Yes, it does help. They (your drawers) are only slightly smaller. After you listed all of your items, I had a memory flash of all of the things that got caught in my top drawer. I have these awesome foil and plastic wrap holders that came from qvc and they barely fit. Lots and lots of my utensils either didn't fit or hit the top frame too. When my boys emptied the DW and just threw the cutlery in...well I just held my breath.

Living in my dh's childhood home right now with a 47 yr old kitchen with indestructible cabinets. The top drawers are huge and deep!

thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed note :-)

We have three top drawers that are right at 3-15/16" (usable vertical height): #1 - prep items (spatulas, strainers, corkscrews and other booze container openers, thermometer, etc.); #2 - daily flatware; #3 - oven mitts (since it's near the oven). If you can get full extension drawers, your utensils should clear the frame OK. Can't help you out if your boys wanna toss from 3 feet away though; but, hey, at least they're helping! :) I do have one go-to plastic wrap that I needed a bit of extra clearance for, so I customized one of my top drawers (3-3/4" usable height) JUST for that. Sounds like the tail wagging the dog, but in the end, it mattered a lot. (ETA: relevant to Cheri's comment: around here, I couldn't guarantee plastic and aluminum wrap boxes would be properly closed.)

My old kitchen had only 3 drawer stacks and I am probably one of the
few people here that really doesn't like the deep drawers. This time
around I decided to go with mostly 4 drawer stacks, so the compromise
was a shallower top drawer as compared to my old kitchen, but I've made
it work and am happy with the end result. My shallowest top drawers are
in the 4 stack and are about 3.8" deep inside. I use those drawers for
my cutlery, tin foil, plastic wrap, immersion blender etc, One is a charging drawer,
another holds some of my prep tools - peelers, potato masher, whisks,
etc, I was eyeing the large size tin foil and plastic wrap at Costco the other day...... they definitely won't fit (sigh).

I have a run of counter that is about 72" long. My 30"
cooktop is centered on it, and there are 3 banks of 3 drawers in that
run. The top drawer in that run was made deeper so that I could have a
usable drawer under the cooktop. It is about 5 1/2" deep and houses
towels in one drawer, utensils/oven gloves in another and directly under
the cooktop I have enough room to store my frying pans.

Hope this helps.

I would also double check that the KD's measurement was from the interior. The exterior of my drawer box is 3 3/8". It took me a while to get used to the shallow drawers, coming from frameless cabinets with metaboxes prior. Can't beat those drawer heights/widths but inset is just so pretty!

I found that all the top drawers for various lines are useless because they are so shallow. Since you are doing custom cabinets, specify what works for you. What do you plan to put in there?

On my perimeter, I set the 1st drawer to be 4.75" high. That's the full clearance. It allows me to put in mugs for one cabinet and tea canister for another cabinet. I measured and made sure that I had the clearances for the mugs and canisters.

On the island, I did 4" so that I would have flexibility with anything that goes in there. Currently, I'm doing spice containers on one cabinet and knife storage in another.

Those cabinets have 5 drawer stacks.

Keep in mind, that measurement is for the actual usable space. It is not just for the drawer. You have to take into account the construction and reveal area. I chose side mount in order to maximize the height area inside the cabinet. The 3/4" lost to the side mounts are negligible vs. the 2-3" of height that I would have lost.

Beachem is right. If the cabinets are custom, you can make them any height you like.

Our drawers (DIY) are 4-1/4", 7", 7", and 11". They are frameless, there's no top frame to grab utensils so that you can't open the drawer, and the bottom drawers incorporate the toe kick for greater depth. 8 stacks; 32 drawers!

I'm making my own inset cabinets. The top drawers all have an opening of 5". The combination of clearance space, Blum undermount slides, and drawer bottom take up about 1", so usable height is just under 4". It's perfect for my flatware (as long as stored efficiently, i.e., not stacked too high) and many prep items (hand juicer, scale, etc.).

As others have said, if you're going custom, you sure can make it taller. Don't get lost in the threads on drawer height ;).

Have you thought about frameless cabinets instead? I had framed cabinets three kitchens ago. But since then have only had frameless cabinets, due to the greater space in frameless drawers and cabinets. My previous framed cabinets also had an issue with the drawers sticking in humid weather, which does not seem to be a problem with frameless, but also could have been those specific drawers, and that won't happen to you. One more thing - many framed cabinets have stiles in the middle which are annoying. If you are going custom, try to avoid those.

I did frameless cabinet with inset drawer fronts. That's something to consider.

I had my IKEA can base and added a frame front that matches it then inset drawer fronts.

My previous kitchen was frameless and had deep top drawers. This time I chose a cabinet company that will do an inset drawer base with no rails between the drawers, much like the photo. Another option is to do frameless or full overlay on the bottom and inset on your uppers. I was told by the cabinet company that the usable height difference between regular inset and inset with no rail is 3.75" deep versus 5.25" deep in the top drawer of a three-drawer stack.

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