Openings & handles

01

Five ways a front opens

The photographs are Gentili Cucine's. The details under each type come from the houses' current price lists.

External handle

The best-known solution: a handle fixed to the door, in whatever shape and finish suits the design.

On Gentili Cucine's Time models, if the external handle pitch is not listed for a door width, the door is drilled with the next lower pitch. A handle with a different pitch must be specified in the order.

The same price list asks for the protrusion of handles to be checked next to corner base units, so they do not collide.

Febal Casa states a range of handle types, in different pitches and finishes.

Integrated handle

The handle becomes part of the door: a profile or a grip along its edge, with nothing protruding.

At Gentili Cucine the integrated handles are called Linea, Step, Sail Line and Sail End. Linea and Step are not made to measure: on a non-standard door, the handle comes in the next size up.

Sail Line is not available on drawers under 18 cm or doors under 36 cm.

Febal Casa has the “J-PULL” handle, which its price list describes as an integrated grip formed on the door, and “Profilo C”, an aluminium profile fixed to the door. Horizontally, Profilo C fits every width and every opening system; vertically, only hinged doors and tall units with pull-out mechanisms.

Recessed handle

A recess cut into the door, where the hand takes hold.

Gentili Cucine has recessed handles, such as INCA, set centrally in the door horizontally or vertically with a pitch of 96, 160, 320 or 640 mm, and HOLE, also central in the door, horizontally or vertically. The Gentili Cucine price list files HOLE under recessed handles; elsewhere you will also see it called a milled or integrated grip.

At Callesella, the Brio+ door in 26 mm solid spruce has a handle recess along one side of its perimeter.

Gola — no handle

A continuous channel between the doors or under the worktop: the hand takes the edge of the door.

Gentili Cucine has two gola profiles, Trendy and Flat. The under-worktop gola runs up to 430 cm long.

Febal Casa's “gola sagomata” is an aluminium profile: horizontal on base units, under the worktop or in between, and vertical on tall units, central or at the end.

GF Interiors uses the horizontal aluminium “Quadra” gola, up to 400 cm long.

Scandola Mobili offers horizontal and vertical gola, the horizontal one in wood or in aluminium, and Callesella, for the Brio+ door, two shapes, “Curva” and “Piatta”.

Push-pull, Tip-On and electric opening

The door or drawer opens with a press, mechanically or electrically, and the front stays completely clean.

At Gentili Cucine the push-pull mechanism, in anthracite, opens the door with a light press. It goes either built into the carcase or free-standing.

On drawers, Gentili Cucine offers push-pull on request, Tip-On on Tandembox Antaro and Legrabox, and the SERVODRIVE electric opening system.

Febal Casa offers mechanical “Tip-on” opening on drawers at a surcharge, and push-pull on the “Standard” aluminium-framed glass unit.

02

What changes in the carcase

Gola needs room. The houses solve it with a taller carcase or a smaller front.

Gentili Cucine's price list costs every base unit in two versions: H. 60 with a handle or H. 63 with gola, H. 72 or 75, H. 36 or 39.

GF Interiors does the same: an H 78 base unit with a handle or H 81 with gola, H 58.5 or 61.5, H 39 or 42. On the H 78 and H 81 corner base units, the door is 77.7 cm in both.

Scandola Mobili names its gola base units in pairs of heights, such as “H. 60 - 63” and “H. 78 - 81”.

The standard carcase heights, with a handle and with gola, are gathered in Carcase & dimensions.

With the GF Interiors “Quadra” gola profile, drawer base units with an intermediate gola are made with the lower front reduced by 3 cm.

Gola is not a single part. Gentili Cucine lists an under-worktop gola, an intermediate one for drawers, single and double vertical gola, a corner gola and a gola bottom panel for wall units.

The side panels change too. At GF Interiors the integrated finishing sides come with or without a gola cut-out, and with the cut-out they need caps. In Febal Casa's gola system, the structural sides are not milled and the gola ends inside the side panel.

And some units do not exist in a gola version: at Gentili Cucine, the fridge tall unit.

03

Wall units: up, slanted, bifold

Doors that lift are not plain hinges. They have a mechanism, and the mechanism has rules.

Gentili Cucine has wall units with a flap door that lifts up (vasistas), a vertical lift-up (vela), a slanted lift-up (traslata) and a double bifold door (pacchetto).

The mechanisms are Blum: Aventos HK for the flap door, HF for the bifold, HS for the slanted lift-up and HK for the vertical lift-up. All have a cushioned close and the door stays in whatever position you leave it.

The mechanisms set limits on the layout. No top unit goes above a slanted lift-up wall unit; with a bifold or slanted lift-up there are no connecting shelves and no upper frame; and flap and vertical lift-up doors do not open next to tall units with frames.

Febal Casa states lift-up, Vela, Lift and folding-door mechanisms from the Aventos family, with a spring that stops the door in any position, an integrated brake and three-dimensional adjustment.

GF Interiors fits its flap-door wall units with a soft-close mechanism that holds the door in any position. Scandola Mobili has a dish-drainer wall unit with a lift-up door, and Callesella wall units with one or two lift-up glass doors.

And no handle on the wall unit: Gentili Cucine and Febal Casa fit an aluminium profile to the bottom of the unit that lets the door open without a handle, and at GF Interiors the black wall-unit gola is included in the price. At Febal Casa it is not provided when wall units are stacked.

04

Walk-through doors, pocket doors and other solutions

Names and details are Gentili Cucine's. At the end, how Scandola Mobili does it.

Ride door

A tall unit with a door that opens inwards. It carries a HOLE handle on the back so it can be opened from inside, and the unit must be anchored to an adjacent tall unit or to the wall.

Gentili Cucine · Ride walk-through door

Vaevieni door

A through door that opens both ways, 30 to 75 cm wide. It is fixed to the adjacent tall unit with no drilling in floor or ceiling; that unit needs feet for an H. 12 or 15 plinth and a side panel down to the floor.

Gentili Cucine · Vaevieni walk-through door

Drop-down (ribalta)

A door that opens downwards, for example on a base unit with one flap-down door.

Gentili Cucine · Drop-down opening

Vela lift-up

The door lifts vertically on a Blum HK mechanism and leaves the whole unit open to reach.

Gentili Cucine · Lift-up opening

Traslata opening

The door lifts on a slant on a Blum HS mechanism, for full access to the interior.

Gentili Cucine · Opening Traslate

For doors that slide back into the carcase, Gentili Cucine has the Exedra and Revego tall units. Revego comes with integrated push opening and no handle at all, and is not made to measure.

Scandola Mobili, in its 2023 kitchen price list, has tall units with one or two “UNO” pocket doors with TIP-ON, or with a knob, handle or vertical gola, and a pair of “DUO” pocket doors with TIP-ON.

How a tall unit with pocket doors hides the whole work area is shown in Layout solutions.

05

Which house states what

The table shows what we found in the kitchen price list of each house we examined.

— : not found in the price list we examined. It does not necessarily mean the house does not offer it.

06

How we think about it

Our own approach, not a price-list fact.

We start from the door. Before deciding on gola or a handle, we check that the door you like takes that opening system.

Then the drawers. Where you open often and with full hands, a push or electric opening can make sense; elsewhere, a good handle is the simplest answer.

And on wall units we look at what sits beside and above, because that is where mechanisms set their limits.