Love them! Now that i have them, I would always want them!

I LOVE soft close, both on drawers and doors!!!! I think it will protect my lovely new cabinets!

Well I'm sticking with my own cabinets, so I can't comment on actually living with them. However, my mother, just redid her kitchen with soft close and I hate them! I think I could live with them on cabinets (though I don't see a real need), but I really hate having to tug the drawers open. Even if it's just a small tug, it's an annoyance I wouldn't want to live with. I also wonder if it will become problematic as they age. Mom is satisfied with the overall kitchen, but she was surprised the drawers aren't easier to open. The only bonus is that it means my 2 year old nephew has a harder time getting into things!

We have soft close on the drawers only. While I don't mind them, if they weren't there I don't think I'd miss them.
On the other hand, I think I'd like them better on the cabinet doors.
Also, we have them on a roll-out and it's a PITA having to wait for the roll-out to retract before I can close the cabinet door.

Love having them!

Mine were just installed in my new build...and I think they are lovely!! I have been playing with the cabinets doors and drawers because I just think it seems like such a cool thing. It gives the cabs an air of "quiet quality" lol!! Mostly, I am glad I don't have to worry about my children ever banging the doors shut! :)

we have the IKEA versions on our entire mudroom and they are great! I don't find myself "tugging" at them at all. And im sure our nearest 2 yo could open them.
I really like that the room always look put together, since my kids are not so great at closing doors etc after themselves.

Im looking forward to having them on the new kitchen, hopefully they aren't the super industrial kind that others have.

My cabinets also only have soft close on drawers and the pantry rollouts. I think it took me about 2 seconds to get used to them. I really don't notice any issues with opening or closing the drawers, just that I give them a shove and they close easily. Now I'm wondering if I can add that to my inset doors.

I have them on our drawers and love them. We recently picked up the cabs ones, but they are not installed yet. Our drawers open easily and close oh so nicely. I hope they work the same magic for our cabs. I can't imagine not having them with 2 rough boys in the house. I love how our drawers glide on air.... Ours are IKEA if that makes any difference.

I like them a lot, but wouldn't call them a "must-have." What *is* a must-have for me is the full-extension drawer slides---which happened to come with soft-close, so that's what we got. I've never had a problem opening the drawers, but do sometimes have to give them an extra bump to get them to close all the way. (Caveat there is that I've never had drawers with regular slides *without* soft-close, so I don't know how good or bad those are, or if they slam, or if they aren't as smooth---our old drawers were old-school with wooden glides.)

Have full extension, but didn't go the soft close route. Mine close softly and easily enough with just a slight nudge.

I love them because I can just bump the drawers and they close themselves. :)

The big tug thing goes away. My least used drawers have that a little. I think it can also be adjusted if it's too tight for you.

Just met with the cabinet contractor last week. We noticed that without the soft close drawer you got a lesser quality extension glide. When you opened & subsequently closed the drawers without the soft close option they looked (from the side), felt and sounded "cheap"/low quality. I'm sure that varies manufacturer to manufacturer, though. We're going with painted & glazed cabinets--when we opted for the glaze the soft close drawers came standard--don't ask me why.

The soft close for the cabinet doors is a nice feature but it is something that can be added after install very easily & inexpensively. Our cabinet guy recommended living in the house for a while and then figuring out which cabinets we needed/wanted soft close on and which ones we didn't. I think he said the devices cost around $2.50 each. If I had any cabinets with glass in the door, I'd definitely have the soft close on them.

Just my $0.02.

I think soft close drawers are utterly creepy. Unfortunately some of the best full extension glides seem to come with it. I worry that when I get around to choosing drawer hardware may become a big issue. Does anyone know if it can be disabled if I'm stuck with it?

L

Love it on my drawers and wish I had it on my cabinets doors!

I got it on my drawers (blum) and love it. I recently found out that Ikea sells the blum cabinet hinge add-ons to make them soft-close. They are blum parts and just snap right into the normal blum frameless style hinges. I outfitted all my cabinets with these for about $30 and I love it!!!

I've got them on my pantry drawers and feel so-so about them. Guests like to play with them, but they're certainly not a must-have. I can see disliking them on roll-outs where you'd have to wait to shut the cupboard door after them.

Wouldn't mind having them on cupboard doors, because of the bang, but I believe soft-close is only available on invisible Euro-style cupboard door hinges, which I find bulky and hideous. Ah well.

I have them on my drawers, my roll out tray shelves (ROTS), my trash pullout, and all my cabinet doors except my corner sink base. While I really, really like them on the drawers, the doors, and the trash pullout, I'm not happy with them on my ROTS. I do wish they were on my 6" pullouts flanking my cooktop.

