A Handleless kitchen or Handleless effect kitchen?
There are two types of handleless kitchen on the market. True handleless and handleless effect. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.
A true handleless kitchen
In a true handleless kitchen, the doors have no handles. A continuous rail is fitted into the cabinet and runs behind the doors. To open the door, you slide your fingers over the top of the door and pull it open from behind.
Below are pictures of true handleless kitchens.
The other type of true handleless kitchen uses push to open catches to allow the door to be opened. Although handleless kitchens with push to open catches look great, they are not particularly practical. Firstly, this type of system cannot be used with an integrated dishwasher or fridge freezer. Secondly, the push to open mechanism’s usually start failing after just a few years. Thirdly the doors can often open just by you brushing past them.
A handleless effect type handleless kitchen
In recent years, handleless effect kitchens have become as popular as true handleless kitchens. Handleless effect kitchens have an integrated handle at the top of each door to enable opening. Examples can be seen below.
Their are two types of integrated handle style handleless kitchens on the market. There’s the low-quality wrapped type and the high-quality painted and lacquered type.
Two types – wrapped and painted and lacquered
If you buy the low quality wrapped type, it can be difficult to open the doors. This particularly applies to doors that attach to integrated dishwashers, fridges, freezers, and fridge freezers. The reason for this is that the groove at the top of the door is very shallow. Because it’s so shallow, you can find it very hard to get the necessary grip required to pull open the door. This is less of a problem with the higher quality painted and lacquered type doors as the groove is much deeper.
It is mainly the high street chains and trade-only suppliers that sell the low quality wrapped type handleless kitchen doors. The majority of integrated handle type handleless kitchen doors sold by Independent kitchen showrooms are the high quality painted and lacquered type.
The other problem with wrapped type doors is they are prone to de-laminating (as shown below). De-laminating is where the surface peels away from the MDF base. The first signs of de-lamination is bubbling around the edges of the doors. The higher quality painted and lacquered type doesn’t give you this problem
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A subtle handle across the top
If you like the look of a handleless kitchen, but also like the practicality of having a handle, why not go for a kitchen with a subtle handle across the top of the door? although this is not technically a handleless kitchen, it gives a similar look. Below are a few examples of these.
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