Blum technology in bespoke kitchens: hinges, drawers, pocket doors and handle-free opening

A bespoke Michelessi kitchen can be judged with your eyes closed: by the noise a drawer does not make when it closes, by the lightness with which a wall-unit door lifts, by the fact that a tall unit loaded with provisions glides out at the touch of a finger. Behind these gestures is the hardware, and for the hardware we have made a precise choice: we choose and fit Blum hardware, the Austrian company from Höchst, in Vorarlberg, which has designed hinges, runners and opening systems for furniture since 1952. It is the one that, in our daily work, gives us the most consistent performance and the most complete range.

We work at a high level, and the level of a kitchen is not set only by the marble slab we cut in our workshop in Aprilia: it is set by the hundreds of movements repeated every day for twenty years. That is why we keep up to date with everything Blum presents, we try the new systems as soon as they are available and we bring them into our kitchens once they are proven: the slim drawer sides of LEGRABOX, the REVEGO pocket door, the electric SERVO-DRIVE opening, the AVENTOS HKi lift built into the cabinet side. The result for you is a kitchen that holds the best available on the market at the moment it is built.

Blum declares a lifetime guarantee on its products and subjects them to endurance tests in its laboratory: the test cycles declared by Blum are in the region of 200,000 openings and closings for hinges, 100,000 for drawers and 80,000 for lift-up doors. These are the manufacturer's figures; what we add is proper installation, the adjustment of every door and every front at fitting, and service over the years. We list the hardware in the quote system by system, and in the Aprilia showroom you can handle it before deciding. The rest of the kitchen is on the pages indoor kitchens and doors, hinges and finishes.

The hinge is the piece of hardware that works hardest in a kitchen, and CLIP top BLUMOTION is the hinge we fit on hinged doors: it has the BLUMOTION damper built into the hinge arm, so the door closes by itself, gently and silently, however hard you push it. CLIP is the tool-free fixing: the hinge clips onto its mounting plate and releases with a lever, so a door comes off for cleaning without a single screw. BLUMOTION is the soft close, with a switch to deactivate it on small, light doors where it is not needed.

Every hinge adjusts in three directions, height, depth and side, with screws you reach with the door open: if the house settles or after ten years the gap between two doors is no longer perfect, it is realigned in a minute. The opening angles and the special versions cover every situation of a bespoke kitchen; the table shows how we use them.

On heavy doors, such as a marble or Dekton front bonded to a backing, we calculate the number and position of the hinges on the real weight of the door: an extra hinge costs little, a door that sags with the years costs a kitchen.

In a modern kitchen the drawers and deep pull-outs carry almost everything: pans, plates, provisions, cutlery, waste. That is why the drawer system is the hardware choice that changes daily life most, and Blum makes three families of them, which we use according to the design: LEGRABOX, TANDEMBOX antaro and MERIVOBOX. They share full extension, with the drawer coming all the way out; BLUMOTION soft close; synchronised running, which keeps the front from wobbling; and load capacities declared by Blum in two classes, the higher one for pull-outs loaded with pans and bottles. What changes is the shape of the drawer sides, the finishes and the degree of customisation.

In the design we decide drawer by drawer: height of the side, depth, load, divider. A pan pull-out is tall and sturdy; a cutlery drawer is shallow and has AMBIA-LINE with the knife holder; a bottle pull-out takes the higher load class. The front, in wood, lacquer or stone, is adjusted in height, side and tilt, so that the gaps are the same across the whole kitchen: that is where a well-made bespoke kitchen shows.

On wall units a hinged door is often the wrong choice: it swings sideways, stays open at head height and, on a wide cabinet, becomes heavy. Blum's AVENTOS systems take the door upwards, with a movement that stops wherever you leave it and closes gently with BLUMOTION; with SERVO-DRIVE the door opens at a touch and closes at the press of a button. Each model matches a type of wall unit and a way of opening. The mechanisms are set to the weight and height of the door: this is why we always ask for the material of the front before ordering.

In the 3D design we show you the swept space of the open door, because an AVENTOS HS on a cabinet close to the ceiling needs room to rise. For wall units that stay on show we prefer AVENTOS HKi; in a kitchen with wall units of different heights we combine the models.

REVEGO is Blum's pocket door system: a large, full-height door opens like an ordinary hinged door and then slides into a pocket at the side of the cabinet, vanishing completely; when you draw it out and close it, the kitchen becomes a cupboard again. It answers a question we hear more and more often: a kitchen open to the living room that, once the cooking is done, is no longer seen. With REVEGO we design a continuous front, in wood, lacquer or porcelain stoneware, which closed is a wall and open frees the worktop, the hob, the sink, the appliances and the wall units, with the interior lighting we set to come on as it opens.

