Types of Cabinet Hinges: Which One Your Doors Actually Need

There are only a handful of types of cabinet hinges in a modern kitchen, and three facts pick the right one for your door: whether the box has a face frame, how far the door overlays the opening (or whether it sits inset), and how thick the door is. Concealed cup hinges, made in a face-frame version and a frameless version, are the norm on new kitchen cabinets. Exposed hinges (butt, non-mortise, semi-concealed and surface-mount) and pivot hinges cover the rest: inset and period doors, older framed kitchens, furniture pieces, and doors that must hide every bit of hardware. Below: a decision table, the specs Blum, Salice and Grass publish, what ships on each line we sell, and how to identify and measure an old hinge so the replacement fits the first time.

Table of Contents

• Types of Cabinet Hinges at a Glance
• Three Questions That Narrow It Down
• Decision Table: Box, Overlay and Door to Hinge
• How a Concealed Cup Hinge Is Specified
• Face Frame vs Frameless Hinges
• Opening Angles From 95° to 170°
• Butt, Non-Mortise and Surface-Mount Hinges
• Pivot and Knife Hinges
• Inset Hinges: Concealed, Butt or Finial
• Soft-Close, Self-Close and Six-Way Adjustable
• Which Hinges Ship on the Cabinets We Sell
• Measuring for Replacement Hinges
• Frequently Asked Questions

Types of Cabinet Hinges at a Glance

Strip away overlays, finishes and closing actions and eight families remain:

Our glossary has short definitions of the concealed hinge and the exposed hinge.

Three Questions That Narrow It Down

Hinge choice is mostly forced by the cabinet, and most mix-ups we see trace back to skipping one of these questions.

1. Is there a face frame? Open the door and look at the front edge of the box. A solid wood frame, glued to the front means framed. If you see the edge of the side panel itself, usually edge-banded, with the hinge plate screwed to the inside of that panel, it's frameless. Our framed vs frameless comparison explains the construction if you're unsure.
2. Where does the door sit? A door can cover most of the frame or side panel (full overlay), cover part of it and leave a reveal (partial or half overlay), or sit flush inside the opening (inset). The styles are compared in full overlay vs partial overlay vs inset; for the hinge, what matters is the number.
3. What does the door weigh and how far must it open? A ¾-inch painted MDF door, a 1-inch solid door and a glass door need different hinges and counts, and a door next to a wall or in front of a roll-out shelf needs a wider opening angle.

Decision Table: Box, Overlay and Door to Hinge

Find your construction and door position; the third column is the hinge to shop for, the fourth is the detail that trips people up.

The first three rows come straight from Blum's own hinge quick-reference chart, which lists mounting-plate height (0, 9 or 18 mm) and arm configuration (straight, half-cranked or full-cranked) for each application. Crank and plate height trade off against each other, which is why a replacement arm must match the plate it clips onto.

For framed rows, the overlay is usually built into the hinge model. Grass sells its TEC face-frame hinge in overlays from ¼ to 1 inch and 1¼ to 1 7/16 inch, so pick the overlay first, then the mount.

How a Concealed Cup Hinge Is Specified

The cup half of a concealed hinge sits in a round pocket bored into the back of the door; the arm reaches back to a plate on the cabinet side (frameless) or to the face frame (framed). The standard models from Blum, Salice and Grass compared below all use a 35 mm cup (smaller-cup hinges exist for special cases), so the hole in your door rarely decides the replacement. What does differ from model to model is the cup depth, how far the cup sits from the door edge, the door thickness range and the overlay.

What three of the big makers publish for a standard model each:

Boring distance and cup centerpoint: the number that sets the overlay

Makers describe the cup position two ways. The boring distance is the gap between the door edge and the edge of the 35 mm hole. The cup centerpoint is the distance from the door edge to the center of the hole. Because the cup's radius is 17.5 mm, centerpoint equals boring distance plus 17.5. Blum's quick-reference card lists centerpoints of 20.5 to 25.5 mm, which correspond to boring distances of 3 to 8 mm.

On a frameless door with Blum's 110° CLIP top on a 0 mm plate, the instructions pair each overlay with a centerpoint: 14 mm overlay at 20.5 mm, 15 at 21.5, 16 at 22.5, 17 at 23.5, 18 at 24.5. Worked example: you want the door to cover 16 mm of an 18 mm (about ¾ in.) side panel, leaving 2 mm of panel edge showing. Bore the cup center 22.5 mm from the door edge, which is a 5 mm boring distance. Move the hole 1 mm further in and the door covers 1 mm more, which is why a replacement door drilled on a different jig can sit visibly off even with the right hinge.

