Options That Make Kitchen Cabinets More Functional

For years, the basic kitchen cabinet has remained more or less the same. It has a door on hinges. You swing it open, and you see a couple of shelves, which you can use to store food or kitchen items. This design has stuck around because it is pretty functional — but there are certainly ways to improve upon it! Here are some options you can have added to your kitchen cabinets to make them even more functional.

Soft-Close Hinges

Soft-close hinges allow you to swing a door shut. The hinge then "catches" the door and closes it the rest of the way rather than letting it bang against the cabinet opening. These hinges save you from having to carefully close the door every time, and they also reduce wear on your cabinet boxes since the doors won't be banging against them.

Slide-Out Shelves

Are you tired of having to reach to the backs of shelves to access glasses, spices, or other small items? Your cabinetmaker can put some of your shelves on sliders. Basically, you would grab the shelf and pull on it gently and it would slide out toward you, giving you easier access to anything on top of it. Most homeowners really like sliding shelves for their smaller spice cabinets. They allow you to have a deeper cabinet and actually use the depth of the shelves.

Drop-Down Shelves

Even the tallest people tend to have trouble reaching the upper shelves in kitchen cabinets. And yet, you don't want that space to go to waste. Drop-down shelves are a good solution. You grab the edge of the shelf and pull it down toward you and it drops down, allowing you to reach the contents without standing on tiptoe. Push it back up again and it will settle back into position on its own.

Open Shelving

This one is so simple, you'll wonder why you did not think of it. Including a couple of open shelves in your cabinet design will allow you to grab your most frequently used kitchen items without even opening a cabinet door. Homeowners like a few open shelves near the stove for their salt, pepper, and oil, and maybe another one or two by the sink for cleaning supplies.

Incorporating these options into your cabinet design will make your kitchen more functional overall. Talk to a cabinet designer to learn more and to explore other similar options.