Choosing Door Knobs… and levers and deadbolts oh my!

Updating door knobs in your home can instantly upgrade your home but where do you start? I’m sharing what we considered when choosing door hardware for our whole house and the different handles, knobs and levers we ended up choosing.

We’re *almost* complete the bulk of our main floor renovation (bathrooms will have to wait!) and now that it’s coming together, I thought I’d share some of the decision making processes we went through. One of those things? Door knobs! We have updated all the doors and door knobs through our main floor as we put down the new flooring. We did this in our last house too and holy smokes, you guys it updates an older home and makes it feel so fresh.

In this house, we went with the same 4 panel shakers that we did in our last place but opted for black hardware instead of the classic brushed nickel look we have always had. I LOVE the black hardware. It’s the perfect modern touch for our bright white home. Other than black, though… there’s a few different types of hardware we selected. Today I’m chatting through the different types, options and what we ultimately chose for our home. We purchased most of these knobs ourselves from Schlage last year, but today I’m excited to partner Schlage to share this post and the hardware on our new patio doors (you might have spied them when I shared how we painted those doors!). 

Guys… I put it all in a video! If that’s not for you though, read on- I’ve put this together in text for you as well. But if that IS your thing? I’d so love if you subscribed to me on YouTube!

The first thing we did in this home for door knobs is those beautiful modern black guys. I did a ton of research when we were choosing last year and fell in love with these Bowery matte black knobs from Schlage. I like the modern clean lines of them and we preferred the look of a knob over a lever to keep it a bit classic. We purchased these guys through Amazon, but they are sold at Home Depot as well!

Door knobs and levers come in three variations. Standard passage knobs, dummy knobs/inactive knobs and privacy knobs. Passage knobs are what we used on all of our kids bedrooms and the door to our rec room. These are just regular old latching door knobs. Dummy knobs are inactive handles that only go on the front of a door. These are perfect for ball catch closets. All of our closets use these. Lastly… privacy! You know, the locking knobs. We used these ones on our master bedroom and both bathrooms. Not that I’ll ever show you those bathrooms… those are a ways down the line on our renovation list ;)

Next up was our entry way. We replaced our front door when we made over our entryway this spring. We wanted a handleset that was black and had a modern but classic design. Nothing curly or cute for us. I also really wanted a smart lock but wasn’t crazy about how keyless entry locks looked. Those white buttons you could spot from the street… no thanks! We found the perfect touch pad lock and handleset from Schlage. You can read all about those ones and how to install a smart lock in this blog post here. The handleset we chose is the Schlage Century Entry Handle with the Schlage Sense Lock with Century Trim. It’s SO good, guys. The handle is square, but because of the matte black finish matching and the clean hard lines of our interior door knobs- they totally coordinate. 

And then most recently? Our patio doors! We rebuilt our deck (can’t wait to show you in the spring!) and replaced our patio doors, giving them a fresh coat of black paint. So of course, we wanted some gorgeous matte black hardware for that baby! I actually love the look of double levers for french doors. There’s something so ‘fancy hotel’ about it that I can’t get enough of. We only needed one knob for the french doors, but adding that second (inactive) handle makes them look 100x nicer. We chose the Schlage Northbrook Levers for this- again for the crisp lines and matte black finish to coordinate with the rest of the house- even without matching.

On the exterior, we used the same Century handleset as the front door… x2! I can’t wait to show you the outside of these doors once we finish the siding on the patio this spring! The double handleset combo looks so luxe, you guys. I’m smitten. 

Alright… so those are our door knobs! And a peek into all of Shane and my back and forth about what we want in door handles. Who knew choosing door knobs could be such an endeavour ;) Let me know if you have questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!