If you’re looking to update your kitchen or bathroom cabinets to be slow close, it’s an easy process. Here’s how to make any cabinet or drawer slow close without having to change them out!
A big part of any renovation is budgeting. With our old kitchen renovation, we had to choose what to spend on and what to save on.
After deciding that I wanted expensive countertops, and that we would keep pretty much the same layout, it really made financial sense to keep our existing cabinets.
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We painted them and changed out the knobs, but I really wanted another upgrade – slow close cabinets! I think that it is a luxurious upgrade, but one that doesn’t have to break the bank.
In this article, I’ll guide you through the process, revealing the secrets to achieving that buttery-smooth, noise-free closure for your storage spaces.
Soft close hinges have a hydraulic mechanism that keeps the hinge from swinging freely and instead has it slowly close into place. Pretty cool!
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This allows your hinge or drawer slide to close without having to push it all the way into place yourself and it won’t bang closed.
If you have a toddler, you can also add magnetic baby locks to the inside of your cabinets to make them child-proof!
Overall, the advantages of soft close cabinets and drawers, such as noise reduction, safety, and increased durability, often outweigh the drawbacks, making them a popular choice for modern kitchen and bathroom designs.
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Remember to always follow safety procedures when working with power tools. That means wearing protective gear such as safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, and dust mask and using appropriate tools to ensure safe construction.
To make slow close drawers, you install one piece inside the cabinet on the wall and one piece onto the drawer. The old hardware remains in place.
The slow close basically is the result of the piece on the drawer catching the piece on the wall and then slowly closing.
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We ran into a small glitch and needed to add a scrap of wood on the side of our cabinet because they were floating, but it is actually a really easy process to retrofit into existing cabinets or drawers.
Instead, there is a gap, so we first had to drill a piece of 1×4 onto the cabinet wall and then attach the soft close drawer adapter onto that piece of wood.
Then we had to line up the plastic piece that goes onto the outside of the drawer itself. Make sure it lines up with the rod.
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Once both were in place, you could try to slam the drawer closed and instead it would melt into the cabinets like butter.
Updating the cabinets was much simpler than updating the drawers. All I needed to do was remove one hinge and replace it with a slow close hinge.
The slow close hinges have the same mechanism to catch the door while it’s swinging closed. For these, you are just replacing the old hinge with a new slow-close one.
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The new slow close features have me swooning. It makes me feel so fancy, and I love love how inexpensive and easy it was!
Hello, I’m Morgan, half of the creative force behind ! With a passion for DIY that dates back to 2012, I’ve transformed three homes and now I’m dedicated to helping others craft their dream spaces. Let’s turn your house into a home together!
[…] We installed slow-close hinges a couple years ago and there is no problem. Once the latch hits, it latches quickly and smoothly […]
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If you're talking about the type of glide that is just the single bar in the middle with a track on the drawer, then I guess not. Slow close drawers have to have something to catch onto to slow it down. I don't think those bars in the middle really allow you to push it closed in one motion.Tired of your doors slamming shut when the kids are in the kitchen? :) There's an EASY fix for this that only takes a few minutes to install.
Did you know you can switch your basic cabinet doors to soft close cabinets by adding these dampers to your bathroom or kitchen cabinet doors? This is a great way to upgrade basic stock cabinets.
We used to walk through IKEA I would open and shut the cabinet doors to see the magic of the soft close door. I never thought I would have them in our house, because replacing each and every hinge in our home wasn't going to happen.
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You CAN replace all of your compact cabinet door hinges with these soft close hinges instead. These are used on face frame cabinets like ours that have the extra trim around the front of the cabinet:
As long as you know how to use a screwdriver or power drill, this is a really easy update. The new hinges come with a tiny soft close mechanism installed inside.
**You'll want to use a different type of hinge if you have frameless cabinets, that have no front trim. These soft close euro hinges will work for that type of cabinet!
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If you use these self closing hinges, you'll need to adjust these to make your door spacing/opening uniform across all of your cabinets.
See those little adjustment screws on the left side of the hinge above? You can tighten or loosen those to change the following:
Thankfully there's an easier answer for soft close doors at the hardware store. I was GIDDY the day I first time I came across these years ago!
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This soft close option have been especially helpful for us because I use stock cabinets for so many of my bookcase builds:
For my recent pantry project, I used an option from the Rockler store just because I was impatient and didn't want to wait the day for a delivery. 😂
Those pantry doors are tall and heavy, so I may add one more damper at the bottom of each one. But on standard doors, one is more than enough to create that slow motion.
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When you do this it feels so luxurious…all fancy-like. It does take some getting used to – for awhile you'll try to shut the doors. We had to remind ourselves to chilllll and let the damper do it’s job. :)
It's nice because the little pads on our doors are constantly falling off -- I’m always gluing them back on and now there is no need.
The directions just show these for cabinet doors but I’m going to try them out on a drawer to see if it works. If not…there’s always those full extending drawer slides with soft close…someday. ;)
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