the soft rubber mats.

As long as you have Blum full-extension glides, soft close can be added later very easily. My cabs came with the wrong glides. Two screws removes the glide. Put the new one on. About a minute per drawer is all it took.

I have full extension on mine and soft close came free with them. I'd have preferred without the soft close actually - I'm finding them pretty annoying. But the full extension I can tell already I'm going to LOVE.

Full extension is definitely a necessity (I have drawers without in my current kitchen and they drive me crazy); soft close is optional, in my opinion. Good luck.

I'm so interested in the responses to your question. I am just having someone come out to tweak my cabinets to line up and work more efficiently. The guy that came out said that he puts in regular Blum slides. I've read before what aliceinwonderland id said before about adding the Blumotion later if you want to. I've read and read and want to make sure that I choose the ones that will allow me to do that.

I have 18" slides that sit on the side and around the bottom now. What model would I need to get full extension with the opportunity to add Blumotion in the future.

Rosiq, I don't want to highjack your thread, but maybe the answers will help you too!

Try out the different drawer options to see for yourself. There are all kinds of quality differences. Some good quality full-extension will close so nicely that you won't need soft-close. I just got back from the shop that made my table and chairs and was looking at an armoir- I had to check a couple of times before I realized that the glides weren't soft-close. Just really good quality full-extension.

I definitely think full-extension is a must. I will never have any kind of drawer made that isn't. Soft-close/self-close is definitely one of those judgement calls where you have to weigh how much it's worth to you. If as someone else posted, it cost 4x as much, not sure I'd be going for it.

Thanks for all those great answers. Now I have another question. My cabinets will be Kraftmaid.
Does anyone know if they are Blum slides or what are they?

yep- we have Kraftmaid and I checked the slides - BLUM.

I'll echo what everyone else has said that the full extension is imperative - but I am not sad that we didn't go with soft-close on everything (would have added 10% to the price of the cabs)

Good luck!

Full extension is a must on some drawers, the soft close is really nice on my pullout and my pot drawers...keeps everything in place and saves wear and tear on the face frame of the cabinet where the *really* heavy drawers might damage them over time.

I am doing a new construction house and opted for full-extension sliders in my kitchen cabinets, which are custom made. I just found out that this will add extra to the paint costs because the painters have to tape off the sliders (on the drawer and inside the cabinet) to be sure they don't get paint or stain on them. Apparently the full-extension sliders will not work properly if they have any paint or stain residue on them. I do not regret upgrading to full-extension; however, I wish I had known before that this would add to my paint labor expenses. It's always nice to know these things ahead of time.

try_hard

We are going with a mix - full extension and soft close on the big, major drawers. Regular slides with no soft close on small 15" or less drawers. To us, full extension made no sense on a 12" drawer. However, full ext. and soft close on a 30" pots and pans drawer sure did. Mix and match based on your own needs and situation

okay, don't laugh, but how do i know if i have "soft close". mine are full extension and definitely don't slam; you have to kind of push them that last inch to lock in fully closed. at first i though something was wrong with a drawer slide til i found all drawers work the same. so, do i have an upgrade i don't know about? :)

Oh, and to add to my previous comment, we did look at getting the soft-close full extension but didn't think they were worth the extra cost. DH and I don't slam drawers so we didn't think it would benefit us. But the full-extensions were a requirement for me.
Try_hard

Glad, yours are an upgrade. I think it would be considered an earlier incarnation of soft-close, since it is supposed to prevent slamming. But now the soft-close close themselves.

It would, personally, drive me crazy to have different drawers with different slides. I don't want to have to think about which I have in which place, because they take a different 'touch' to operate. And, once I can open some all the way, I sure don't want to have to fight with some where the back quarter of the drawer's contents are hidden from view. The smaller ones, in particular, tend to have smaller items that get back there. I would be yanking my elbow out, expecting the drawer to come out, full-extension, and it would stop. But I know that's just my viewpoint.

Our last renovation was a major one that also included all the bathrooms, the bedroom closets and the family room. We tried to keep the cost under control by choosing the extra options according to need. The bathrooms got the cheapest drawers, not even full-extension. I don't miss a soft-close there but it aggravates me not to have the full-extension. The new closets got full-extension drawers but no soft-close. And for that purpose it's just perfect. In the kitchen all of our 20 drawers have the full-extension soft-close mechanism. And I do not regret the extra cost there. Expecially the wider and deeper drawers can be quite heavy once filled and the soft-close definitely helps there.

I agree get the full extention but I hate the one drawer with the soft close - I did it on the silverware drawer due to price and I'm not impressed as it takes to long to close.

thx, rhome - i guess it beats having doors that slam; i'm sure i'll get used to the the proper touch needed. of course, i'll have to line and fill the drawers first. :)

My drawers came with soft-close standard and I love them. I don't care if they don't close quickly--it's not like I need to stand over them to watch them close--but it's so great that they close noiselessly and without jarring the dish ware inside them. I loved them so much that, like Gizmonike, I installed those soft close snap-on hinges on my cabinets too. The only ones I don't have them on are the corner cabs (I'd have to install screw-on ones) and it's so startling now when I accidentally shove them closed with the same strength I shove the other cabinet doors.

call me "totally stupid" but how can you tell if you have full extension? I'm wondering if I have a mix here.

In terms of terms, since a couple people have asked:

With a full extension drawer, the end of the drawer will line up [or come very close to lining up] with the frame of the cab. With Scherrs, you have your choice between full extension and 7/8ths extension.

With self close, when you give a fully open drawer a little bump, it will do the rest by itself. They actually speed up a bit in the last couple of inches. When you first get them, they seem like 'self slam' drawers...

With soft close, they slow down in the last couple of inches and just ease into place. The only time you'll notice it at all is when you are looking for some thing in the drawer below, and it certainly isn't a big deal even then, and even for the monumentally impatient [like me].

My IKEA kitchen came with full-extension Blum rails for the drawers. You can buy a set of rails with the dampers for $19.99 or just the dampers for $6.99/pr. Is there anyway you could use these rails or attach the dampers after the fact?

IKEA now also offers soft close dampers for the hinges, except for the corner cab hinge. We really love these features.

Here is a link that might be useful: IKEA's blum hardware for drawers

We are going with 30" deep lowers and would like to have full extension slides with soft-close on the drawers. Do they make full extension slides that go deeper than 24"?