MyHoustonDecor.com

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

This is really the first part of a long line of decisions in your cabinet hardware. Cabinet knobs and pulls all generally do the same thing, but depending on how you want them to be able to open one may work better than the other.

Cabinet knobs are pretty traditional when it comes to the doors of your cabinetry. If you are purchasing ready-made cabinets with pre-installed hardware, chances are you will be getting cabinet knobs as part of that deal. Cabinet knobs are those rounded pieces that you pull on to open a door. They generally are attached with only one screw or bolt.

Cabinet pulls, on the other hand, are usually C-shaped bars where the two edges of the ‘C’ attach to the cabinet. In order to use these, you would slip your hand, or at least a few fingers, into the ‘C’ and use that leverage to pull the door open. Instead of just using one hole in the doors, these do use two screws and take up more space on the face of your cabinet door.

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

If you are doing this project yourself and have doors without any pre-drilled places 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 holes needed 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 towards cabinet knobs since they only require one hole each.

If there are older people in the home, or those with arthritis or other motor weaknesses in their hands, cabinet knobs may be a painful proposition. The use of cabinet knobs requires the bending of fingers around the knobs to pull them open. 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 slip a few fingers or a hand into the pull and use the whole arm to pull the door open.

If the look is more important to you, you will likely end up choosing cabinet knobs as there are many more decorative cabinet knobs on the market than there are pulls. Pulls are not as easy to dress up, while knobs can be created in various shapes, sizes and even decorated with images that go with your decor.

As the owner of many online sites, author Jennifer Akre, shares her insight on how to bring your indoor living space to life with sleek cabinet hardware, charming cabinet knobs and daring drawer pulls.