Blum offers it in two versions: REVEGO uno, with a single door disappearing into a pocket on one side, and REVEGO duo, with two doors that meet in the middle and disappear one to the right and one to the left. The movement is guided and damped in both phases, the swing and the slide. In our work REVEGO comes in for the kitchen in the living room of a flat, where everything is closed after dinner; for the kitchen of an office; for the breakfast area of a formal home. The pockets take a few centimetres from the cabinets at the sides: this is why we decide it in the 3D design and not on site. Inside, the hardware is the same as in our other kitchens: LEGRABOX in the drawers, AVENTOS in the wall units, SERVO-DRIVE wherever handleless opening is wanted. Projects of this kind are on the page bespoke kitchens.

A handleless kitchen can open in three ways: with a recessed grip, that is a groove in the edge of the front; with TIP-ON, the mechanical ejector that pushes the drawer or the door out with a light press; with SERVO-DRIVE, Blum's electric system that opens the drawer, the pull-out or the lift-up door at a touch and closes them with the soft close. The recessed grip and TIP-ON need no power; SERVO-DRIVE does, with a power unit hidden in the cabinet, and so it must be allowed for in the design of the services.

SERVO-DRIVE is the choice that most strikes in our showroom: you touch the front of a pull-out full of pans, and the pull-out comes out by itself. On AVENTOS wall units a touch opens the door and a button closes it. For the waste pull-out under the sink Blum offers SERVO-DRIVE uno, a version for a single cabinet with its own power supply: it opens with a nudge of the knee while your hands hold the chopping board, and it is the application we recommend to those who want to try electric opening before extending it. For the integrated fridge and dishwasher there is SERVO-DRIVE flex, which opens handleless appliances at a touch as well.

TIP-ON is the mechanical solution: an ejector which, when the front is pressed, pushes it out just far enough to grasp. On drawers there is TIP-ON BLUMOTION, which combines push-to-open with soft close; on doors TIP-ON works with the CLIP top hinge without damper, because the damper would hold the door back as it opens. We choose with you, cabinet by cabinet: SERVO-DRIVE where the front is heavy or hands are often busy; TIP-ON where a simple opening with no wiring is wanted; the recessed grip where the line of the cabinet calls for it.

In every kitchen there are spaces that are usually lost: the corner between two base units, the fifteen centimetres beside the hob, the plinth under the cabinets, the tall unit where the things at the back are never seen. Blum has a solution for each, and in our designs we use them to make every centimetre work.

• SPACE CORNER: the corner base unit with drawers and pull-outs set at 45 degrees, on LEGRABOX or TANDEMBOX runners, with full extension and BLUMOTION. The corner stops being the hole where unused pans end up and becomes, in an L-shaped or U-shaped kitchen, often the roomiest cabinet of all.
• SPACE TWIN: the narrow cabinet, just a few centimetres wide, beside the hob or the oven: full-extension drawers for spices, oil bottles, chopping boards and baking trays on edge, in the space otherwise closed off with a panel.
• SPACE STEP: the plinth becomes a drawer and, where needed, a step: it pulls out with the foot, bears the weight of a person according to Blum's declared figures and lets you reach the top shelf of the wall unit without a stool. We recommend it to those with wall units up to the ceiling.
• SPACE TOWER: the larder tall unit with full-extension internal drawers, one above the other, with high sides: every tray comes all the way out and can be reached from three sides. It is the answer to those who ask us where to put the shopping, with AMBIA-LINE or ORGA-LINE dividers keeping jars and bottles in order.

In the design we combine them with the other tall units: oven and microwave at eye level, integrated fridge with SERVO-DRIVE flex, SPACE TOWER larder next to the preparation zone. The standard layouts to start from are on the page modular kitchens and layouts.

Not every drawer has steel sides: in solid wood kitchens and in classic kitchens the drawer is made of wood, with its sides on show, and the hardware is hidden beneath the base. For these drawers we use Blum's MOVENTO and TANDEM runners, which are unseen, run with the same lightness and have the same soft close. MOVENTO is the concealed full-extension runner with the smoothest movement in the range, adjustable in four directions after fitting, with load capacities declared by Blum in two classes; it pairs with BLUMOTION, TIP-ON BLUMOTION and SERVO-DRIVE. TANDEM is the basic concealed runner, with partial or full extension, for drawers in lighter use and for internal drawers. The solid wood drawer on a MOVENTO runner unites the joiner's craft with the technique of the hardware: you will find it under wooden kitchens.

EXPANDO T is the detail that concerns us most closely as stonemasons. Our fronts in stone, Dekton and Laminam are thin, bonded to a backing, and conventional screws have nothing to bite into. EXPANDO T is Blum's fixing system for thin fronts: an element that expands inside the material and allows CLIP top BLUMOTION hinges, LEGRABOX fronts and AVENTOS doors to be fitted to stoneware, glass, stone on a backing and compact laminate. It is the hardware that carries heavy stone doors, and it lets us make a kitchen in which worktop, island, splashback and doors are all the same material, cut in our workshop: with EXPANDO T and hinges sized to the weight, a marble door is not a thing for photographs but a kitchen used every day.

