The “Sinful” Mistake Even Designers Make in Kitchens

The stakes feel super-high in kitchen renovations, mainly because they’re so costly. A few bad choices can make your project feel like it’s off the rails — even when that’s not really the case. And because you’re faced with so many different decisions, fatigue is bound to set in there, too. That’s often the case with kitchen cabinet hardware ideas. Hardware is such a small detail that it often gets lost in the shuffle, but the right handles can totally transform the look and feel of your kitchen.

Hardware is something even the best of designers get wrong. Because its selection often happens at the tail end of a renovation journey, many designers default to using the exact same piece of hardware on every cabinet, door, and drawer. And that’s a design mistake that not only can bring the look of your kitchen down — it’s also not the best choice for function, either. 

To get a truly bespoke, designer kitchen-inspired vibe, you should always mix knobs, pulls, and hardware styles within a space. Using the same hardware everywhere can look builder-grade and not thoughtfully designed — even if that’s not your intention.

“It looks custom when you don’t use the same cabinet pulls everywhere,” says Laura Broadhead, director of product development at Amerock, a decorative and functional hardware brand. “Intermixing different pull sizes, pull lengths — and knobs and pulls — adds such a high-end look to a space. Don’t be afraid to vary the [hardware] finish on an accent cabinet, either, or to choose hardware with a split finish or mixed material such as glass, leather, or stone”

Essentially, a little bit of visual variety makes this high-touchpoint element look better. Feel and function is at play, too. While knobs typically come in very similar standard sizes (and some may prefer them for drawers over cabinets, for example), pulls can really run the gamut in terms of size. 

Larger cabinets can actually benefit from larger pulls — they quite literally make certain doors easier to open. That’s why it can be a good idea to have a mix of the same style pull in different sizes throughout your space — even from a functional standpoint. 

If the cabinet-to-pull-size ratio befuddles you, though, you’re not alone. Amerock created a pull length guide to help customers figure out the right fit. Spoiler alert: The general rule is that a pull should be half or less of the drawer width and one-third or less of the door height. 

Of course, you can always go longer to make a more dramatic design statement. But know that just varying your hardware a little bit will make your kitchen look 100 times better. It’s such a small but easy-to-fix feature that often gets overlooked — and this goes for cabinetry in other rooms of the house, including the bathroom, too.