Are they a "must have"? No, they're not a "must", but they are/were, to me, a high-priority "nice to have". The only "must" concerning drawers, ROTS, and pullouts is full-extension. Not only does it allow you easy access to everything in those items, but I no longer get scraped knuckles every time I go for the items in the back!

As to the ROTS...I don't like them b/c not only do you have to wait for the ROTS to close b/f you can close the door (even with soft-close cabinet doors), but if you don't wait long enough and close the doors anyway, the inside of your doors get dinged. I speak from experience! :-)

Unfortunately, my 6" pullouts are neither soft-close nor full-extension And the shelves are also fixed (i.e., not adjustable). If I had known that ahead of time, I would have spoken up. Unfortunately, I did not. I assumed they would be like all the other drawers (hmph!)

Luckily, I didn't have to choose, both full-extension & soft-close come standard on all Omega drawers, ROTS, & trash pullouts...both the Dynasty/Embassy semi-custom as well as the Omega Custom...and they're Blumotion...one of the higher-end brands and the ones IKEA uses.

What was not standard, was soft-close doors. My KD wanted $50 per door for soft-close. Instead, we bought them for around $3 per door and installed them ourselves....it took my DH less than an hour to install all 18 (16 in the kitchen, 2 in the Powder Room). The only reason we don't have one on the corner sink base is that we didn't have spacers. When I ordered the dampers, I forgot the corner sink base is partial-overlay (all other cabinets are full-overlay) and partial-overlay doors need spacers. [If IKEA has them now, I think I'll check out IKEA and see if I can get the spacers there w/o having to pay for shipping.]

BTW...the reason my corner sink base is partial-overlay and not full is that it eliminated the need for filler on the one side and minimized the filler on the MW drawer side. The MW drawer sticks out farther than the drawers and/or doors of my cabinets and with the sink base cab door hinge on that side, a bit of filler was needed to allow the cabinet door to open fully w/o hitting the MW drawer. I mention this b/c I seem to recall a recent thread or two asking about filler & corner sink bases with full-overlay.

I agree with beuhl, I really like having them, but if budget was tight and something had to go, they aren't a must have. (But my husband might feel they are a must have.) Soft close doors and drawers was standard on our DeWils cabinets so we didn't have to choose.

Ours are Blum and our grandson and granddaughter didn't have any trouble opening them as 2 year olds or as 1 year olds either.

I think they are a cool luxury, but not a must have . We have Blum on all lowers and uppers. We like them a lot, definitely adds a 'high end' feel.

We really love the soft close Blumotion, would not stint on drawer slides if you can help it.
lynn

Initially I found them difficult to get used to but I'm glad we have them because they just seem to add to the overall quality of the kitchen. I don't know if that makes sense or not. However when we go to friends homes that don't have them I tend to be inadvertently slamming doors.

We worked with an indepedent cabinet maker that had to by all the soft close at retail price (he doesn't do a big volume) so cost was a factor and we only put soft-close in the top drawers for utensils and such. They are nice, particularly for the oft used and shoved shut main and large utensile drawers but otherwise I don't miss them on the other drawers and glad I didn't spend the extra money. Ditto for the cabinets which have regular hinges and I have no problems with no soft close. I think it may be how you use your cabinetry. We don't seem to slam much so I don't miss them, but do think they are valuable on my utensile drawer which I am most likely to 'slam.'

Eh. Don't care either way. Might make a difference if I was storing glasses and dishes in them though!

Love them. Don't think about them at all but that is a good thing. Used to be pulling open a drawer was like pulling a square peg through a circle opening. And the cabinet doors would slam shut. Not anymore.

Buehl, You can find the spacers alone on Amazon and other sites!

We are currently finishing the installation in our kitchen; it's been a long 4 months. We have the soft-close on the drawers and are now putting in the soft-close on the doors. I wanted both, but SO was unsure about the soft-close on the drawers. At first he didn't like it. He said he didn't like how the drawers "fought against" him when he tried to close them. Now he's used to it. It's just a matter of coming to terms with the fact that you don't have to "push" it closed. It really just needs a nudge and it will do the rest on its own. The soft-close on the doors was a must-have for both of us because we did not want loud banging every time we closed a cabinet door.

Love ours, no more slamming drawers, half closed drawers or drawers that bounce back open if pushed too hard. We did the drawers only and will get the Ikea ones for the cabinet doors at some point.

We also only did the kitchen to save on money as doing the whole house was pricey and the rest of the drawers don't get much use.

My cabinetmaker recommended having them on the cabinet doors but not drawers because he said they tend to break or cause problems after awhile. I didn't spec them on the drawers based on that but after reading this thread, I'm rethinking it, especially for much-used utensil drawers and the ones I'll be storing dishes and platters in.