On the cabinet side, Blum's frameless instructions place the plate 37 mm back from the front edge with its screw holes 32 mm apart, the same spacing as the 32 mm system rows in frameless boxes. Blum also says the top and bottom hinges should be farther apart than the door is wide, with each cup center at least 3 to 4 inches from the end of the door.

How many hinges a door needs

Blum's guidance counts weight first: two hinges for a door of about 4 to 6 kg (roughly 9 to 13 lb) and three for about 6 to 12 kg (13 to 26 lb), for doors up to 600 mm (about 23⅝ in.) wide, with one more hinge for doors up to 650 mm wide. Count the handle's weight too. In practice: two on standard wall and base doors, three or more on pantry, tall and heavy glass doors.

Face Frame vs Frameless Hinges

The cup is the same; what the arm attaches to differs, and that is the usual reason a hinge bought online doesn't fit.

• Frameless hinges clip onto a separate mounting plate screwed to the inside face of the cabinet side. The plate sits back from the front edge, the door covers the side panel's edge, and the arm's crank plus the plate's height set the overlay. Side, height and depth all adjust, and the door lifts off the plate with a lever. Our frameless cabinets buying guide covers the box.
• Face-frame hinges fix to the back or side of the wood frame. Blum's ½ in. COMPACT BLUMOTION fastens directly to the frame with a single #8 screw; Grass's TEC is sold in side-mount, wrap-around and face-mount versions with 42 mm and 45 mm boring patterns. Overlay is usually built into the model (the ½ in. COMPACT only does ½ in.), so you choose it, rather than dial it in. Grass sells the TEC in a range of hinge and base-plate combinations, and Blum's framed COMPACT line includes clip-on versions with quick-release, which is what Fabuwood's Allure uses.

You can't convert a framed cabinet to frameless hinges by swapping parts, and frame thickness matters: Blum caps the ½ in. COMPACT at a ¾ in. frame, and wrap-around hinges are made for specific frame thicknesses.

Opening Angles From 95° to 170°

Blum's hinge chart lists models that open 95°, 100°, 107°, 110°, 120°, 125°, 155° and 170°. For most doors, 107° to 110° is the default. Choose a different angle when:

• Thick doors (95°). Blum makes a 95° "thick door" version for doors too thick for the standard hinge's geometry.
• Roll-out trays and pull-outs (155° or 170°). A door that stops at 110° can sit in the path of a tray sliding out behind it. A wide-angle hinge swings the door out of the way.
• Doors beside a wall or a tall unit (wide angle, or a filler). A filler strip keeps the door and its pull off the wall. Our article on blind corner cabinet sizes and solutions covers the corner cases.
• Doors that open too far. The opposite problem: a wide-angle door that hits an appliance or island. Clip-on angle-restriction clips limit the swing. Fabuwood's Illume spec book lists Blum clips that cut its 110° hinges to 86° (one clip per two hinges) and its lazy Susan's 170° hinges to 130°.

Corner doors are their own family: lazy Susan and pie-cut corners use folding doors on special wide-angle hinges, and Fabuwood's spec books list no soft-close on them (see the exceptions under our lines table).

Butt, Non-Mortise and Surface-Mount Hinges

These are the exposed hinges, chosen today for looks, for inset furniture-style doors, or because the cabinet being repaired already has them.

Butt hinges

A butt hinge is two rectangular leaves wrapped around a pin. One leaf is let into a shallow mortise in the door edge, the other into a matching mortise in the frame, so with the door shut only the round knuckle shows. Many have a removable pin, which is where the "hinge and pin" searches come from: tap the pin up and out and the door comes off without unscrewing anything. They're strong, but fit depends entirely on the mortises; with no adjustment screw, a door that drops or rubs is fixed by shimming or re-cutting.

Non-mortise hinges

A non-mortise hinge does the butt hinge's job without the chisel work. Its leaves are thin and shaped so that one nests inside the other when the door closes, which leaves only a small gap between door and frame. They look nearly the same as a butt hinge from the front and rely on screw grip alone, with no adjustment screws. Wrap versions, such as Amerock's no-mortise inset hinges for ¾ in. doors, fold a leaf around the back of the door or frame for extra hold.

Surface-mount hinges

Surface-mount (face-mount) hinges screw onto the outside faces of door and frame, so the whole hinge is on show, either as a decorative strap, H, butterfly or flag shape or as the plain self-closing hinge on many older American framed kitchens. They're the easiest to fit. Amerock, for example, sells self-closing face-mount hinges in a ⅜ in. inset version for lipped doors and a variable-overlay version whose overlay you set when you fit it.

Semi-concealed and offset hinges

On semi-concealed hinges one leaf wraps the frame and shows while the other hides behind the door; offset versions suit lipped doors, doors with a rabbeted edge that sits partly inside the opening, commonly by ⅜ in. You'll mostly meet both repairing older framed cabinets, and the replacement has to match the lip or overlay, the frame thickness and whether the old hinge was self-closing.

