Opening a Fridge Door in a Tight Kitchen Moving the Hinge Pin Into the Corner of the Door

This application covers a refrigerator door hinge arrangement in which the pivot pin sits in a recess cut into the corner of the door itself, rather than above it. The point is to let a flat fronted door swing fully open when the appliance is installed hard against cabinetry, without resorting to a complicated multi joint hinge. The applicant is LG Electronics, the Korean appliance and electronics manufacturer.

The Problem

Refrigerators have become furniture. Buyers want them flush with the surrounding cabinets, with a front panel that matches the kitchen or can be swapped out later, which means the appliance is installed with almost no gap on either side. That is an aesthetic requirement with an awkward mechanical consequence.

A door on a conventional hinge pivots about an axis behind and above its front face. As it opens, the outer corner of the door sweeps an arc wider than the door itself, and if there is a cabinet or a second appliance immediately alongside, the corner strikes it. The usual fix is to leave a gap, but an integrated kitchen with a visible gap down one side defeats the purpose of buying an integrated appliance. Worse, if the gap is narrowed, the door cannot open past 90 degrees, and drawers and shelves inside cannot be pulled out at all.

The specification runs through the existing answers and rejects each. Multi joint hinges built from a linkage of arms, as in Korean laid open publication 10-2004-0049683, let the door step outwards and clear the wall, but the mechanism is complex and expensive to make, its operating envelope grows with any protrusion beside the appliance, it takes noticeably more force to swing, the door moving away from the cabinet creates a pinch hazard for anyone standing beside it, and routing electrical wiring and tubing into the door through a moving linkage is described as virtually impossible.

The other approach, taken in Korean laid open publication 10-2017-0137565, is to round or bevel the front of the door so that the corner is closer to the pivot and sweeps a smaller arc. That works geometrically but constrains the front of the door to a curved or inclined shape, which will not sit flush in a run of cabinetry, and makes a detachable front panel difficult to implement. The problem is compounded by insulation: the thicker the door, the further the corner is from the pivot, and doors are getting thicker as efficiency requirements rise.

What This Invention Does

The invention keeps the simple single axis hinge and moves the axis instead. A hinge mounting part is recessed into the door body itself, set back from the upper end of the door, and the upper hinge is inserted into that recess. The hinge pin drops into a pin mounting hole formed in the lower surface of the recess, which places the rotational axis in the edge region defined by the front end and the side end of the door rather than behind and above it.

Because the axis is effectively at the front corner of the door, the outer corner sweeps a much smaller arc, and the door can open fully alongside adjacent furniture without the linkage of a multi joint hinge. The specification frames the geometric target explicitly: with the door open at 90 degrees, the door is thick enough that the extension line of the door gasket and the extension line of the storage member inside the cabinet are spaced apart, which is the condition for drawers and shelves to slide out cleanly.

The second half of the claim deals with wiring. Modern doors carry displays, touch controls, lighting and sometimes dispensers, all of which need power and signal run from the cabinet across the pivot. A hinge pin large enough to pass a full wiring loom would be structurally intrusive, so the arrangement splits the route: some wires pass through the inside of the hinge pin, and the rest are guided into the door through an upper opening formed in the upper surface of the hinge mounting part, with the opening made larger in diameter than the pin. The pin can then stay slim.

Putting a recess in the corner of a foam filled door removes material exactly where the door is weakest, so the design compensates. An upper cap deco covers the recess, and it is fixed by fastening members that pass through the plate shaped front plate forming the front surface and the side frame forming the side surface, with several fasteners grouped around the hinge mounting part to tie the corner together. The panel assembly on the front remains flat and, importantly, remains separable.

Key Features

• Recessed hinge mounting part. The upper hinge sits in a recess formed in the door body, spaced back from the upper end of the door.
• Corner located pivot. The hinge pin occupies the edge region formed by the front end and side end of the recess, shrinking the arc swept by the outer corner of the door.
• Flat front retained. The door keeps a plate shaped front surface and a detachable panel assembly, so it can be finished to match surrounding cabinetry.
• Split wiring route. Some wires pass through the hinge pin and the remainder through a larger upper opening in the recess, allowing the pin diameter to be minimised.
• Reinforced corner. An upper cap deco is fastened through both the front plate and the side frame, with multiple fasteners around the hinge mounting part to restore strength lost to the recess.
• Clearance for internal storage. The door thickness and pivot position are set so that at 90 degrees the gasket line clears the line of the internal storage member.

Who Is Behind It

LG Electronics Inc. is a Korean multinational headquartered in Seoul, founded in 1958 and one of the largest manufacturers of home appliances in the world. Refrigeration is among its core product lines, and its built in and panel ready ranges are precisely the products this hinge arrangement is designed for.

The three named inventors, Minho Cheong, Daekil Kang and Ohchul Kwon, are appliance engineers working in LG’s refrigerator development line. The subject matter is characteristic of that work: a narrow mechanical improvement, described in fine detail, that resolves a conflict between industrial design and mechanism.

The application is a divisional of Australian application 2023241366. This specification does not restate the priority chain beyond naming that parent, though the background is written against Korean prior art and the filing follows LG’s usual route from a domestic Korean priority filing.

Why It Matters

Built in and panel ready refrigeration is the fastest growing premium segment in major appliances, driven by kitchens designed as continuous joinery rather than as rooms containing appliances. In that segment the installation constraint is absolute: the appliance has to work with zero clearance, and a door that cannot open fully is a product that cannot be specified. A mechanical solution that avoids the cost and feel of a multi joint hinge has direct margin consequences on a high volume product.

The technical trend pushing on this is insulation. Energy efficiency standards keep tightening, and the response has been thicker door walls and, increasingly, vacuum insulated panels. Every millimetre added to door thickness moves the outer corner further from a conventionally placed pivot and makes the clearance problem worse, so relocating the axis into the door is a way of buying back geometry that insulation keeps consuming. The wiring provision points the same way, since door mounted screens and cameras have made the hinge a data path as well as a bearing.

The filing pattern is standard for the appliance sector. Manufacturers protect mechanical detail densely, because the differentiating features of a refrigerator are not thermodynamic but architectural, and a competitor can copy a hinge geometry far more easily than a compressor. A divisional filed in 2026 off an Australian parent from 2023 suggests LG is pursuing additional claim scope around a design already in production.

Related Concepts

• Refrigerator – the appliance whose door geometry this application addresses.
• Hinge – the mechanism whose axis placement is the substance of the claim.
• Vacuum insulated panel – the insulation technology behind ever thicker appliance doors.
• Kitchen cabinet – the joinery context that creates the zero clearance requirement.
• Major appliance – the product category in which built in refrigeration competes.
• LG Electronics – the applicant and one of the largest appliance manufacturers worldwide.

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AU 2026202088 was published in the Australian Official Journal of Patents on 9 April 2026 and is open for public inspection. Patent applications represent inventions that are sought to be protected and do not necessarily reflect commercially available products.