What Should You Know About Kitchen Cabinetry?

Well, standard size cabinets are what kitchen builders today work with, as these facilitate them to design a kitchen storage solution that will suit most people needs and fit in most of the appliances. When you’re designing your kitchen, it’s important to know about standard kitchen cabinetry sizes and possible variations.

Kitchen cabinetry’s nitty-gritty that you should know is described below:

Kitchen Cabinet Materials

A major part of kitchen cabinets is made from MDF, which is treated to withstand enlargement and coated with white melamine on both sides. Well, you can also obtain coloured melamine by request. Kitchen cabinets that are low cost have thin backs and may be constructed out of melamine coated particleboard. Better cabinets, however, come with thicker backs that fit into routed channels, which make them sturdier and more stable.

Storage Needs

Your kitchen should be designed to store a huge range of items such as:

• Store food in the fridge and kitchen pantry units.
• Store small appliances on your benchtop or in-floor cabinets.
• Store pots and pans on shelves in your floor cabinets or pot drawers.
• Store all major appliances, including your fridge, oven, cooktop, microwave and dishwasher.
• Store utensils in drawers.

Selecting the size of cabinets for your storage needs can be one of the toughest tasks of your kitchen design. Many homeowners want a big pantry, but don’t give adequate thought concerning the use of space in the pantry. A two-door pantry often comes with recessed shelves – this makes it simpler to reach items, but a lot of interior space is lost. Pantry drawers or inserts utilise that space, facilitating you to have a slimmer pantry and more space for your other kitchen cabinets.

Height for the Kitchen Cabinetry

The standard heights for kitchen cabinetry are as follows:

• The standard benchtop will be 900mm from the floor. However, this can differ 20mm plus or minus, but if you don’t request, it will be 900mm.
• The height of standard kitchen cabinetry is 2070mm that can be 5mm plus or minus. This covers the space between the benchtop and the bottom of the wall cabinets – 450mm.
• Standard wall cabinets are 720mm high and floor cabinets are generally 720mm high.
• Generally, the kitchen kickboard is usually 150mm high, which can differ 50mm plus or minus.

Suppose, you want some variation in the height of your cabinets, then you need to bear in mind that you’ll have to house all of your kitchen appliances. For instance, if you want to position your benchtop higher, then your oven or dishwasher won’t fit into a standard floor cabinet. You’ll need selecting a higher kickboard or fill the gap. Conversely, if you want a lower benchtop, you can lower the height of your kickboard instead of your cabinet height else your dishwasher and the under-bench oven won’t fit into their cabinets.

Depths for the Kitchen Cabinetry

The depths are as significant as the heights of kitchen cabinets. The standard depths are as follows:

• Benchtops should be 600mm deep
• Wall cabinets should be 300mm deep
• Floor cabinets should be 560mm deep
• Wall oven cabinets should be 560mm deep

The 560mm depth is designed to house appliances such as oven, cooktops, microwave and dishwasher. The older kitchen floor cabinets were constructed for 450mm deep benchtops; however, you can still go for this if you have one less appliance to fit in the cabinet.

Widths for the Kitchen Cabinetry

Kitchen cabinets are available in different standard widths from 300mm to 1200mm in the increments of 150mm such as 300mm, 450mm, 600mm and 750mm and so on. Nonetheless, with the exclusion of oven cabinets and dishwasher, you can customise the widths as per your unique requirements. You’ll find that the width of your kitchen will mostly decide your cabinets’ width; however, you still have options. Your cabinets’ width matters, similarly the cabinet’s type that you select to fit the space also matters. For instance, instead of having a standard drawer cabinet of 450mm or 600mm, you can opt for shallow drawers’ row. Pot drawers are an excellent way to facilitate you to reach your most-used pots and pans effortlessly.

Other Things to Take Into Account

When you’re designing your new kitchen from the ground up, you should opt for standard sizes for your appliances. It’s prudent to select your appliances first and then fit the rest of the kitchen around them. Refrigerators are available in diverse widths, so knowing the size of your refrigerator is a vital consideration. Normally, ovens and cooktops fit into 600mm broad cabinets; however, you can also purchase 900mm broad ovens, range hoods and cooktops.

Once you’ve purchased your kitchen appliances, you have more liberty to alter the sizes of your cabinets. For instance – you may want to lengthen your wall cabinets to the ceiling. You’ve more liberty with a kitchen island. When you have enough walkway space around your kitchen island, then it can be as broad and deep as you want.