Making your existing floor plan more functional and user-friendly is one of the simple ways to give your kitchen remodel a boost. The type of kitchen cabinets matters because a recent Statista study confirmed that 29 percent of American homeowners pursued renovations because their old kitchens had deteriorated. Quality matters!
Cabinets and kitchen drawers play an important role in storage, available in different sizes and types to cater to other storage requirements. Naturally, ceiling height matters for tall cabinets. High ceilings allow you to get more storage with a taller wall cabinet height. For added styling at the top of your wall cabinets, crown molding is a great option for kitchens, even with modern designs. For oddly shaped spaces, custom cabinets can fit into the right angle for functional opening measures that maximize functionality.
Consider what you need for storage and usefulness to determine which drawer size works best for your tall cabinets, if you decide to install them.
Table of Contents
- 48-inch Kitchen Drawers
- 36 and 33-Inch Kitchen Drawers
- 30-Inch Kitchen Drawers
- Standard Depths of Kitchen Drawers
- Standard Height of Kitchen Drawers
- Frequently Asked Questions
Different ideas for your cabinet doors include full-overlay, partial overlay, inset doors, raised-panel doors, recessed panel doors, slab doors, mullion frame doors, and open frame doors. You will find double doors for standard wall cabinets and a standard base kitchen cabinet which will serve your individual needs if you need easy access to bulkier, stored items. You will also find them useful for the kitchen under sink storage. Here are some ideas at Bed Bath and Beyond. Single door configurations are more common.
Many homeowners today view kitchen remodels from a serious lens and looks past basic cabinets to find the right kitchen cabinet for their kitchen style. Remodels are costly investments and while budgets sometimes constrain decision, never forget that you may sell your home one day. Install quality and style to boost your home equity!
RTA cabinets make the best kitchen cabinets from high-quality materials, with options such as adjustable shelves or a cabinet frame, or frameless cabinets.
I know you may be thinking about different heights, and the size of your cabinets, as it relates to door hinges. Door hinge configurations depend on the various heights of high cabinets available and if the door has too much weight, for example. If the door height minimum is 40 inches high but less than 10-11 pounds, you only need two hinges. Cabinet doors from 40 to 60 plus inches need three hinges if their weight falls between twelve and twenty pounds. If wall unit types of kitchen cabinets exceed sixty to eighty inches for door height and weighs between 27 to 35 pounds, you need to use four hinges.
Consider what you need to store drawer size works best for your tall cabinet. Small kitchens will not have as many options so you’ll need to think about your needs with kitchen cabinet sizes, drawer depth, drawer heights, and base cabinet dimensions. Kitchen guidelines will show those kitchen drawers or drawer slides, that align to the size of your kitchen cabinets and intended use. For base cabinet sizes, drawers play within the 6 to 36 max width range, while height falls into the 4 to 10-inch range, and max depth range falls between 24 and 36 inches. The standard depth of a base kitchen cabinet will be different if your kitchen has the perfect space for a kitchen island. In this scenario, the maximum depth and door width could be larger with a taller countertop height, allowing for greater storage and eliminating the need for a kitchen pantry.
Read on to know more about the standard dimensions of kitchen drawers.
The size of the new kitchen drawers should fit into your kitchen’s floor plan and layout. The room’s shape and size will determine the width of drawer fronts and the rest of the kitchen units you plan to work into the space. It is uncommon to find drawers in upper cabinets, and instead, these are more common in standard base cabinet units.
Base cabinets often have standard dimensions, but you can still customize the height and width of drawers to an extent to suit your specific needs, especially if you plan to add other features, such as a lazy Susan.
You need to figure out how you plan to use your kitchen drawers and what you will store in them to determine the size that will best work for you. As stated earlier, there are standard sizes for kitchen base cabinets, but there are several options you can look into further detail.
For standard widths measurements, most manufacturers offer base units measuring 48, 36, 33, 30, 24, 18, 12, and 9 inches.
Base units with smaller widths can accommodate drawers of similar width, and such units get used for the filler cabinets. The drawers measure 24, 18, 12, or 9 inches in width and are great for storing utensils, cutlery trays, and baking accessories. These are also typically used to store miscellaneous items in the kitchen like elastic bands, keys, screwdrivers, and other random small things that don’t have their own home.
48-inch Kitchen Drawers
Forty-eight inches is the most significant size for base units, so they also have the largest width of drawers that you can get if you plan to buy stock cabinets.
If you work with a kitchen designer for custom cabinets, the standard distance measurements are not applicable. But it is not likely that you will need a top drawer bigger than 48 inches wide.
