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agk2003

Help me with Bar Pull Placement!

11 years ago

So we are almost done with this kitchen. Not really but we are at least almost done with the cabinets. Cab guy just needs to come back one more time to install molding, magic corners and cabinet pulls. So yesterday I tortured hubby on a Sunday by contemplating pull placement for 2 hours. He's got the patience of a saint! Anyhoo, we are set on horizontal placement on the uppers and the drawers (obviously) but aren't sure whether to go with the smaller or more medium size pull. Or do we mix sizes (some small/some medium depending on cab/drawer size? we were even considering going with 3 sizes so that we could do a large pull (11") on the larger drawers) I've posted pics below and would love to hear advice. Also, we were thinking of doing the pulls vertically on the lower cabinets but after seeing breezy's kitchen in THIS thread, we are considering going horizontal on the lower cabs too. Thoughts? Advice? Thank you!

This is the smaller pull (almost 5.5"):


This is the medium pull (almost 8"):


This is the smaller pull on a drawer:


This is the medium pull on a drawer:


Comments (12)

  • 11 years ago

    I like the medium pulls, and would do them all horizontally. But then I wonder if not being able to see the difference between drawer, cabinet, left/right swing would be irritating... I have cup pulls on drawers and knobs on cabinets. Guests always seem confused with the trash pullout, with looks like a cabinet door with a knob yet pulls out like a drawer.

  • 11 years ago

    I prefer the medium/longer in both cases, but that's just me.

    I have very similar white shaker doors and I am doing similar longer pulls (and also horizontal on all drawers and cabs).

    My pull lengths were determined by sticking to the rule of 3rds. Each pull is 2/3rds of the width of the drawer.

    Since I have a lot of different drawer widths in my kitchen, I ended up with a lot of different pull lengths (like 6 or 7!) but as long as they're all similarly proportioned, they look good together.

    Just as a warning: the thinking is that the more modern longer pulls are a trend, and eventually will look dated. From that perspective, it's "safer" to stick with a more standard length.

    But I decided I don't care. I'll cross that bridge in 10+ years if/when longer style pulls are dated. For now, I want what I want!

  • 11 years ago

    Your hubby is a good-looking good sport!

    The drawer shown - do you have any drawers significantly bigger or smaller than that one? I think both sizes look greaet on the drawer - I went back and forth, and couldn't decide on a winner.

    I think if you do horizontal on the uppers, for sure do it on the lowers as well. If you would only do horizontal on the doors in only one place, I would do lowers, to be consistent with the drawers. Presumably, you have mostly drawers anyway, right?

    On the uppers, I liked the smaller one better.

    I was dead sure that I would go with all horizontal (I love Breezy's kitchen too!) But when I held up my pulls to my doors, I didn't like it as well as vertical. Pullouts (trash, and above the fridge) got horizontal pulls.

    I found that 2-sided tape would hold long enough for me to put up a few, and get a look.

    Here's the best thing about pulls and knobs - there are far more right answers than wrong ones. I've never looked at a kitchen reveal and thought "Boy, that's a gorgeous kitchen - too bad they screwed up the hardware". If it looks good to you, it's correct.

  • 11 years ago

    I like the longer pulls every where. The center of the door placement would drive me batty and I would be concerned guests (or my DH, lol) would be yanking on doors in the wrong direction due to the ambiguousness...but that's a personal preference thing.

  • 11 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    thank you for the advice. looks like 3 votes for longer, one for the smaller.

    errant_gw, i see the concern re: guests, but since we'll be able to tell which way the doors open, i won't worry about guests. they can figure it out lol.

    michelle, i had the same thought as you, the longer pulls are more "modern" right now meaning they'll probably be dated soon, so then we were leaning towards the smaller ones. we're torn. would it look weird to do smaller on the uppers and the medium size on the lowers and drawers? of course we do have a couple of giant width cabs (20" and 21"0 where the smaller looks a little awkward.

    annkh_nd, thank you, he will like hearing that:) the reason we were thinking horizontal on the uppers and vertical on the lowers, was this inspiration pic:

    Contemporary Kitchen · More Info

    the only difference is their lower cabs do not have drawers on top so they don't have a horizontal pull over vertical pull look going on, which i would have. and we do have drawers significantly larger than the one shown. we have some 28-32". we also have one tiny one because we did a very narrow tray base and i made the stupid mistake of requesting that the door on the tray base look like a drawer over a door and that resulted in a horrifically tiny looking drawer. i think we're going to have to do a vertical pull on that drawer. i'm starting to think it doesn't really matter as long as things look relatively proportionate.

  • 11 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    michelle, re: the rule of 3rds, do you mean that a 30" drawer would have a 20" pull?

  • 11 years ago

    1/3rd would be 10" :)

  • 11 years ago

    ok that makes far more sense:)


  • 11 years ago

    bumping for more opinions...


  • 11 years ago

    I hesitate to give my opinion since it seems in the minority, but I like the smaller pulls better.

    I also,personally, would want the door pulls vertical. Before I got my handles on my doors, I kept trying to open them the wrong way! I was so glad when the handles went on and I knew which direction to open! But that's just me.


  • 11 years ago

    I like the bigger pulls. We used similar pulls throughout our kitchen, same size on everything. Our doors are vertical, drawers and trash pull-outs are horizontal. Only the narrow spice pull-out next to range has a smaller size pull.


  • 11 years ago

    I think either pull looks great, but am leaning toward the larger. I did the opposite- all vertical above and all horizontal below. The few doors I have with horizontal pulls are not confusing- you pull the door and it opens ;) I also got different pull sizes for different door sizes- kind of held them up and went with my gut. I was definitely tired of making decisions by the time doors were ready for pulls...