I finished installing our lidi cabinets in May. I went from old framed cabinets with doors to Ikea frameless with drawers. I guess since I don't know any different I really don't mind the wasted space. I fit so much more in my kitchen now than ever before. In fact I still have many empty upper cabinets that I might replace with shelves just because I can.

I have 1 36" cabinet. Thats where I keep all my dishes. In one drawer I have 12 dinner plates, 6 pasta bowls, and 12 salad plates. While there is room for the other 6 pasta bowls, I noticed that the cabinet started to sag a bit in the center from all that weight so I put the remaining bowls in the second drawer with some serving dishes.

As many here will tell you, drawers are really the way to go, and for their price point alone Ikea's cabinets are extremely well designed and sturdy.

I believe that may be the case for many types of cabinets. It allow running electrical and plumbing in the back if needed. I know that Ikea cabinets can be reduced in depth to 21.5 inches and still have the deep drawers so that can be a really useful feature in kitchen design if needed.

There is no great explanation for it. I've always wondered if they sell slightly different cabinet frames in other countries.

I recall being told by Ikea that this is because the drawer hardware that Ikea uses has the soft close mechanism at the back of the slides and that takes up a few inches of space. Therefore, Ikea drawers are built to that spec. There is nothing stopping one from building different drawer boxes and using different hardware, but you just can't get them from Ikea.

doug is right, it is the soft close feature that takes up the space. I did find it annoying to lose the space and would have given up the soft close feature to get deeper cabinets but that was not an option. For me it was only 2 IKEA cabinets which I wrapped in custom panels and cost was the main issue. The rest of my kitchen which is all custom size cabinets does not lose as much space and so has deeper drawers. The drawers are sized for the undermount glides and are not soft close.

Although the IKEA drawers lose some depth, the cost, quality and reasonably priced drawer inserts makes them very functional.

It isn't just IKEA. I've been playing with building kitchen cabinets. The standard drawer glides are basically 21 to 22 inches. Measure the drawers in your current kitchen. I measured the drawers in my current old Merrilat kitchen and the drawers in my IKEA cabinets in my laundry room. The IKEA drawer actually gives me an addition 1/2 in usable length. I know you can get longer drawer glides, but the price jumps quite a bit.

> There is no great explanation for it. I've always wondered if they sell slightly different cabinet frames in other countries

They indeed do - the rest of the world (outside US) gets Faktum cabinets which are 60cm deep (23-5/8") instead of the Akurum cabinets sold in America that are 24-1/8" deep. I'm guessing the drawer guides are shared between the two.

In the 1990s, Ikea sold metric-sized cabinets in the US too, but it was problematic because American 24" wide appliances wouldn't fit into a 60cm space. Ironically, more and more "24 inch" dishwashers and ovens sold here are actually 60cm designs brought in from Europe, China, or elsewhere.

The reason is simple.
Ikea use Blum slides.
Blums come in 3" increment lengths.
12,15,18,21,24
The blumn profiles are actually half an inch greater.
So a 24" slide is really 24 1/2" long & it also needs 5/32" at the front and a little at the back.

The drawers are very sturdy - one of mine holds my Kitchen Aid mixer. The soft close add-on still leaves a bit of room in the back. Would be nice if the limiting factor wasn't the slides, as having another couple of inches in every drawer of a small kitchen would help.

I haven't missed the extra space in my drawers -- nor do I pine for the standard cabinet shelves that would have been there but for the drawers. In our case, the extra space was handy. We have an island and had to run power across the inside rear of the cabinets. With the shorter drawers, there is no chance of interference from the hardware, drawers or drawer contents.

We have two 30" all-drawer bases (one has utensils, pots and pans and baking supplies, the other glassware and more baking), and two 36" all-drawer bases (one with mainly tupperware and odd appliances like crock pot and toaster, the other with flatware on top, everyday plates and bowls in the middle, and odd serving pieces in the bottom). Ours have been in use for almost three years with no sagging or issues whatsoever.

jakabedy I think it was you who gave me the idea of storing my mixer in my 15" pullout. And just to add to your comments, my 36" sink cabinet has an interior pullout on the left side and my plumber was able to run the pipes behind them horizontally which was important due to how the exterior wall had been built. I don't have a picture, but those extra couple of inches behind the pullout were key.

One other thing I've done that the shallow drawers allow is to mount the roll-out drawers (that install inside a hinged-door cabinet) as far back as possible (which requires drilling your own holes in the inner cabinet sides), so the front of the rollout drawer is inset a couple of inches from the outer, swinging door. This leaves space to mount hooks or shallow shelves/trays to the inner door panel to store pans, spices, or other such items.

Annkathryn,

I hope that setup with the KA mixer in the lower drawer is working well for you. We've had our set up that way for almost three years and it has been great. I still have to lift it upto the counter, but it's easy to access it from the extended drawer.

Thanks everyone. Great responses. I appreciate it.

jakabedy I haven't really put the KA setup to the test as I just moved in to the house and haven't had time to do any baking or mixing. I'll pull it out for Thanksgiving for sure. But I have to confess that I'm probably the only person on the planet who doesn't like her KA mixer and wishes she had her old 1980s-era Sunbeam back.

(excuse hijack)