Leather cupboard pulls

For keen interior design enthusiasts, leather cupboard pulls aren’t anything new – but they haven’t had as much coverage as they should have had. When recently giving our kitchen a facelift (for under £50 too!), leather kitchen pulls were the obvious alternative to metal hardware. Not only do leather cupboard pulls look great – especially teamed with brass fastenings, but they’re also a relatively cheap alternative. One of my favourite things about them is that they don’t catch on your clothes… this happens A LOT in a small kitchen like mine!

I first spotted leather kitchen cabinet pulls on a Scandinavian interior wholesale website (can’t find the link for it now) and loved the look… but they were expensive at the time – around 30 Euros each. Then when it came to us finally sorting out our own kitchen, my fiancé found some leather cabinet pulls on Etsy… for £3.90 each! That’s one of the things I love about Etsy – you can source some fantastic stuff straight from the makers. The ones we bought were by leather artisan Carmina Ardelean who’s Etsy shop is called Bengjy Minu. She is based in Birmingham and hand-makes all of her products out of her home studio.

Fixing the leather cabinet pulls was super easy and I have a top tip for making sure that each one is properly centred. If you have a spare bit of wood or thick cardboard, line it up to where you want the screw to go and drill a hole through the wood. Then you can use it as a stencil or template to make sure that all of your other screws sit in exactly the same position without having to measure it each time. It worked a treat!

The original cabinet handles were centred on the door, but we found that they were too high up for us to use so we always opened the cabinets from the overlap at the bottom. So make sure your pulls are at comfortable reach! If you haven’t seen our before and after photos yet – click on the image below to watch the vlog ; )

And this is the final look! We’re so happy with it – it’s not our perfect kitchen but it’s so much better than it was before our makeover! One thing to consider with leather cupboard pulls though is that they’re not as durable as metal handles or pulls. As we have a four year-old, this could potentially be an issue – especially since everything needs to be cleaned so much more when you have little ones! But we weighed it up against the cost of replacing them and decided it was worth the risk. The leather pulls have been in for a couple of months now and we’re delighted with them : )

If you’re tempted to make your own – I found a great YouTube tutorial… perhaps cut up an old belt? I considered it, but seeing as the ones on Etsy were so affordable – I decided to save a bit of time instead! Let me know if you do make your own though – would love to see a photo!

Natalia xo