Which hinges fit IKEA METOD fronts — and how the cup is bored

METOD fronts take standard 35 mm concealed cup hinges — the European standard. IKEA sells them as UTRUSTA, but the design is not IKEA's own: a hinge taken off a real METOD door and checked in September 2026 turned out to be a Blum 71B3590, a CLIP top BLUMOTION 110° in the INSERTA (press-in) version. That is why Blum hardware fits these fronts as well as the original does — the original is Blum. A front is prepared for one with a single large blind bore of Ø35 mm, the cup, plus two small holes beside it that fix the hinge to the front.

UTRUSTA is a Blum hinge

This is one of those facts IKEA never prints, and it settles most of the questions people have. The soft-close UTRUSTA is a Blum 71B3590: CLIP top BLUMOTION, 110° opening angle, INSERTA mounting — two Ø8 expanding dowels that press into holes in the front, no screws involved. We read the number off a hinge removed from an actual METOD door.

The practical conclusion is a simple one: you do not have to buy your hinges at IKEA. What the hinge itself demands — the Ø35 mm cup, its depth, the two holes beside it — is Blum's own published specification, so a CLIP top bought off the shelf wants exactly what the original wanted, and both routes lead to the same front. Buy them at a DIY store, a furniture-fittings supplier, or the same shop that cuts your board — and hinges salvaged from old doors work just as well. Where that cup sits on the door is a separate question, and the one that decides whether the front fits: the cup positions on our drawings are verified and match the IKEA METOD system.

UTRUSTA is our default, and every door is drawn for it: the Ø35 mm cup plus two Ø8 holes for press-in dowels. The cup itself is universal — Ø35 mm is the standard IKEA, Blum and Hettich all build to, so almost any cup hinge will sit in it, and the brand is your choice. Only the arm mounting differs: a screw has nothing to bite on in a Ø8 hole. So if you already know you want screw-on hinges, tell the shop before anything is drilled — the paid set carries a reference page with both mounting systems on it.

The Ø35 mm cup vs the mounting holes

"Hinge drilling" covers two entirely different operations, and confusing them is the most common misunderstanding at the quoting stage.

The cup is one large round hole, 35 mm across, bored with a cup cutter into the back of the front. The body of the hinge sits in it — the whole mechanism disappears into the board. The cup is blind: it does not go through.

The mounting holes are two small holes beside the cup, which fix the hinge to the front. On UTRUSTA — as on any press-in hinge — they are sockets for Ø8 dowels. They only make sense in strict relation to the cup, which is what fixes everything else.

A third part — the mounting plate, which screws to the inside of the carcass — does not concern the front at all. A METOD carcass comes with rows of holes drilled at the factory for exactly this, and nothing has to be added.

For your order this means one concrete thing: "yes, we drill 35" may mean the cup only. Our drawing carries both kinds of hole, each dimensioned from the finished edges of the front — worth saying out loud when you ask for a quote.

Why the cup is blind

A blind hole is one that stops inside the material. The cutter goes in to a set depth and no further — a front with a hole through to the visible face is firewood.

That sounds trivial, but it is usually what decides whether a given shop can do this job at all. Cutting board to size and edge-banding it is universal; boring blind Ø35 mm cups is not — and it is the thing to ask about separately, before you order anything else. It is not an exotic service or an upcharge, just a question of whether the shop has a boring machine with a depth stop and does this work routinely.

Depth brings the second point with it: board thickness. Our drawings are dimensioned for 18 mm board, every hole depth is printed on the sheet, and every one of them assumes that thickness. 18 mm is what we recommend. 16 mm board — the thickness of many IKEA fronts — also works, but the same depths then leave only a few millimetres between the bottom of the bore and the visible face, so the depth stop has to be set carefully; on anything thinner they leave too little, which is why 16 mm is the floor. If a shop proposes a board outside that range, that is the moment to stop and ask.

And orientation: the cup is bored from the back. Every drawing we produce shows the rear face of the front — the one that ends up inside the cabinet once it is hung. The show face stays untouched, which is the whole point of a concealed hinge.

How many hinges

The number of hinges follows the size of the front, and not by height alone. Two is the floor — even the smallest METOD door hangs on two, and nothing hangs on one. Taller doors get a third, and the tallest, two-metre ones get a fourth. At the same height, a wider (so heavier) door crosses the boundary sooner than a narrow one, which is why "three hinges above such-and-such height" is not a rule that holds.

So we do not publish a formula here. IKEA states the exact count in the product details of every front it sells — if you have that page open, it is the most reliable source there is. In the configurator we suggest a count for your size and let you change it within a sensible band, and the drawing always says how many hinges it was drawn for. The index page of the set lists the hinge count per door, and the notes page adds them up into the total to buy — the number you take to the shop.

One practical note: settle the hinge count before cutting, not after. Adding a fourth cup to a finished, banded front is possible, but it is freehand work without a machine and without a drawing.

Tool-free hinges (INSERTA)

INSERTA is Blum's name for press-in mounting: the hinge arrives with two Ø8 expanding dowels already fitted, and they press into holes in the front. No screws, no driver, no chance of a screw going in at an angle and setting the hinge crooked. UTRUSTA is exactly this, and it is what our drawings are drawn for.

That leaves the boring itself, and there are two ways to get it done.

Order everything in one go. A single order covers the cutting to size, the edge banding, the Ø35 mm cups and the two Ø8 holes beside each of them. The front comes back ready to hang, and nobody has to calculate anything or line up a template — the drawing dimensions both from the finished edges of the front. This is the route we recommend: a machine with a depth stop hits the same spot on every piece.

Or mark it out and drill it yourself. Then you order the cutting and the banding only, and transfer the holes from the drawing onto the back of the front. There is kit for this that makes all the difference on a workbench: hinge jigs with guide bushes set the cup and both holes off the edges of the front, and depth stops — a collar on the bit, the stop on the drill, or a drill stand — keep the cutter from going further than it should. The cup is blind, so the depth matters every bit as much as the position; before you touch the first front, make a test bore in an offcut of the same board.

Next

You choose the hinge side and the hinge count in the configurator, with a free 2D preview alongside. If all you want is the number for one particular size, the size table prints the hinge count beside every door we support, along with its finished dimensions. Before you take the drawing to a shop, read the guide to ordering custom fronts — it lists what to order in one go and what to confirm before you accept a quote, and the other guides cover dimensions, materials and how to keep the kitchen from looking like a catalogue.