I’m looking to upgrade the kitchen cabinet drawer slides and cabinet door hinges to soft close style.
Is there a noticeable difference in quality in the selection of these on the market?
If there’s a reason to go with more costly slides and hinges, which brands would you recommend?

Can you order a single and try it out ?

I don’t believe there’s a big difference though .

We have soft close cabinets. Our builder is a cabin maker so everything was custom made on location. Not sure what brand he used but all of them close very nice, even the pots & pans drawers.

JD338

I like them.

Google KV drawer guides. I don’t know if they are the best or not, but they’re good!

Mackey.

For soft-close drawer slides check out:
Grass Dynapro slides
Blum Tandem slides
Hettich Quadro IW21 slides
KV MUV slides
You’ll need to get new drawer boxes too.

For soft-close euro hinges check out:
Blum
Salice
Grass Tiomos
You’ll probably need new doors too.

These are the current cabinet industry standards.
Made in Europe, not China.

When we built new cupboards, we bought hardware from Rockler. We used fifty dollar glides in the silver wear drawer.

Had them now since our big remodel almost 10 years ago. Have had zero issues with the soft-close drawers, even in the very heavy pots/pans ones.

Hey, thanks for the replies.
I will definitely check out the manufacturers listed.

Try searching on hardwarehut.com,
they sell the Salice, Grass and Hettich products.
Undermount softclose slides will require new drawer boxes. Sidemount softclose slides are also available and may work with your existing drawers if you have 1/2” between the drawer opening and the side of the drawer box on each side.
Ask for Stephanie or Cindi or Micki at hardwarehut.com. They know what they’re doing.
Tell them Mike F. sent you.

Will do, and thanks.

Figure out a way to buy the expensive ones cheaply.

Stop slamming them and spend the balance on guns and ammo.

m stevenson;
Good evening to you sir, I hope the day in your section of southern Michigan was kind to you and you're well.

With the understanding that my information is dated in that I've been out of the cabinet business since 2014, but started in '87.

We'd just started using soft close hinges then and were using Hettich.

Off the top of my head I recall using Acuride, Blum, Hettich, Salice and Ferrari hinges and hardware. The Accuride full extension and Blum and Hettich regular slides were good quality and virtually trouble free.

We've had Blum hinges in our kitchen that I installed in '03 and not one hinge has failed.

Maybe it was the time we used them, but we did have issues with the Italian hinges and hardware mentioned.

I was going to install soft close in our kitchen - I want to say either Hettich or Accuride, but didn't.

Hope that was useful for you or someone out there.

Best of luck with the project.

Dwayne

Do you have a suggestion for teaching my wife not to slam them?
It’s not a problem for me, but she can’t seem to close them without it sounding like a train running into a brick wall.

Hey Dwane, thanks for relating your experiences.
Have yourself a great rest of your week.

Please don't hate, but help educate me
Current house is 21 yrs old, from the info above my existing standard hinges and slides are below the current standards. What is the allure? I just replaced a few existing cupboard hinges because they didn't fully close, replacement hinges cost me about $3 and 5 mins time each. What am I missing out on? I do have one "junk drawer" that has been slammed over my kids' growth to adulthood and had to be enforced due to it being cheaply made, but what would I gain by upgrading?

I built a bunch of cabinets in my basements 4 years ago. I bought the drawer slides from Amazon. Selected by best reviews. They have been working great and I would do it again. Don’t remember what mfg they were tho.
I wouls suggest you look into full extension ones. You won’t regret it?

orfisch;
Top of the morning to you, I trust that wherever in the world this finds you, it finds you well.

Speaking broadly and my goodness I am terribly cognizant of how slippery a slope that can be, but until one gets exposed to what the general public might be capable of, it's tough to wrap one's head around a whole bunch of stuff. Please understand I do not mean that to be derogatory in any sense of the word.

For instance when we were farming, my brother and myself could run tractors and equipment with minimal issues while the cousin we farmed with had more breakdowns.

When I got into the cabinet industry machines, tolerances and producing an acceptable end product made sense to me and so help me it just does not come naturally to a whole lot of folks. Sometimes it can be taught, but for instance you will never teach me to hold a tune in a pair of big buckets, no matter how motivated we might both be.

In the same way, when we offered a lifetime warranty on our kitchens - which we did - when we'd go into some places after 20 years they looked basically new yet. Conversely I recall going into a local contractor's house after less than 2 years and the whole house looked at least 10 years old. Everything showed wear, it was wild how much too. I told the boss the entire family must have tiger claws or something?

So then if we overload a drawer which is built from PBC- particle board core - melamine and then we slam it with just a bit more than normal enthusiasm it will loosen up the screws holding the tracks in the PBC cabinet box.

There are usually extra screw holes not used and a careful person can repair PBC melamine with wood glue or epoxy and some sawdust, but it takes some time.

We could use plywood for the boxes and real wood for the drawers, but in places like Hawaii for instance where it might rain half the day, every day, plywood isn't the solution one would think.

As well, plywood manufacturers do not make it with as consistent a thickness as PBC melamine can be - we had a spec of +/- 1/10mm thickness for melamine and they hit that consistently. If the box material is varied in thickness, the overall size of a run of boxes can be troublesome at best and lead to boxes being cut down and new doors made at worst.

Anyways sorry for the long explanation, but some people's cabinets will last much longer with soft close and some people will never ever see the difference in cost.

The trick in life is to know one's weaknesses and purchase accordingly isn't it?

Hope that made sense and all the best.

Dwayne