Drawer Slide Feature Guide

Whether you're dealing with a broken drawer or in the midst of a kitchen or bathroom renovation, navigating the plethora of drawer slides can be overwhelming. Here's a guide to help clarify your options:

First, you'll need two key pieces of information:

The length of your drawer
The clearance between the drawer sides and the cabinet sides

As long as you choose slides that fit within your cabinet's dimensions, your decision will come down to your budget and personal preferences. Below, we've outlined the various features to consider for your home project.

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3/4 Extension VS Full Extension

The extension of a slide is simply how far out of the cabinet your drawer will protrude. Unless you have a critical application where you MUST have access to the entire drawer, like a tool box in your shop, for example, this option mainly comes down to budget.

3/4 Extension

3/4 extension slides will leave a small portion of the back of your drawer inside the cabinet when it is fully extended. They are often chosen for purely economic reasons as they are usually much cheaper than their full extension counterparts, while achieving nearly all of the same functionality.

Full Extension

Full extension slides, like the name implies, allow your drawer to extend the full distance out of the cabinet, giving you access to the entire drawer. These are often used in interior rollout drawers, toolboxes, or pullout organizers tucked into your base cabinet.

Side Mount VS Undermount

How does your drawer attach to the slide? Side mounts will typically require more side clearance between your drawer box and the cabinet opening. Undermounts will typically require a newly built drawer box, or modifications to your current drawer box according to manufacturer specifications.

Side Mount

Side mount drawer slides will attach directly to the side of your drawer box. If you check in your kitchen right now, chances are you have side mounted drawer slides. The nylon roller variety is a very popular budget option for side mount slides, but more and more cabinet shops are moving to the more robust steel ball bearing variety, like one we have pictured here. Check your side clearance carefully before purchasing new side mount drawer slides.

Undermount

Undermount drawer slides are quickly becoming the most popular type of drawer slide (the Blum Tandem undermounts are by far our best selling product). You might have guessed, but these types of slides will sit underneath your drawer box. There is a small learning curve when it comes to construction of the box if you're more used to installing other types of slides, but the ease of use and installation once you get it down are second to none.

Optional Features

Below you will find a number of features that are not necessarily crucial to the functionality of a standard drawer, but depending on your goals and application, some of these may be absolutely critical.

Soft Close

When you close a drawer equipped with soft close, the very last inch or so gets pulled in automatically and dampened by some sort of mechanism. There are many drawer slides today with integrated soft close and they are only growing in popularity. You can also retrofit old drawers with add on devices which you can find here.

Overtravel

When full extension just isn't long enough for your application, overtravel is the feature you will want to look for. They work just like full extension slides, but they extend some additional amount. Generally the extra travel you get is 1 inch, but you can find them as low as 3/4 inch, or as high as 1-1/4 inches. Your mileage may very there depending on the model.

Integrated Drawer Box Sides

There are a few series of slides out there that have the drawer box sides built in. Pictured here, we have the Blum Legrabox system. For the Legrabox system you only need to build the bottom, the back, and the front of the drawer box.

Hold Out

Hold out is a feature that will keep your drawer or pullout in the open position. Typically you would find these on a pullout keyboard tray on a computer desk.