The interior organization of the space is probably more important than the cubic feet. Also, what are your shopping habits? Do you shop often? Do you need lots of space for fresh fruits and veggies? Deli meats? condiments?

Having said that, I found that my built in fridge which is advertised as smaller than the fridge that it replaced holds more. I love that things don't get lost in the back. Make sure that you like the door shelves. Do you want it to hold that gallon of milk? Are the door bins deep enough that the things you are storing there don't topple over when you open the fridge? (I had that in one of my fridges.... drove me crazy!)

Have you had a french door fridge before? It seems there are a lot of people that love them or hate them. I fall into the hate department. I particularly dislike having to open both doors in order to access the deli drawer or crisper. Others may not have that problem, so take a close look at the functionality of the fridge you are considering.

I think the french door configuration does not lend itself well to an outside water dispenser, if that is important to you. If you can do without the water dispenser, the french door style is popular, because the alternative fridge style is a side-by-side which means both sides are narrow, and difficult to store holiday meals like the turkey, or large baking dishes, or frozen pizza boxes. I think the third alternative of a counter-depth single-door style is in the $5000+ price range, other than Fisher & Paykel, so you can also look into those.

"I particularly dislike having to open both doors in order to access the deli drawer or crisper."

Not sure if the "4-door french door" style helps with this issue, as I don't have one, but I think it is popular because of the accessibility of the wide drawer without having to open both doors. This one pictured is a Samsung, but I don't know anything about it, just got the image off google.

We are a family of two adults and bought our Electrolux five years ago. It is cramped if you do bulk shopping or you have a lot of condiments fighting for door space or if you buy large jars. My veggie bin gets very full in summer when we eat a lot of fresh produce. I only have to open one door to access the produce bin on the right. Both need to open to reach the left bin. I love the deli drawer. It has a separate temperature control and holds a lot of meat and dairy and keeps it fresh longer. The freezer is very roomy. We have an automatic ice maker in the freezer.

We have a Samsung french door with water and ice on the outside and another ice maker in the freezer. I really like the dual ice makers. We originally wanted a side by side, but got a great deal on this french door (like $800, IIRC). We've had it for about 5 years and I still would rather have a side by side. We have a chest freezer so freezer size for large things isn't an issue. I dislike the freezer drawer of the french door as everything ends up a jumbled mess, even though it has a shallow drawer inside and dividers in the big drawer.

This Samsung counter depth 4 door allows you to configure the lower right section as a frig or freezer. link

You may be able to recess a standard depth frig into the wall if you have space available behind it.

And the other option is to increase the depth of your counter to match a standard depth frig. My counters are deeper than 24" and I'd never go back. The added space in very valuable.

The other option #2 is to place a standard depth frig across a corner.

We had a counter depth french door fridge for 11 years for a family of 2 adults and 2 kids and it was great. We did have a small secondary fridge in our laundry room where we kept extra beverages. Ours was a Jenn Air and it did not have the water dispenser in the door which added a significant amount of space to the interior. Ours had a filtered water dispenser, but you opened the door it came out of a small spout on the side wall of the fridge.

In our new house, we switched to a regular depth french door fridge and I'm finding I don't like it as much. Yes, its bigger, but things get lost in the back. But it was significantly cheaper and we framed it back so it looks like a counter depth fridge.

We have a Bosch counter-depth French door fridge. Love the refrigerator part (inside water dispenser) but find the freezer section pretty small and as a previous poster mentioned things get jumbled up pretty easily. It's the least practical freezer of all the refrigerators I've owned.

We have had the fridgidaire counter depth french door unit in two different houses and found it totally sufficient for 2 adults and kid. It did not have a water dispenser, which freed up a lot of space. We are not food hoarders, and tend to only have a few days at a time. I don't think CD fridges (or any fridges, for that matter), work well for people who go to costco once a month and stock up on everything. We also prefer to have an extra fridge in the garage for beer, soda and freezer overflow during the holidays.