Pivot and Knife Hinges

A pivot hinge doesn't hang the door from its side at all. One pivot sits in the top edge of the door and one in the bottom, each fixed into the cabinet's top and bottom, so from the front you see at most a thin line of metal at the door edge. Brusso, which machines solid-brass pivot hinges, mortises them into the top and bottom of both door and case; its center-pivot version turns the door on one axis with no side clearance to the case, and its offset version, a knife-hinge design, sets the pin in from the door edge so the door swings clear of the frame. A knife hinge is that slim, two-blade style of pivot.

Pivot hinges suit furniture and flush built-ins where side hardware would spoil the look, but the cabinet needs a solid top and bottom to mortise into, and the fit is set by those mortises rather than by adjustment screws.

Inset Hinges: Concealed, Butt or Finial

An inset door sits flush inside the opening, so the hinge must swing it without the edge hitting the frame. Three options:

1. Concealed inset hinge. A cup hinge with a full-cranked arm (or a straight arm on a thicker plate, per Blum's chart) moves the door's pivot point so the edge clears. You keep three-way adjustment, which matters with inset's narrow, even reveals.
2. Butt hinge. Traditional, visible knuckle, no adjustment; doors must be fitted precisely.
3. Finial or ball-tip hinge. A butt hinge with decorative caps on the knuckle, often matched to the pulls.

In our catalog, St. Martin's Heritage inset program lists Blum soft-close hinges. Our inset cabinets buying guide covers cost and upkeep.

Soft-Close, Self-Close and Six-Way Adjustable

The last choice is how the door closes. Blum's chart sorts the same geometry into "SC" (self-close) and "FS" (free swing) codes; BLUMOTION adds a damper.

• Free swing: the door stays where you leave it.
• Self-close: a spring pulls the door shut for the last part of its travel, and it can bang.
• Soft-close: a self-closing hinge with a damper, built into the cup or arm or clipped on afterward, that slows the door for the last few inches. Every line in the table below lists soft-close as standard, with the exceptions noted under it. Our Blum soft-close hinges article covers durability and cost, and soft-close vs self-closing covers drawers.
• Push-to-open: a hinge paired with a touch latch for handleless doors.

"Six-way adjustable" on a spec sheet means the hinge adjusts on three axes, side to side, up and down, and in and out, each in both directions. The screws and their ranges are in our guide to adjusting cabinet hinges.

Which Hinges Ship on the Cabinets We Sell

We don't sell hinges, knobs or pulls on their own: the hinges come mounted on (or packed with) the cabinets, as each manufacturer specifies. Here is what each line's spec book or our catalog data states:

Exceptions: Fabuwood's Allure spec book says its Lazy Susan, Easy Reach and Pie Cut cabinets don't have the soft-close mechanism (Illume's lists Lazy Susan, Easy Reach and wall pie-cut), and US Cabinet Depot excludes select discontinued styles from soft-close. Fabuwood's warranty text also states that it does not cover Blum hinges or other third-party accessories; Blum's own warranty terms are in the Blum article linked above. US Cabinet Depot's limited lifetime warranty names door hinges among the covered parts; J&K's covers door hinges for one year. The manufacturers' documents are on our spec book page.

Measuring for Replacement Hinges

Most hinge returns happen because one measurement was guessed. Start by naming the hinge from what you can see with the door open:

For a concealed hinge, take these measurements too, in millimeters if you can, since hinge makers publish in metric.

1. Read the hinge. Open the door fully and look at the arm and cup. Branded hinges carry the maker's name and often a model number stamped in the steel. Blum numbers can be read against its chart: in the CLIP top BLUMOTION 110° family, 71B3550 is the straight arm, 71B3650 half-cranked and 71B3750 full-cranked, and the ending gives the door fixing (50 screw-on, 80 press-in, 90 INSERTA, 8E EXPANDO). Fabuwood's Illume spec book, for example, names Blum 71B358E. The same straight-arm hinge hangs a full-overlay, twin or inset door depending on the plate height, so note the plate too. Photograph both halves before you take anything off.
2. Confirm the cabinet type. Plate on the inside of the side panel means frameless; hinge fixed to the wood frame means framed. This decides which catalog page you are even on.
3. Measure the cup. Check it is 35 mm across, then measure from the door edge to the near edge of the hole. That is the boring distance; add 17.5 mm for the cup centerpoint. Keep the same figure on the new hinge's spec or the door will sit differently.
4. Work out the overlay. Overlay is how far the door's hinge edge extends past the edge of the cabinet opening; Blum's face-frame instructions define it the same way. With the door closed, mark the frame where the door edge falls, open the door and measure from the mark to the opening. On an end stile that equals stile width minus the strip still showing: a 1½ in. stile with ¼ in. showing is a 1¼ in. overlay. On a frameless cabinet, overlay is how much of the side panel's edge the door covers.
5. Measure door and frame thickness. Hinges are rated for a door thickness range; wrap-around hinges also for a frame thickness.
6. Note the opening angle and closing action. Does the door stop near 110° or swing nearly flat? Does it close softly, snap shut or stay put?
7. Look at the plate. On frameless cabinets the arm clips to a plate whose height affects the overlay. Unless the new hinge's maker says it fits the old plate, replace plate and hinge together.

