Is there a proper place to fasten your kitchen cabinetry hardware? You bet there is and before drilling the holes for your cabinet handles the location must be correctly placed on the doors. Because hardware styles and shapes vary, these suggestions should only be used as an educational guide to familiarize you with professional cupboard design methods for cabinet handle placement. There are a few rules that should be followed and yet they are made to be broken as well.

Where Should Cabinet Handles/Knobs be Placed?

Use these suggestions as a guide for where the cabinet handles or knobs should be placed.

• Placing Cabinet Handles or Knobs in Line-I generally like to use the center of the drawer as a guide for where the doors will be drilled for the knobs or handles. If your drawer front is six inches high, then the center will be three inches down from the top. To keep the handles on the drawers in line with the base cabinet doors that will not have a drawer over them, I would measure down 3” from the top of the base cabinet door and drill the hole.

This method of locating where to attach the hardware is not necessary a rule but it is a good starting place when trying to decide where to place the knob or handle.

• Customer Preference-Here’s where the rules get thrown out the door, when the customer has a personal preference as to where the cabinet handle should be installed. This is why I suggested starting with the center of the drawer but don’t drill anything until the customer, wife or whoever really wears the pants in the family decides where they want them to be installed.
• Framed Doors-When drilling for a cabinet handle on a framed door, there are several horizontal lines to consider. Oftentimes people want to have the knob in line with the rail or an equal distance from the top/bottom and side of the style and rail of the door. My previous suggestion should be considered also, where you would use the distance from the center of the drawer as a guide.

Always wait to drill the doors for the handles or knobs until after all of the cabinets have been installed. Hold the hardware up to the kitchen, vanity, wall-unit, office furniture, or laundry room cabinetry door and decide what the best place is going to be to drill the hole. By placing the handle in position prior to drilling, the hardware will be correctly installed according to yours or your customer’s tastes, the placement will be perfect.

When your cabinet has problems with the doors hitting one another, there are a few ways to eliminate them from rubbing. Because there are so many styles of cupboards, I will be suggesting several ways of fixing the areas so that the rub is eliminated. Each situation will be different. So, hopefully you will find a suggestion that addresses your issue. read Fixing Cabinet Doors that Rub