It can be a difficult task to find a fridge that fits just right in your kitchen. With so many different sizes and styles, it’s very important to know the dimensions. You also need to understand the amount of clearance to allow for different styles of doors or simply for aesthetic reasons. In this section we will attempt to prepare you to know exactly what size of fridge is going to be best for your situation.
The first thing you need to take into account is what dimensions the opening in your cabinets are. Width, depth, and height are all important. Once you have these, you can start looking for a refrigerator that will fit. It isn’t just as simple as matching those dimensions to the fridge though. Most styles of refrigerators need to have some clearance so that there is enough air movement to cool motor as well as room to get a grip on the fridge when installing or moving it.
It can be difficult to figure out how much clearance needs to be allowed for though. This is information that isn’t always posted, especially on re-seller websites. You can usually find this data in manuals which may or may not be available from the manufacturer’s website. Care should be taken when determining how much room to leave, because there can be costly consequences to leaving too little allowance.
Clearance in the back often is required so that cords and plugs will have enough room to fit. Also, the efficiency of the fridge can be reduced if there isn’t enough air flow, and the excess heat could damage the finish on walls or cabinets, or in rare cases even start fires. Because of design differences, sometimes even very similar refrigerators can require dramatically different clearances. It can be surprising sometimes too, as often the smaller mini-fridges require the most clearance of all due to their lack of built in vents and solid state cooling systems.
We intend to post not only the dimensions of refrigerators here, but also the clearances recommended by the manufacturers. This will allow you to easily find those fridges which will fit into a specific dimension, without causing problems.