Kitchen drawers of this width also need a generous standard height to ensure that your drawer fronts won’t seem too skinny. This way, you can use them to store more oversized items that you often use, making them more accessible instead of having them stuck at the back of the cabinet.
Good examples are a smoothie maker or a toaster if you don’t want to keep your appliances on your countertop. Drawers of this size are also perfect as pan and pot drawers.
36 and 33-Inch Kitchen Drawers
You will need more extensive base kitchen cabinets if you have a double sink that is 36 or 33 inches wide. Some homeowners often install a false drawer in front of the sink. False drawers are fixed drawer fronts that cannot be used for storage or pulled out. Instead, these are purely for aesthetic purposes of covering the bottom of the sink and all its fittings.
These base units with larger widths get used for other kitchen parts, where more expansive working drawer units get installed. This size should be deep drawers to ensure that they don’t seem out of proportion. You can also use these deep cabinet drawers for storing bulkier items like Tupperware, Dutch ovens, and other small appliances.
30-Inch Kitchen Drawers
The most common width of kitchen base units is 30 inches, and in many kitchen plans, this will make up most of the storage space. Many fitted kitchen appliances also measure 30 inches in width, so it makes sense that the units have a similar width measurement to make everything cohesive.
Many integrated microwave ovens, single sinks, wall ovens, and hoods measure 30 inches in width, and things will look more seamless if your base cabinets also follow the exact measurement.
For base cabinets measuring 30 inches wide, you can also have wide drawers measuring 30 inches. This size of drawers also works well as utensil drawers and cutlery drawers. These drawers also have enough space for more oversized items like casserole dishes, chopping boards, and baking trays.
Standard Depths of Kitchen Drawers
Standard base cabinets fitted around the kitchen’s perimeter can be 24 inches deep, a standardized measurement for the standard-sized countertops to work accordingly with minimal overhang. If your base cabinets are of standard size, the kitchen drawers will also measure 24 inches deep as the standard measurement.
Base cabinets used to form a kitchen island are often 24 inches deep, although this can go bigger if needed for up to 36 inches, so you will also have deeper cabinets drawers.
Standard Height of Kitchen Drawers
Thirty-four and a half inches (34.5) is the standard floor unit height for kitchen base cabinets, and the size meets the building codes to ensure that the kitchen is accessible to most users.
By keeping your cabinets at this height, you can prevent small kids from reaching up over the door height and gaining access to knives, hot food, and other dangerous items. It is also common for base units to have a toe kick or kickboard that often has a height of 3 inches.
If you deduct the toe kick’s height of 3 inches from the total height of base cabinets at 34.5 inches, this will leave you with 31.5 inches.
You will then have to divide this between the number of cabinet drawers you need. For instance, you can have three drawers, and each of them has the same height of 10.5 inches. You can also have drawers with varied overall depth measurements for custom cabinets.
For a more balanced look, it is common to see deeper cabinet drawers at the bottom of units, while the top of the cabinet may feature shallow drawers. It will not just work great for aesthetic purposes because it also means that this shallow drawer can serve as the cutlery drawer. Its position will also be at a comfortable height, ideal for regular use. Some modern kitchen designs also feature two drawers of the same height in the base cabinet.
The depth measurement for these drawers will be deep at over 15 inches, This makes them ideal for storing pans and pots or appliances like coffee makers or blenders. These drawers often look contemporary and chunky and can offer better kitchen functionality than several shallower drawers. You can also customize the height of your kitchen drawers according to your specific needs. Standard kitchen drawers can come in different height measurements ranging from 4 inches to 15.75 inches.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the standard size of kitchen drawers?
Drawer boxes or kitchen drawers correspond with the base kitchen cabinet dimensions and their intended purposes. Drawers for base cabinets range 4 to 10 inches in height, 6 to 36 inches in width, and 24 to 36 inches deep, which depend on the base cabinet’s depth.
Is there such a thing as standard kitchen drawer size?
The drawer sizes still depend on the measurement of the cabinets. For you, it means that blind corner cabinets, tall kitchen cabinets, utility cabinets, and pantry cabinets will all have their respective drawer sizes.
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John Thompson, Writer and Commentator, EvolutDesign.com
Soldier, writer, researcher, consultant, and bon vivant, John Thompson is the author of numerous columns, op-eds, reports, briefs, short stories and books as the “Felicity Files” and “Spirit Over Steel: A Chronology of the Second World War” (version III). Often found hunched over his computer, or in his garden, and now often found doing both. His diverse talent has led him to work in industries and projects such as energy, security and home construction and renovation.
