Kitchen Hinges

The most common place to find concealed hinges is in your kitchen cabinets as they are hidden inside the cabinet allowing a feature to be made of the cupboard door. The popular choice of hinges for kitchen cupboards are full overlay concealed hinges, these let the door fit inside the cupboard carcass allowing the door edge to be perfectly in line with the edge of the cabinet. These types of hinges have a straight arm. If it is a display cabinet with a glass front you may find that it is an inset hinge, this means that the cupboard door is set inside the cabinet frame.

 

 

Inset hinges have a large crank/bend in the arm so they are easy to tell apart.  In older, more traditional solid wood kitchens you might also find a half overlay hinge, this basically allows the door to be half over the frame, which means you see the other half of the cabinet frame. This style of hinge is usual for kitchens in the high end category as it shows that the frame is solid wood as appose to the MDF carcasses you find in lots of newer kitchens. See below examples of a half overlay and inset overlay hinge typically used in a kitchen.

 

 

Bedroom Hinges

Similar to the kitchen hinges, bedroom furniture hinges are generally concealed hinges found in furniture like cupboards and wardrobes. Most of these pieces of furniture use full overlay hinges to hide the hinge inside the cabinet, but there are some pieces of furniture like glass doors or display units that will use inset hinges to allow the doors to tuck inside the cabinet frame. 

 

 

Office Hinges

In the office you find a selection of desk height cupboards and also tall wardrobe like cupboards, and in both of these you will commonly find concealed hinges.  The standard for cupboards like this are the full overlay hinges as they allow the cupboard door to cover all of the cabinet frame, and often the doors are the same colour or style as the desks around them.  As with the bedroom and kitchen hinges, you do also find display cabinets with glass doors in offices using an inset hinge.

 

 

Shopfitting Hinges

As well as in the home and office, you also find concealed hinges in furniture involved with shop floor displays and also as storage.  Similar to the uses above you will find full overlay hinges in cupboards used for storage across shops floor displays.You can often find inset concealed hinges in glass display cabinets that are used to store items of high value with a lock on the doors. The inset hinge allows the glass door to be set inside the cupboard frame.