Soft-close hinges are nice but I still prefer standard ones for certain jobs

I finished a kitchen remodel in Cleveland last month where the homeowner insisted on Blum soft-close hinges for every door. They look great and shut silently, but I had to adjust three of them twice because the doors wouldn't stay aligned after a week. On my own cabinets at home I use basic European hinges with no dampers, and they've held up for 12 years without a single tweak. Anyone else find soft-close mechanisms add more hassle than they're worth on heavy doors?

2 comments

2 Comments

finley9392d ago

... and then the damper piston gave out completely on the 48 inch pantry door last week. Just stopped working out of nowhere, so now that door slams shut faster than any regular hinge I've ever used. I get why people like the quiet thing, but when you're doing heavy oak doors or those thick shaker style ones, the soft close just adds more parts to fail. My old man always said keep it simple with cabinets, and he had those basic self closing hinges on his garage shop cabinets for 25 years without a hiccup. I'll take reliability over fancy any day.

dakotawells2d ago

All this talk about pistons failing and doors slamming... are we sure this is really that big of a deal? I've got soft close on a couple of bathroom vanities I did for a client five years ago and they still work fine. Yeah if you're hanging a solid oak pantry door that weighs fifty pounds maybe you got a point. But for normal cabinet doors the average person isn't gonna wear out a damper in their lifetime. Seems like people just want to complain about something new.