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Upper cabinets line up with lowers?

16 years ago

Do you think the upper cabinets need to line up with the lowers? I got my cabinet design back and the uppers don't line up with lowers. If a 24" on bottom, it might have a 36" cabinet above it. The uppers and lowers fit along the wall but they don't line up with say a 36" set of drawers on the bottom with a 36" upper cabinet over it. Hope I am explaining it right.

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Comments (6)

cheri127
16 years ago
Hi Mollie. It's not unusual for uppers and lowers not to line up but some folks (myself included) need symmetry. You can achieve this by making sure cabinets around a given focal point are symmetical (ie. the hood or range). If you do a "layout" search, you'll find lots of examples of this.
User
16 years ago
If symmetry is important to you, then achieve it in the upper cabinets, which are far far more visible in the room than are the lower cabinets. Matching upper and lower cabinets can be done, of course, but if that makes things look choppy, or sacrifices functionality, then it's the first thing I'd discard when tweaking a design. Fewer large cabinets are always less expensive (and more functional) than are many smaller cabinets. So, if you have a 24" Dishwasher in your cabinet run, followed by an 18" drawer stack, followed by a 36" base, the first thing I wouldn't do is to put 24" upper, an 18" upper, and then a 36" upper. Instead, I'd try a 42" upper and then a 36" upper. Or, more likely, since the DW is next to the sink base, which is under the window, and I like to give the window moldings decent clearance, I'd probably use 2 36" cabinets over that run, as long as I could achieve similar window molding clearance on the other side by tweaking those cabinets as well.

So, you can see there are many ways to "solve" the layout problem, and there is really no "right" solution. There is just the solution that works for you and for what is important to you. I would definately caution you though to work for function first of all, and then tweak for symmetry.
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I had 48" drawers in my previous house that held all my pots and pans and they worked fine for 17 years till we remodeled, even though the cabinet boxes and drawer glides were not of great quality. Go with a well built drawer and high quality heavy duty glides and you won't have any issues. I just built and have 42" drawers on either side of the range. Drawer size is not an issue, but the quality of the drawer components is crucial. I really dislike those utensil pull-out and don't think they hold much for the amount of space they occupy. I also wouldn't worry about symmetry with the lower cabinets. Do you have an island? Can you even see the cabinets on either side of the range from across the room? I would keep the 40" drawers on the right. On the left just do a cabinet door, put one vertical divider inside and use the space to store cookie sheets, trays and large cutting boards.
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oruboris
16 years ago
For me, it's less a matter of lining up than relating to each other.

On a 6 foot cab run, you could use 2 36"s on the base, and 3 24"s on top. If the middle of the 24"s has a microwave shelf, plate rack, or wine rack, it will look just fine.

But if different sizes are just used willy-nilly they'll never look as good as they could have.

The happy news is that it is very simple to do cab elevation drawings with graph paper. Try it, bet you'll come up with something you love.
coolbeansw
16 years ago
Mine don't align, and I was worried about it but my KD said it was ridiculous, that it would never bother me once everything was installed. And he was absolutely right.
kompy
16 years ago
Your desginer did the right thing! Aligning cabinets is a common 'big box store' mistake that newbie kitchen designers make. I'm not sure who is teaching them this! Also, some computer design software has an 'auto-design' button that will line cabinets up. IMO, it looks terrible. You can get a 9" door next to a 21" door.

Kompy
gizmonike
16 years ago
No, uppers & lowers don't need to line up. Ours are symmetrical in the sizing of the lowers and uppers, but not to each other. For example, in our range run, our lowers are 16", 30", 16", 36" range, 16", 30", 16", while the uppers are 24", 24", 67" hood, 20", 20", 20". It ends up looking very symmetrical along the horizontal, and the eye does not connect the vertical lines separated by the countertop space.

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