I have had Ikea side mount drawer slides forever not one has failed and I have huge drawers loaded wiht pots for 12 yrs in this house. BTW the soft close functions perfectly too .IMO Blum is the standard all makers follow

Thanks so much both of you for commenting on the side vs. undermount slide issue. I just copied the first photos that came up on the Hardware Resources website so am not sure which ones will be specified. The Euro hinges should look like this (i.e. they will be regular, not compact), but I'll be sure to ask about side or undermount slides.

@bry911 Thank you so much for your input about HR quality. It eases my mind to have at least one outside review aside from my cabinet maker about these. That's good to know about the warranty, too. My cabinet maker said he has seen one hinge fail in the 10 years he has been using HR, and they replaced it for him at no cost. I did assume that HR must be made offshore due to the cost advantage over Blum, though I don't believe the actual hardware cost difference would be beyond a few hundred dollars since my kitchen is small with only 9 cabinets. What would lift the cost upward is the additional time the crew would need to take to determine placement, and they've spent much time already perfecting templates in their software for HR hinges and slides so that everything is installed foolproof. Being a patternmaker for apparel myself, I have a real appreciation for the precision and time that goes into that and wouldn't want to mess it up with the risk of switching hardware on them. Thanks again for taking time to help answer my questions.

Hi I don't have any experience with HR products. I've seen them at the trade shows but only had a brief conversation about their new drawer system they were promoting. But limited sizes and price not all that much less than Blum and they never sent me the sample they said so didn't go any further. Agree with what bry911 said above. Your picture is a side mount slide. I would not use those. Not because they don't work but that look of seeing the slide is really dated. Blum and Grass are the best out there but there are other brands that are fine. The difference in price per kitchen isn't enough for me to use something else. If you're doing a large volume it could add up. That doesn't mean other stuff isn't going to last.

There’s no contest as to which is preferred. And it isn’t the knockoffs.

@jdesign_gw Thank you for your input. I really appreciate your getting back with me on this. My slide photo posting was probably a mistake as I would imagine my cabinet manufacturer uses undermount, but thanks for the reminder to check on this for sure. This particular shop indeed does a high volume of work constructing mostly commercial cabinetry, so I can see that the cost savings for them could add up, but it is odd that given their claims to superior quality with all they do they've chosen the "knockoffs" as @User said for such an essential part of the cabinetry. I've seen another poster talk about Blum being an optional upgrade in another cabinetry line, and it was only going to cost about $300 USD extra, not sure the number of cabinets in that order, but it surely couldn't have been more than my 9-cabinet kitchen.

I was able to try out one door with a Hardware Resources hinge at my cabinet maker's main office, and the soft close feature seemed to start quite far out in the travel path and go quite slow. The Blum hardware I've tested in showrooms seemed to have a more refined action than that, which is why I was surprised by the slow, stiff movement of the Hardware Resources hinges.

I saw one comment somewhere that Blum uses silicone parts in some styles that can wear out in time and the knockoffs like Salice that use all steel in the production are supposed to last longer, but in all the reviews I've read of Blum versus many other brands including Hettich, the one thing you'll hear repeatedly is that the action is smoother with Blum. We'll sit down and discuss this cost again before we finalize the order, so thanks everyone for the input. The cabinet maker is definitely willing to offer Blum, but it sounds to me like from our discussion that he'd really rather not given the trouble, and he'll charge us a lot for this upgrade.

I have had Ikea side mount drawer slides forever not one has failed and I have huge drawers loaded wiht pots for 12 yrs in this house.

That's interesting. At that time I was probably out of the states and Ikea had switched to undermount at least ten years before that in Europe. In fact, I thought the Akurum line had always used undermount slides. Live and learn.

However, I was referring specifically to the HR side mount slides. When you add a soft close function to a wide drawer you increase the chance of binding exponentially. This is not a problem that undermount have.

ETA: At any rate, Ikea did switch to an undermount and I think we have to allow that there must have been a reason.

