Klovo vs. the Steel Cabinet Brands You Already Know

The garage is the last room in the home that still looks like it belongs to a different era.

Think about how kitchen cabinets looked in the 1920s and 1930s: metal. Steel doors, metal frames, utilitarian finishes. Then the industry shifted — wood replaced metal because wood looked like it belonged in a home. Today you wouldn’t put metal kitchen cabinets in a house you care about. The same transition is happening in the garage.

Steel garage cabinets are the right tool for a specific job: a mechanic’s shop, a utility space, somewhere you’re working on cars or bikes and durability against impact and grease is the priority. If that’s your garage, metal works fine.

But most garages today are something else entirely. They’re home gyms. WFH setups. Craft and hobby stations. Family hubs where kids store their gear and parents actually want the space to feel like part of the house. For those garages, a steel box with a powder-coated finish is a mismatch — functionally and aesthetically.

This comparison is straightforward. Here’s how Klovo stacks up against the steel brands you’ve already seen.

Weight capacity

Gladiator specs capacity per shelf. A cabinet with three shelves at 75 lbs each is a 225 lb cabinet in practice — and only at perfectly distributed loads. Klovo’s 500 lbs is the per-cabinet number regardless of how the load is distributed across shelves.

For light storage — spray cans, cleaning supplies, seasonal bins — any of these works. For a home gym, a workshop setup, or anything that gets serious daily use, the capacity gap is real.

Cabinet depth

Eighteen inches is the right depth for a garage. It stores everything a garage needs to store — equipment, tools, bins, gear — without eating into the floor space you need to actually use the room. Gladiator’s deeper configurations are kitchen dimensions applied to a garage, which means less room to move, park, or work.

Finish and feel

Steel cabinets are finished with powder coat. Durable against impact, and the right choice if the cabinet is going to take wrenches thrown at it. In a lifestyle garage — a home gym, a WFH setup, a family mudroom — powder coat reads as utilitarian. It looks like workshop equipment because it is workshop equipment.

Klovo uses Thermally Fused Laminate (TFL) — the same finish standard used in kitchen cabinetry. Scratch-resistant, moisture-resistant, and designed to look like it belongs inside the home, because it does. Push-to-open doors and drawers throughout — no hardware to snag or loosen. Clean lines, no visible pulls.

The finish is not a cosmetic detail. It’s the difference between a garage that feels like a storage room and one that feels like an extension of the house.

Assembly

Gladiator RTA: Cam locks, alignment dowels, Allen wrenches. Plan for 45–90 minutes per cabinet.

NewAge welded line: Arrives pre-assembled, which sounds like a win until you schedule LTL freight delivery and coordinate two people to move it.

Klovo: GlideLock panels push and lock together. Each cabinet assembles in about 2–3 minutes. A full set in under an hour, one person, no tools required except a drill for wall anchors.

Price

Klovo sits between Gladiator and NewAge on price. What it delivers at that price — TFL finish, 500 lb capacity, Blum hinges, GlideLock assembly — is not available from either competitor at any price point.

The honest take

If you’re running a mechanic’s bay or need storage that can take a grinding wheel kicked against it, metal cabinets are built for that. They’re good at what they’re good at.

If your garage is a home gym, a WFH studio, a family drop zone, a craft bench, or anywhere you spend time and want it to feel like part of the house — the steel brands are a category mismatch. They were designed for a different garage than the one you’re building.

See the Klovo sets. Browse the collection →