We are currently in a house where we inherited a kitchenaid CD fridge and hate it. Like the fridigdaire, it doesn't have a water dispenser. But it is amazing how much smaller the interior space is compared with the fridigeaire. For instance, on the shelf on the right hand door where you keep milk -- the fridgidaire fit exactly two gallons of milk. This one only fits one and a couple miscellaneous drink bottles (like 2 wine bottles, or a wine and OJ bottle). My son drinks milk with breakfast every day, so when we are low on milk, we always buy another gallon. Before we run out of the last one. Which means the extra gallon ALWAYS has to be shoved into one of the main shelves on its side.

So agree with others - confirm that the interior space is good usable space. I highly recommend the fridgidaire model.

We got the Samsung counterdepth 4 door flex french door fridge. I love it! I can see everything, and we actually have more space than in our previous full depth side by side. I have ice/water in the door and so far no issues. Also you can open all doors individually, no need to open both at once. The freezer compartments ( one which can be converted to fridge) each have a shelf and 2 basket drawers. Again plenty of room

at once.

It totally depends on your shopping and cooking habits.

I have a Kitchen Aid French door counter depth fridge (no external water dispenser) for my family of 6 (2 adults and 4 teen boys). It definitely requires me to be more vigilant in keeping the fridge organized and cleaned out, which is not a bad thing. I do have a full size fridge in the garage for bulk shopping, milk, drinks etc. If I didn't have that I would find the fridge too small. Especially since I live in the country and don't grocery shop that often.

I do love the French Door style though - had a full sized one before my remodel and loved it too.

We have a ten year old LG French door counter depth ...large pizza box won’t really fit inside, and we do like gthigpen and have an under counter GE fridge next to it for drinks. Our fridge has a water dispenser in the door. Other than the box issue, it’s great and we do ok. I would guess if one entertains a lot, then it’s not large enough to hold a lot of plates, food. We like ours but do have the beverage fridge and a chest freezer in addition,

I have a kitchen aid counter depth fridge for 2 adults and a 12 year old. We like it, but we did decide not to do a water dispenser on the door in order to have more fridge space. We have an internal water dispenser and put a scoop in the ice bin and that works fine. We do have a freezer in the basement for extra storage (we already had that when deciding on the fridge). You do have to open both doors to get in it, but the meat/deli drawer is quite roomy.

We switched to counter-depth for room-space reasons and honesty we like it better - there is a little less storage but stuff gets lost at the back WAY less and we can make better use of the space we have.

We have the old fridge in the basement for overflow but mostly we just use it to store flats of bottled water and for extra freezer space. (If we didn't have the fridge part we'd just have the bottled water on a shelf.)

I agree that it depends on how you eat and your shopping habits, because you can't deny the math. There is less interior space. If you're a once-a-month Costco shopper, it won't work for you. If you have convenient shopping near your home it probably will work. I like counter-depth just because they take up less physical and visual space in the room. And I love having the freezer on the bottom.

We recently traded our inferior, trouble-prone Electrolux French door CD refrigerator for the model recommended above by Dan and Sue. I hesitate to recommend it, because Samsung has such a horrific reputation. But you absolutely cannot beat the layout. Comparing it to our Electrolux is like night and day in terms of what can be stored. We keep the lower right compartment set to chill and it put all of our drinks in that section. And since the icemaker is incredibly small, we keep separate ice bin in the lower left compartment, which is the true deep-freezer section. We also have a small freezer in our garage for bulk storage. We are a family of two adults, but we store a lot of fresh fruit, juices, and vegetables, and frequently entertain. This refrigerator meets our needs wonderfully. But we will be buying the extended warranty at the end of the first year, something that we never do—and should not have to do—but what I see on the Appliance Forum, there is not a decent refrigerator on the market today, so we went ahead and took our chances with the Samsung because the layout is so perfect.