Refrigerator Dimensions Guide

This refrigerator dimensions guide is to help you find the right size of fridge for your kitchen. Finding a refrigerator that will fit in a given dimension has always been a lot harder than it should be. Manufacturers do publish this information, but tend to keep it “close to the vest” on their websites or in their showrooms to make sure that interested customers have to go to them to comparison shop for compatible models.

At FridgeSizes.com we try to bring this information out in the open so that you can easily compare between the models of many manufacturers. In this way you can find which fridges will work in your kitchen, and which won’t. To prepare for this comparison though, it’s important that you understand what is involved in sizing the enclosure the fridge will be installed in. It’s not as simple as pulling out a tape measure and then going and buying a fridge. While most of this is likely “obvious”, when dealing with a major purchase like a refrigerator it’s good to make sure to do it right the first time.

Step 1: Measure the Enclosure

Measuring the space where the refrigerator will go is the obvious part of this exercise. Many people may not realize it’s not the only step though. The width, height, and depth of the enclosure are very important of course. Make sure to “measure twice” and “purchase once”.

Note any irregularities in the enclosure, and make sure you know the minimum dimensions and where they are located. Sometimes you can get away with an inch or two in the rear width of a refrigerator that is installed flush to surrounding cabinets, as they tend to have flanges that flare out near the front which fill the extra gap. Most times though you’re going to have to account for those irregularities in the back as most fridges have single dimension sides from front to back.

Step 2: Note Any Potential Obstructions

While it’s nice to have perfectly square openings and walls, often there are other considerations. Perhaps a microwave plugs into the wall in the fridge enclosure, and so extra allowance for the plug might be needed. Most fridge plugs are designed to be relatively flat with an L shape, but other appliances may have more conventional plugs that take up more room.

The front and sides of the fridge are going to need to allow for the doors to swing open. An island counter opposite the fridge could limit the room for a full sized door. Remember that you can go with Side by Side or French Door styles in cramped quarters, as the extent of their doors is much less than a full width door.

Step 3: Account for the Layout of Your Kitchen

Walls or extended cabinets or counter-tops are another consideration. The doors on refrigerators need to have room to swing open at the hinges. Usually you want to make sure they can open at least 90 degrees, and often recommended clearances are to allow 105 degrees or more. How much room needs to be left will depend on the hinge design. In general though, this means that a counter-top that extends an inch or two beyond the cabinets it rests on needs to be the “depth” when considering counter-depth installation of refrigerators.

One of the main obstructions to use of a fridge is an extended wall on one side or the other. When refrigerators are installed in corners, or in any kind of L shaped enclosure, extra consideration has to be made for the opening of the fridge door. If the hinge of the fridge is up against a wall, you aren’t going to be able to open the door very wide at all. Because of this, if you are looking for a refrigerator for such a location, you need to take into account the extra clearance room that needs to be allowed for the door to open.

You might think that you could simply use the hinge on the side opposite the wall, but this often creates difficulty in using the fridge at all. Since you can’t stand “through” the wall while opening the door to the fridge, it means the door will block access to the interior of the fridge from the most likely angle of approaching the refrigerator in the first place. As the door will act as something of a wall when it’s open, and the wall will always be acting as exactly like a wall, it creates a narrow alley to approach the fridge from and would make it more difficult to get things in or out.

Most manufacturers will have recommended clearances for such situations. The amount of room you need to leave is going to vary based on the thickness of the door and hinge type. Make sure you take this into account when sizing a fridge for the dimensions of your enclosure.

Step 4: Find Refrigerators to Fit

This can be one of the more annoying steps, and is the reason for this website being created. While you can quickly find refrigerators from various brands compared by price, it’s much more difficult to find which of the ones that fit your budget will also fit your kitchen’s space restrictions. Here at FridgeSizes.com we have a dimension search which will help you quickly find models of fridges from various manufacturers that will fit a given enclosure.

The search takes into account the recommended clearances of each model, as well as their physical dimensions, to give you the dimensions of the minimum enclosure the refrigerator should be installed in. This can save you a lot of time hunting through PDFs on manufacturer’s websites to try to figure out what size the fridge really is, or how large the enclosure will need to be to fit it.

Step 5: Verify Your Findings

One of the hassles with buying a fridge to fit given dimensions is that the dimensions of a model may change without warning. While our dimension search can give you a good idea of what models will fit into a given enclosure, we can’t guarantee that the refrigerator you are buying will be the same dimensions as the model is listed on the manufacturer’s website. Most of the time this shouldn’t be an issue, but just bear in mind that you always want to double check before making such an important purchase.