For the utterly unhandy among us, what is involved in changing them to the Ikea/Blum ones? Do you replace the whole hinge, or is it something that attaches to the existing hinge? My drawers will be frameless full-extension.

i cannot comment on most of the brands of socalled softclose in operation in everyday kitchens.

there may be differences.

i have shallow drawers. I like letting them close themselves. They are Ikea drawers, which are Blum Metabox ("M height").

i have deep drawers. I like letting them close themselves. They are Ikea drawers, which are Blum Metabox ("M height" with bars or rods). They have lots of weighty things in them. Some of the drawers are Blum Metabox with box sides, and i like letting them close themselves too.

i like pushing open drawers with a hip nudge or a small shove like the kind of shove you give to someone in a rowboat or a canoe who wants to get a few feet away before dipping the oars or paddle.

Without the softclose, the drawers would bang shut. Stuff would slide backwards. Stacked plates would move around.

Shove once / leave it alone / let it seat itself.

Obviously there are many different types of soft-closing drawer slides. The cabinet maker bought ours at Knape & Vogt. The slides are attached to the side. Drawers open without any effort and close with a gentle nudge. No banging, no content shifting.

I have them on both drawers and doors; they came standard with my cabinets (Ikea). Love them on the drawers - would never go back :)

With the doors however, I found that a soft-close damper for each hinge was too much. The dampers worked a little too well and often didn't close completely without a really hefty push, so I ended up only using one per door and they work just fine now.

I have soft-close drawers and cabinet doors in my master bathroom. I absolutely love them. I get so used to pushing the cabinet door shut when I leave the room that I do the same thing in my kitchen that does NOT have the soft-close, and let me tell ya, I prefer the non-slamming doors. As for drawers, never noticed or cared about the extra tug to open them. I'm not that weak. I am however forever slamming things in my hurry to move on, so for me, the soft close is wonderful. A must have? Nah. Just a nice luxury that's used daily.

I'm planning on using soft close on both drawers and cabs because DH tends to slam--not necessarily intentionally. I can hear the cab doors from upstairs. Tired of it, so I'm looking forward to soft close.

Retrofitting soft-close drawers is problematical b/c you have to replace the existing drawer glides with soft-close glides. That means you have to carefully measure b/f installing them to be sure they are aligned properly for the particular glides you're using as well as to be sure they're "level"...both individually and to each other.

Retrofitting soft-close doors, OTOH, is pretty easy...just install the damper with one screw & you're done! Here's a pic of the dampers on our cabinets for the doors:

Closeup:

Thanks, buehl. Retrofitting the drawers sounds like something I would make a royal mess of, so I'd better spec them now! I was just over at my neighbor's and noticed that she has them on her drawers and she loves them too.

I love the soft close. We have all drawers in the lower base cabinets, both deep and shallow, so having the soft close makes life much easier. When quickly grabbing a dish or pan you can just give the drawer a shove with your leg or hip and it almost closes itself. No slamming, no noise. And you really won't notice the little resistance when you first open the drawer. You'll get used to that very quickly and forget about it. I'm never going back to plain drawers without soft close.

My problem is with the soft close in the few upper cabinet doors we have. They are tempermental...some work better than others, and they really are dependant on proper installation. I still have one door that slams a little as the soft close piston just can't grab it soon enough, no matter where I place it.

Soft close drawers were a must for me. Our old drawers and doors from 1988 slammed mercilessly and our reno involved removing walls to open the kitchen to the living/dining area. The last thing I wanted was any more noise emanating from the kitchen into the more open space. Our cabinets happened to come with a free upgrade to soft close doors at the time we ordered, or else we would have gone "after market" with those since they can be had much more inexpensively and installed very easily as others have noted on this thread. Another good point others have mentioned is they are probably essential when storing dishes or glassware in drawers.

So my answer is, yes, I love them on both doors and drawers. Could I live without the...sure. But I could have "lived" without remodeling my kitchen too. LOL

I haven't had the doors, but the drawers are a requirement to me. It makes things really nice. I find now that I'm living with my parent's during the remodel of my new house, that I'm slamming drawers, or leaving them slightly open.

I can live without a lot of things including a new kitchen. or the extra bathroom we're adding.... but i wouldn't cut the soft close drawers.

things I would cut if I had to to save the soft close drawers:
glaze on the cabinets
the built up crown on the cabints
the pot filler
I'd go with chrome for the faucet and potfiller
I'd probably downgrade one or two of my appliances

the doors? I dunno, it could be nice, but I I haven't lived with it so its not a gotta have, I don't know what I'm missing.

We have both and I wouldn't do the cabinets again. We have inset and the soft close mechanism just takes away even more real estate inside the cabinet. Also, they get out of sync fairly often and you have to go back and adjust them with a screwdriver. I do like the softclose drawers....