Excellent hardware in a badly planned kitchen is no use at all. So before choosing the systems we design the kitchen by zones, following the method Blum has codified for ergonomic kitchen planning, and we adapt it to your home and to how you cook. There are five zones: provisions, meaning larder and fridge; tableware; washing, with sink and dishwasher; preparation, the main worktop; cooking. Everything in the zone where it is used, in drawers rather than behind doors, the heaviest things between knee and shoulder.

We measure the heights on you: worktop, oven in its tall unit, wall units and the point where an AVENTOS opens, because the edge of the open door must stay within reach of the person cooking. We calculate the weights on what you will put in the cabinets: the pan pull-out, the larder and the bottle drawer take the runners with the higher load class; on stone fronts we calculate the weight of the door and size hinges and lift systems accordingly.

All of this goes into the 3D design, drawn by our technical office with the architect and corrected with you until it is right: plan, elevations, compartments for the appliances, Blum systems cabinet by cabinet, marble or stone worktop chosen slab by slab. And then there is the trial in person: in the Aprilia showroom the drawers open, the doors lift, the electric opening is there to touch. Before signing a quote, come and close a LEGRABOX drawer with one finger: it is the simplest way to understand what we mean.

A kitchen with Blum hardware asks for almost nothing: the runners are not lubricated, the dampers are not replaced through normal use, the hinges do not work loose. What is needed, over the years, is adjustment, and adjustment is our job. CLIP top BLUMOTION hinges adjust in three directions; drawer fronts in height, side and tilt; MOVENTO runners in four directions; AVENTOS lift systems in force and in the position of the door. If a new house settles or you change the floor, our team goes over all the gaps and brings the kitchen back to the day it was installed.

For cleaning, a soft cloth and a neutral detergent are enough, according to the material of the fronts, as explained in doors, hinges and finishes; the drawers unclip with the levers beneath the base, without tools, to clean the cabinet. Spare parts remain available over time: if one day you want to add SERVO-DRIVE to a kitchen born with TIP-ON, we do it, on the same kitchen. Service comes from the team that did the fitting: the same team that answers when you call Michelessi.

The hardware is the part touched most often, but it is not the only technology that goes into our kitchens: in the same 3D drawing we design induction hobs flush with the marble or stoneware, hoods integrated into the hob, LED strips in the profiles under the wall units and inside the drawers, electronic taps, pop-up sockets in the worktop, integrated fridges and dishwashers opened with SERVO-DRIVE flex. We choose them with you from today's market and coordinate their fitting with qualified electricians and plumbers, with a single party responsible. The same goes for outdoor kitchens, where the hardware under a pergola follows the same rules with materials suited to the open air.

The workshop, the technical office and the showroom are in Aprilia, on the Pontina road at km 45.350, between Rome and Latina, where we have worked stone since 1976 and where the kitchens can be seen, touched and opened. The site survey is free in Rome, Latina and throughout Lazio; the 3D design and the quote are free everywhere, remotely too, starting from your measurements and photographs. We install with our own team throughout Italy and follow projects abroad: we fit kitchens with Blum hardware in flats in Rome, in villas along the coast between Anzio and Sabaudia and in country houses across Lazio, and in every case the team, the adjustment and the service over the years are ours.

1. Site survey and measurements
   We measure the room, the water, gas, drain and power connections, the out-of-square walls and the heights of the people who cook. In Rome, Latina and throughout Lazio the site survey is free; elsewhere we start from your measurements and photographs with a guided remote survey.
2. Design by zones
   We divide the kitchen into the five zones of the Blum method: provisions, tableware, washing, preparation, cooking. Everything goes in the zone where it is used, the heaviest things between knee and shoulder, in drawers rather than behind doors.
3. Choice of Blum systems, cabinet by cabinet
   CLIP top BLUMOTION hinges on the doors, LEGRABOX, TANDEMBOX antaro or MERIVOBOX in the drawers, AVENTOS in the wall units, SPACE TOWER and SPACE CORNER in the tall units and corners, REVEGO where the kitchen must disappear, SERVO-DRIVE or TIP-ON for handleless opening.
4. Trial in the Aprilia showroom
   Before deciding, the drawers open and close with one finger, the lift-up doors rise, the electric opening is there to touch. The slabs for the worktop and the samples of fronts in wood, lacquer, stoneware and stone are there too.
5. 3D design and quote
   The technical office draws the kitchen in three dimensions with the Blum systems listed cabinet by cabinet, the weight of the fronts and the force of the lift systems. We correct it together until it is right. The design and the quote are free everywhere.
6. Construction and stone cutting
   Carcasses and fronts to the measurements of the design; thin fronts in stoneware and stone receive EXPANDO T fixings; worktop, upstand and sides in marble or stone are cut on numerically controlled machines and finished by hand in the workshop.
7. Installation and adjustment
   Our team fits carcasses, hardware, fronts, worktop and appliances, adjusts every hinge, every front and every lift system and leaves the gaps equal across the whole kitchen. The same team provides service over the years.

Come and handle the Blum hardware in our showroom in Aprilia, or ask us for the free site survey and the free quote with the 3D design of your kitchen: request them here.