What is a Self Closing Hinge?

A self-closing hinge is a unique type of cabinet hinge that is specifically designed to close by itself, ensuring that you don’t have to push a cabinet door completely shut in order to securely close it. These hinges come in many different styles, so you can find one that matches your cabinet door and your decorative style.

Common Uses and Applications

• If you are too busy to pay close attention to whether or not your kitchen cabinet is closed all the way or when you don’t want to touch your cabinets with wet or dirty hands.
• What if you are handling a food product like chicken, fish, or meat, that can attract bacteria if it comes into contact with a cabinet door surface? Help to avoid that potential health risk by installing self-closing hinges, which makes it a little bit easier to shut cabinets without touching them with hands that may not be sanitary.
• Just give the cabinet door a bump or a nudge and it will close itself, even if your hands are full of sticky batter or dusty flour. A self-closing hinge might be really useful, too, if you’re in the bathroom with moisturizer or hair products on your fingers – or are in your workshop with motor oil, grease, or grime on your hands.

How They Work

A self-closing hinge has a spring built into it, which gives it just enough added closing power to make any door finish closing all by itself. You don’t have to worry that it will close on its own when you need for it to stay open, however, because you have to first give it a gentle initial push to get the self-closing action started. Once the door reaches a certain point in the closing process, the spring activates and pulls the door closed the rest of the way, so that it is securely shut against the cabinet.

Adjusting Self-Closing Cabinet Hinges

European self-closing cabinet hinges are designed so that you can tweak their alignment and make adjustments even after installing the hinges, in order to ensure that the cabinet door closes without any gaps. There are usually two or three places on a European self-closing hinge to make these adjustments with a screwdriver or similar tool.

Three-way adjustment features typically include the following: depth, side-to-side, and height adjustment.