Cabinet Knobs or Pulls – Choose Them Wisely

There are many decisions to make when buying new cabinets or refurbishing old ones. In addition to choosing how much storage space you need, you also need to choose wood colors and styles. And don’t forget about one of the hardest decisions some people have to make, whether it’s having cabinet knobs or pulls on those cabinet doors.

This is really the first part of a long list of decisions on 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 shopping for ready-made cabinets with hardware pre-installed, chances are you’re getting cabinet knobs as part of that deal. Cabinet knobs are those rounded pieces that you pull to open a door. They are usually fixed with a single screw or bolt.

Cabinet handles, on the other hand, are usually C-shaped bars where the two edges of the ‘C’ meet the cabinet. To use them, slide your hand, or at least a few fingers, into the ‘C’ and use that lever to open the door. Rather than using just one hole in the doors, these use two screws and take up more space on the front of your cabinet door.

Just knowing what they are may not be enough to help you decide between knobs and cabinet doors, so let’s look at some of the pros and cons of them.

If you are doing this project yourself and you have doors without pre-drilled places for knobs or cabinet pulls, you really have a clean canvas to work with. But you should also keep in mind that you need 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 may be drawn to the cabinet knobs as they only require one hole each.

If there are elderly people in the home, or people with arthritis or other hand motor weaknesses, 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 motor skills in the fingers. Cabinet pulls, on the other hand, are much more convenient, as 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 will likely end up choosing cabinet knobs, as there are far more decorative cabinet knobs on the market than pulls. The handles are not that easy to disguise, while the handles can be created in various shapes, sizes, and even decorated with pictures to match your décor.