When referring to an "overlay" people will often mean two different things. There is an overlay on your cabinets and an overlay of the hinge itself. In order for the cabinet doors to function correctly you will need to match these to each other. I'll show you how to measure overlay hinges and cabinet overlays.
If you already have your hinges and you want to determine the overlay of the hinge so that you can replace them, then you can evaluate the overlay very simply. Below are images of two different 1/2" overlay hinges. The overlay is the distance from the corner wraparound part of the hinge and the barrel. This OVERLAYS, or overlaps, the cabinet door with the cabinet door opening.
Here are two examples shown on the semi-wraparound 1/2" overlay hinges.
Most overlay hinges will either be 1/4", 3/8", or 1/2". So if you are measuring and it's really close to 1/4", 3/8", or 1/2", then just round to the nearest overlay increment as long as it's quite close. Depending on how the hinge is made the measurements will vary a millimeter or two but that won't end up affecting anything. Be sure to measure just up to where the hinge turns down. Do not measure to the outside of the hinge.
There are also hinges that are called "variable overlay" which mount on the outside of the cabinet and allow the builder to simply slide the hinge to whatever location or overlay is needed. Variable overlay hinges are a much more flexible option but aren't quite as sturdy as they don't wrap around the cabinet. Unless you have very heavy cabinet doors then variable overlay hinges will still be sufficiently strong. Here's what a variable overlay hinge looks like. Screws will be visible when using a variable overlay hinge.
There is also one more kind of overlay hinge in the full wraparound. The full wraparound overlay hinge adds a lot of sturdiness to the cabinet doors and would be appropriate for very heavy doors. The full wraparound hinges for overlay cabinet doors look like the one shown here and wrap entirely around the face frame. You can see the extra lip at the bottom as being different from the partial wrap hinges at the top.
Once you understand what the overlay of a hinge is it very easy to determine how far your cabinets are overlaying in your kitchen or wherever they are. As you can see below the 1/2" overlay of the hinges above is marked with the red line. A 1/2" overlay hinge overlays the cabinet door 1/2" past the opening of the cabinet. Whatever the distance of the highlighted red area, that is the overlay of your cabinet door.
And of course if this doesn't answer all your questions we've got experts on hand to answer any of your questions and make sure you get the exact hinge you need. Browse our inventory of hinges for overlay cabinet doors today. We have a variety of cabinet hinge overlays to choose from including semi-concealed hinges, residential, specialist hinges and more.