Don't assume every door in the kitchen takes the same hinge. Fabuwood's Allure spec book, for example, puts ⅜ in. partial-overlay COMPACT BLUMOTION hinges on its diagonal sink base and asks for 1 in. overlay hinges on the glass door of its angled end wall cabinet, inside a full-overlay line. Then buy every hinge on that door, not just the broken one. If a soft-close hinge has simply weakened, check the maker's warranty first.

For knobs, pulls and the rest of the hardware picture, see our cabinet hardware guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I identify what kind of hinge my cabinet has?

Open the door. If you can't see the hinge from the front and there is a round cup in the back of the door, it's a concealed hinge: frameless if the arm clips to a plate on the cabinet side, face-frame if it fixes to the wood frame. A hinge on the outside of the frame is a face-mount hinge (often self-closing, on a lipped door); a visible knuckle means a butt, non-mortise or semi-concealed hinge; a pin at the top and bottom of the door means a pivot hinge. The identification table above lists what to match for each.

How do I know what size cabinet hinge to buy?

"Size" on a concealed hinge means overlay, plus cup position and door thickness. Measure the overlay (how far the door edge extends past the cabinet opening), the distance from door edge to cup hole, and the door thickness, then match all three on the maker's spec sheet. The cup itself is almost always 35 mm.

What is the difference between face frame and frameless hinges?

A frameless hinge clips to a plate screwed inside the cabinet side; a face-frame hinge fastens to the wood frame and usually has its overlay built into the model.

What hinges are used on inset cabinet doors?

Concealed inset hinges, which keep adjustment and soft-close, or traditional butt and finial hinges set in mortises. Blum's chart handles inset with a full-cranked arm on a 0 mm plate or a straight arm on an 18 mm plate.

What is a non-mortise hinge?

A hinge whose thin leaves nest together when the door closes, so it can be screwed straight to the door edge and frame without cutting mortises. It looks like a butt hinge from the front, has no adjustment and is best on light doors.

What does a 1/2 overlay hinge mean?

It's built so the closed door covers ½ inch of the frame or panel on the hinge side. Blum's ½ in. COMPACT BLUMOTION face-frame hinge is one example. On frameless cabinets, half overlay usually describes two doors sharing one partition, each covering part of it.

What does six-way adjustable mean on a hinge?

Three adjustment axes, each in two directions: side to side, up and down, and in and out.

Can I switch exposed hinges to hidden hinges?

Often, if the doors are thick and solid enough to take a 35 mm cup. You'll bore new cup holes, fill the old hinge marks and may change the overlay. On a whole kitchen, compare that labor with refacing or new doors first.

Get the Hinges Right Before the Cabinets Ship

On new cabinets the hinge is decided by the line you choose: framed or frameless, overlay or inset, and who makes the hardware. Our free 3D design service puts a designer in touch within one business day and returns a design and itemized quote within 24–48 hours. Compare Fabuwood Allure (framed) with Illume (frameless), see St. Martin Heritage for inset, and order door samples to see a finish in person.

We design, quote and ship cabinets; installation is done by your contractor or by you. Questions about a door, an overlay or a replacement? Use the contact page or call 609-900-3358. Contractors can ask about Captivating Pro trade pricing.

Sources: Blum Inc. hinge Quick Reference Guide (cabinet application, mounting-plate height and arm configuration by model, CLIP top opening angles); Blum kit instructions H002 CLIP top BLUMOTION 110° and H004 COMPACT BLUMOTION ½″ overlay (© 2025); Blum hinge quick-reference card (cup centerpoint and boring distance); Blum "number of hinges" guidance; Salice Series 200 110° product page; Grass America TEC face-frame hinge specification sheet; Brusso pivot-hinge product pages; Amerock no-mortise and face-mount hinge product descriptions; Fabuwood Allure spec book (hinges, warranty, corner and specialty-cabinet hinge notes) and Illume spec book (hinge model, restriction clips); US Cabinet Depot, J&K, KCD and Mantra spec books; our catalog data for Fabuwood Ovela, St. Martin, NOMA, US Cabinet Depot Palermo and Torino, Diamond, Decorá and Tribeca, checked October 2026.