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Home Decorating

Dress up my cabinets - pulls: knobs or pulls, mixture?

11 years ago

I have very plain cabinets - slab doors with routed edge. I'm painting them next weekend and wanted to add some hardware. Currently they have hidden routed finger pulls in the edge which is horrible - especially for painted cabinets - the paint is scratched and chipping where fingers hit it and they get dirty.

I have a total of 10 drawers and 20 cabinets. I want to dress them up a bit, but I think all pulls would probably looks too busy. I like pulls on drawers because they are easier to use than knobs. But that leaves knobs for cabinets, with a bigger empty flat space with only a little knob.

Any suggestions?

Featured Answer

DLM2000-GW

11 years ago

From our experience, I will never use knobs on lower cabinets or drawers ever again!!! MY DH is FOREVER catching his cargo shorts pockets on them. Now maybe he's just weird, but as he turns away from the counter after doing something, he invariably catches a pocket - the slanted front pockets on the drawer pulls and the side cargo pockets on the door pulls. It's only because our knobs are wood and doweled and glued in place that they haven't been ripped out. Look for pulls that don't have extended edges.

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Comments (7)

Annie Deighnaugh
11 years ago
We used a mix of pulls and knobs....generally pulls on drawers and knobs on doors, but on the little glass uppers we used knobs and on the desk drawer we knobs....it all depended on what we thought looked best.
localeater
11 years ago
I have slab front doors and drawers and I used pulls on both.
From GW Photos
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You know, not knowing what to put where was probably part of it for me, too. I've seen kitchens with knobs on the uppers and pulls on the lowers. Or pulls on the uppers and knobs on the lowers. Or knobs on doors and pulls on drawers. Or vice versa. And then what do you do with the dishwasher panel (if your dishwasher is paneled, or if a woodchuck is planning to chuck wood on it). I decided to get nice big handles that wouldn't cramp my fingers and put them on everything. They were heavy-duty enough for the dishwasher panel, and I only needed one of them on the 30" drawers (instead of two knobs). But I've seen some combinations of knobs and pulls here that I've loved, so it's really just another one of those endless decisions - which cabinets, which finish, what height uppers, what countertop, what backsplash tile, etc. I tried to make a list of all the decisions I had to make over the course of this renovation. I gave up after my third glass of wine. ;-) Whatever you decide to do will be correct. :-)
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I am also doing panels for myt refrigerator, dishwasher. I went with a mixture of polished nickel and glass knobs. I did amerock bin pulls and the matching appliance pulls for dishwasher and refrig. I did glass knobs on my glass front cabs and ice box latches on my lower doors and doors above refrig. I think the important thing is for the finish to match. I ordered samples of several knobs, pulls and latches that I liked and then looked at them together to see which looked the most cohesive. Some finishes just don't match even though technically the same. Some of the polished nickel was darker than others. I think you can mix and match but check to see the tones are the same first. Hope that helps
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We used knobs on the doors (upper and lower) and pulls on the drawers. We have a lot of cabinets and the hardware we wanted to use wasn't cheap, so all pulls would have been a little pricey. We used 4" pulls on most of the drawers. I didn't like the feel of the narrower pulls. We used two 6" pulls on our wide large drawers because I liked the way it looked, but one would probably have worked fine. We used a pull on the trash pullout and on the two tall skinny cabinet doors beside the refrigerator. We have a more traditional kitchen, so the variety looks OK. With a more modern style, you might want to keep things more consistent. Be sure you also check out the projection (height) to be sure your hand fits comfortably in them. Some are very flat. The knobs we picked have a flared bottom to them, where the knob touches the cabinet, so when you grab them, your fingers go in the groove and don't touch the wood of the cabinet. I've seen some older kitchens where the cabinet finish has worn from too much contact with fingers around the knobs. I would imagine you might get similar wear if your pulls were close to the surface they are mounted on. Like on of the other posters, I had a pull picked out, but decided not to use it after I actually had it in my hands and found it didn't have the desired hand clearance. I loved the knobs though, so ended up using a different pull with the same finish from the same manufacturer. The bottom line is that the hardware has to function for you.
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Olychick
11 years ago
I think pulls on all is a good way to go. I found these pics before localeater posted her beautiful cabinets:

This post was edited by olychick on Wed, Feb 20, 13 at 14:18
busybee3
11 years ago
i like a combination of knobs and pulls... in our kitchen i have knobs on all the drawers and pulls on the cabinet doors because there were all knobs originally and when i went to change them, i could drill additional holes in the cabinet doors, but not the drawers since the hole was already centered on the drawers. (we have not had problems with clothing catching on the knobs... but we're all on the taller side in my family)

in our master bathroom, i put pulls on the drawers and knobs on the cabinets... i like the way it looks that way AND i have alot more drawers than doors and the knobs i chose were pricey, so it was the more economical decision!!
hosenemesis
11 years ago
Depends on the pulls. What style are you going for in your kitchen? The pulls can make or break a kitchen. My sister-in-law went with very safe-looking pseudo-traditional brushed nickel pull and her kitchen is boring- neither here nor there.
Tmnca
Original Author
11 years ago
I haven't chosen any of the hardware yet, so I am open to suggestions. But these are pretty cheapo 1980's cabinets, not as nice as any posted here :) The first picture posted is very nice, but those shaker cabinets have more to them than ours.

I don't want a very modern look, I like it in other people's kitchens but it's not what fits in my house.

Here's the kitchen shortly after we moved in - the paint job the PO did on the cabinets is horrible and needs to be stripped and re-done. The countertops are now concrete, the dishwasher is a new white one, and I'm putting in white subway tile backsplash... so lots of white I love a bright kitchen.

Our home is decorated in traditional-transitional style.

{{!gwi}}

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