There are so many decisions to make when buying new cabinets or refinishing old ones. In addition to choosing the amount of storage space you need, you also need to choose the colors and styles of wood. And don’t forget about one of the toughest decisions some people have to make, whether it’s having knobs or pulls on cabinet doors.
This is really the first part of a long list of decisions in your cabinet hardware. Cabinet knobs and pulls generally do the same thing, but depending on how you want them to open, one may work better than the other.
Cabinet knobs are pretty traditional when it comes to your cabinet doors. If you’re buying off-the-shelf cabinets with pre-installed hardware, chances are you’ll get cabinet knobs as part of that deal. Cabinet knobs are those rounded pieces that you pull to open a door. They are usually attached with a single screw or bolt.
Cabinet pulls, on the other hand, are usually C-shaped bars where the two edges of the ‘C’ meet the cabinet. To use them, he would slide his hand, or at least a few fingers, into the ‘C’ and use that lever to open the door. Instead of using just one hole in the doors, these use two screws and take up more space on the front of the cabinet door.
Just knowing what they are may not be enough to help you decide between cabinet and door knobs, so let’s look at some pros and cons of them.
If you’re doing this project yourself and have doors without pre-drilled spots for cabinet knobs or pulls, you really have a clean canvas to work with. But you also have to keep in mind that you have to drill all the necessary holes for the cabinet hardware. If you have a lot of cabinets, that means marking and drilling a lot of holes. In this case, you might be drawn to cabinet knobs, since they only require one hole each.
If there are elderly people in the home, or people with arthritis or other motor weaknesses in their hands, cabinet knobs can be a painful proposition. Using cabinet knobs requires curling your fingers around the knobs to open them. This is not always easy with limited finger motor skills. Cabinet pulls, on the other hand, are much more convenient, since you can slide a few fingers or a hand on the pull and use your entire arm to open the door.
If appearance is more important to you, you’ll likely end up choosing cabinet knobs, as there are many more decorative cabinet knobs on the market than pulls. Handles are not that easy to dress up, while knobs can be created in various shapes, sizes, and even decorated with images to match your decor.
