How to Adjust Cabinet Door Hinges

Adjusting your cabinet door hinges is a very easy project that can make a big difference in how your cabinets look and function. If you've got cabinet doors that are bumping into one another, not closing correctly or simple are mis-aligned, with just a few minutes of work and some basic tools you can fix them and have the working smoothly and looking great in no time.

Here are some tips for how to adjust cabinet door hinges.

There are a couple of different types of hinges that you may have on your cabinets depending upon the style and the age of your cabinets. The two most common types are plain hinges and European hinges. Plain hinges are the simple, flat, standard hinges that most people are familiar with. European style hinges, on the other hand, have a bar of metal with a couple of screws that attaches to a plate on the inside of the cabinet and then snaps into a cup on the cabinet door.

Most cabinets from IKEA comes with European style hinges, while cabinets from other stores usually have standard hinges, although that is not a hard and fast rule. The first thing you need to do is to determine what style of hinges you have since each uses a different method of adjustment. Once you have determined which hinges your cabinets use, read on to learn how to adjust them.

Plain Hinges

Plain, standard hinges are the easiest hinges to adjust, although they only allow you to adjust the door up, down, or side to side. That means that you can't easily adjust the depth of your cabinet doors using standard hinges.

Your first step is to loosen the screws on the hinge enough that you can move the hinges, but not so much that the door falls. You want to loosen them just to the point that you have a little big of wiggle room. Straighten the cabinet door by moving it up, down or to the side. When you have it properly aligned, tighten the screws on the hinge using a screwdriver. Do this for each of your doors until they have all been straightened.

European Hinges

European hinges are slightly more complicated to adjust, but typically allow you to adjust the depth of the door along with being able to move it side to side or up and down.

On the bottom part of the hinge that is attached to the cabinet (not to the door) there should be four screws. If these screws have come loose it can cause your door to sag out of position. Start by trying to tighten these screws to see if it fixes the problem. If not, move on to the other adjustment screws.

There should be two additional screws on your hinge - one toward the back of the cabinet that controls the depth of the door (how far in our out it is) and one toward the front that allows the door to move from side to side.

Play around with adjusting these two screws until your cabinet door is hanging straight and is properly aligned. It can take a little bit of patience to get it right, but it is worth the effort for how much better your cabinets will look and function.