Shopping for Doorknobs

Charlotte Moss wishes people would pay more attention to the hardware on their doors.

“It’s one of those items that sometimes gets left to the end” of renovations, said Moss, the well-known interior designer. “To me, it’s equivalent to a buzzkill when you spend all this money decorating or building a house and forget about those details.”

While doorknobs are relatively small, they have a “huge impact” on the way people perceive a space, she said: “It’s like a woman putting on jewelry. If you’ve got a great dress on and put on a pair of terrible earrings, that’s the first thing everybody’s going to notice.”

As it happens, Moss has recently been thinking a lot about the parallels between jewelry and door hardware. Earlier this month, she introduced a collection of cuff bracelets based on archival patterns from the architectural hardware company P.E. Guerin.

Whether you are accessorizing an outfit or a door, she said, when you choose pieces that are appropriate yet distinctive, “it just notches it up and takes things to a different level.”

— Is the hardware made of a material that will work with other things in the room? “You have to think about the plumbing fittings, the light fixtures and the hardware together,” Moss advised. “There should be harmony in those finishes.”

— Does the door need to lock? If so, buy what is called a “privacy set” of knobs or levers. Those referred to as “passage sets” are for doors that do not require a lock.

— Will the hardware fit your door? Doors are drilled in various ways, requiring different types of latches and rosettes. Measure carefully and, when in doubt, defer to a knowledgeable sales assistant, Moss said.