@bry911 We do have "wide" drawers at 24" and 33", so undermount it will be. I'll make sure the cabinet manufacturer is doing this, thanks.

Another tidbit in this discussion is that I've read Blum manufactures in two places, Austria and North Carolina USA, and I'm not sure how current that information would be. China (where Hardware Resources is apparently made) is no longer a low-wage labor country, and many luxury products are made there, but somehow they overall still don't have the reputation that other European and US-based manufacturers do in general.

You are all inspiring me to try to order a set of hinges and a set of undermount slides from Hardware Resources and Blum and compare them on my own, just the action. This cabinet maker is going to give us a good price for the total installation, so perhaps the upgrade to Blum will be worth it. We've gotten three other quotes for our 9-cabinet design, $20K from Harmoni, and $27K from both Bentwood and Kennebec, so we decided to look at a custom shop for cost savings and are still waiting on a quote but feel sure it will undercut the others without too much quality loss aside from the hardware dilemma.

While some jobs in China are no longer low-wage, many, many still are, and their human and environmental rights records are also appalling, and have improved little in recent years. Not to mention that the Chinese government has similar stances and does little but look the other way. There are other reasons many choose to support European- or US-based manufacturers than just straight cost or quality - real or perceived.

@Harry Doyle I would overwhelmingly agree with supporting labor in countries where the human rights record is better. We were quite far along in the process with this cabinetmaker before realizing he didn't use Blum hardware despite the fact that he enforces high standards of quality everywhere else. It might have been a cause to look at a different manufacturer had we known this upfront.

I guess Blum has lots of competition, so this leads me to wonder how many other companies are actually going with substandard manufacturers for hardware without the customer realizing it, including all the big box store brands. I know that Signature, which is a fairly well respected custom cabinetry line that is picking up a lot of business from Wood-Mode's closure/sale/downsizing woes during the past year uses Salice hardware. Plenty of other companies are using Hettich with varying degrees of success compared to Blum. Most people say the Hettich hardware is more problematic over time with smooth soft-close action than Blum tends to be. I've even seen reviews on Amazon of people having plenty of trouble with Blum's lift-up door hinges, so even they are having problems from time to time.

Grass is supposed to be excellent as a Blum equal in many respects, but Grass is harder to source in the USA as it is mostly a European-marketed brand. So many decisions when doing a cabinetry layout! I just shared all your comments in this thread with my husband, and he is still reluctant to ask our current cabinetmaker to switch templating to Blum since they have their Hardware Resources systems perfected. It would have been easier to start with a cabinetmaker who uses Blum as standard, one more thing to add to the checklist for any future projects.

I would not be concerned about Hettich, they are likely 5 times the size of Blum and have been in the business for over 100 years. They are based in Germany and have facilities in every major market. My main cabinet supplier uses Hettich and in over 20 years I have only replaced a few hinges and a couple of drawer guides. Blum are also extremely good, so I would have no issue with either.

China is perfectly capable of manufacturing to high specifications. The last time I looked China had ten times more ISO certified factories than the U.S. does. There is some legitimate concerns about higher than specified fail rates from Chinese sourced products because of certain socioeconomic pressures in China. However, China is quickly getting those issues under control.

Most of the blame for cheap manufacturing in China should go to the U.S. companies who are sourcing substandard products, often knowingly with poor environmental or safety standards.

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Here you can have 2 more cents from me. I am not sure how much you are going to see the quality difference. Much of the preference for higher quality hardware comes from a manufacturing perspective, rather than anything in the operation of the hinge or slide. Back in the early days of soft close, Blum just worked, it was forgiving when other soft close mechanisms were not, which became a big time saver during installation. However, it all worked in the field, it was in the shop that Blum really had an advantage, they just took less time to install.

Again, I would prefer Blum and I would pay a small amount extra for it, just not a mint.

ETA: I am almost positive that the HR hinge boring machine will bore the Blum hinges without any adjustments (unless something has changed since I played with the machine). So for hinges there is no templating difference. For drawers there could be.