No matter how fancy your cabinets, they won’t really be complete without accompanying knobs or pulls. You can’t just slap any old handle on them either – you need to think long and hard about which ones to use to enhance your own personal kitchen design.
You can’t go wrong with choosing hardware styles that fit in with your overall kitchen style. For raised panel kitchen cabinetry, that usually means similarly traditional and mostly ornate hardware that balance the hefty feel of the cabinets themselves.
Here’s a quick list of the best knobs and pulls for that traditional staple, raised panel cabinets.
- If ornate designs are your thing, knobs with decorative backplates will be your go-to cabinet hardware. They add a very strong decorative element to every cabinet and drawer you put them on, considerably upping your kitchen’s traditional, old world atmosphere.
- For a more simple and elegant approach, accented wire pulls are perfect. Since these pulls come in all kinds of designs, you can choose an accent that’s enough to make your kitchen not look too stuffy without going overboard.
- Bin pulls and knobs are among the simplest hardware designs that you can put on a cabinet or drawer door. As such, they work particularly well at toning down your raised panels’ ornate look – especially those with decorative cathedral arches.
- Drop pulls offer a similarly elegant touch as wire pulls, but with a more furniture-like feminine vibe. Also known as pendant pulls, these make excellent alternatives to knobs for drawers or cabinet doors open into tight spaces.
- Wood knobs are also great at adding a very old-fashioned feel to a kitchen. The wood-on-wood approach lends your cabinets and drawers the look of furniture in a way that even drop pulls can’t quite achieve.
- Raised panel cabinets are most often used in designs rooted in the traditional style, but don’t let that limit your choice of pulls and knobs. Industrial-style face-mounted pulls can be used to create a sense of tension in the design. Mix them with more traditional pulls or knobs to enhance the contrast.
Replacing your old cabinet hardware or installing new ones on newly-bought raised panel doors is an easy enough DIY job for the weekend. Before you put on your tool belt, though, read these installation tips first.
- Cabinet templates are your friends. These templates ensure that all of your measurements are uniform and act as guides for drill placement. You can mark drill holes with a tape measure and a pencil too, but it’s easy to miss these especially if you’re tired. Templates already have holes in them that you can use to mark the perfect spot. You can even drill into plastic templates if the original placement of the guide hole isn’t to your taste. You can get cabinet templates at most home improvement and hardware stores.
- Knobs and pulls should be placed at a comfortable height that provides the best leverage when opening the cabinet door. Placing knobs in an area somewhere between 2 1/2” to 3” from the lower corner of the cabinet door (opposite the hinges, of course) is a good place to start. Take care not to put them in a corner where mitered joints meet, though.
- Knobs that measure between 1” and 1 ½” in diameter are most recommended for cabinet doors. For drawers, you can use knobs of the same size or larger. Wood knobs are a bit of an exception; they can be slightly larger since they have less visual weight compared to metal.
- For drawers wider than 24”, consider using two knobs or pulls with each located roughly 1/6th of the drawer length from the ends.