Handles are the cheapest thing in the kitchen and the only part you touch every day. Get the size wrong and a good door looks unfinished, which is a shame given the fix is a measurement rather than a budget.
The working rule is that a pull should be roughly one third of the width of the drawer front. A thirty inch drawer takes about a ten inch pull; a twelve inch drawer takes about four. Most kitchen drawers land between twelve and thirty inches, which puts the pull somewhere between four and seven.
It is not a law, and the reason it works is proportion rather than arithmetic. A short pull on a wide drawer reads as an afterthought and makes the drawer look heavier than it is. An oversized one on a narrow drawer crowds the front and looks like it was bought for something else.
Anything over twenty four inches wide usually wants two pulls rather than one longer one, because a single centre pull on a wide drawer racks it as you open. That is also the point where runner quality starts to show. See door styles and storage.
Recent work
How it works
How Handles Get Chosen
Hold samples on the door
Finishes read completely differently against your own doors and under your own lights. We bring the two or three you are considering and hold them up rather than showing a catalogue.
Size against the widest drawer
Work out the pull length on the widest drawer first, then step down for the narrower ones. Doing it the other way round leaves the big drawer looking under-handled.
Decide knobs or pulls, or both
Knobs on doors with pulls on drawers is a common and easy combination. What rarely works is mixing two different pull styles across the same run of cabinets.
Drill to a jig
Every hole set from the same reference rather than measured individually. A quarter inch of drift is visible across a run, and there is no fixing it once the hole exists.
Where they go
Placement Is What People Actually Notice
On doors, handles sit around two and a half to three inches in from the edge, level with the bottom rail on an upper and the top rail on a base. That puts every handle in the same relationship to its door, which is what makes a run look deliberate rather than assembled.
On drawers under twenty four inches, one pull, centred. Over that, two, spaced so they line up with the doors below where possible. The vertical alignment between a drawer pull and the door handles beneath it is the detail that separates a fitted kitchen from a fitted-looking one.
All of it is drilled to a jig rather than marked by eye, because a handle a quarter inch out is visible from across the room and impossible to unsee afterwards. On a slab door it matters most, since there are no other lines to distract from it. See painted finishes and shaker doors.
Getting it right
Other hardware
The Rest of the Hardware
Handles are the part you touch. These are the parts that carry the weight.
Sizing, placement, mixing styles and when to use two pulls.
Roughly one third of the drawer width. A 30 inch drawer takes about a 10 inch pull and a 12 inch drawer about 4 inches. Most kitchen drawers end up wanting something between 4 and 7 inches.
About two and a half to three inches in from the edge, level with the bottom rail on an upper door and the top rail on a base. Consistency across the run matters more than the exact number.
Over about twenty four inches wide. A single centre pull on a wide drawer racks it as you pull, and two spread the load and line up better with the doors below.
Yes, and knobs on doors with pulls on drawers is a standard combination that works well. What rarely works is two different pull profiles in the same run, which reads as a mistake.
More than on any other profile, because there are no frame lines to look at. The handle is the only detail on the front, so both its proportion and its placement carry the whole door.
Yes, provided the new ones share the same hole centres. Different centres mean filling and redrilling, which shows on a painted door and is close to invisible on a stained one.
Yes, using a J-pull edge or a rail behind the door top. It suits slab doors particularly, and it has to be decided early because it changes the door heights across the run.
Finishes look different under your own lights, and proportion only reads at full size. We bring what you are considering and size it against the widest drawer first.
