Do a search here for a few threads about 3 vs 4-drawer stacks that were posted about a 1 to 2 years ago. Lots of good information on those threads than you can read right now and use tomorrow. 70% of the forum is probably in bed by now!

All of my plates and glasses are in 3-drawer stacks.

If you have good quality drawers with heavy duty glides, then heavy drawers won't be a problem.

I designed the sink/DW side of our island with smaller drawers on top for utensils, and two larger drawers below for dishes, glasses and glass storage containers. I do not stack different size dishes on top of each other (I wouldn't like that either.)

The cabinetmaker should use a heavy duty drawer glide. To be on the safe side, just be sure to tell him you will be storing dishes.

I don't store my dishes in below counter drawers - but if I did, I'd be tempted by four stacks for dishes (3 stacks for glasses). Measure the height of your plates when stacked together - if you are doing custom, go with that set of measurements - with hand room for moving plates and bowls in and out - leaving that top drawer (silverware and the like) as per standard.

Some of this will depend on overall storage space in your kitchen.

You specify heavy duty, full extension drawer hardware. If you don’t already have a metal tape measure, go buy one. You can’t intelligently design a kitchen without one. I measured everything, and I mean everything, I wanted to store. My cabinet maker and I spent lots of back and forth conversations about drawer depth and usable width. Remember the drawer dimensions on your plans- 27” or 34” or whatever-are outside dimensions. Go to your current kitchen and measure the outside of your drawers, then open the drawer and measure the inside, usable part of the drawer. You will see a significant difference. Discuss with the cabinet maker what his inside dimensions will be. I literally laid out each drawer, each shelf and measured not only the surface area I needed, but also the inside height I needed. For instance, my Cuisinart, my stack of pie pans, my odd serving bowls, etc. needed certain depths of drawers. My favorite mixing bowls needed a shelf more than 12” deep, so we made my uppers a little deeper. As far as your specific question, my old Dansk dishes are much deeper than my Noritake plates and both are different than my Lenox. I have different numbers of place setting and serving pieces. Only you can design the proper height, width, and depth drawers you need.

As an old timer, I find this new houzz seriously hard to search. A search for drawer stacks and depth on this site now turns up pages and pages of unrelated houzz content from all over, not a single thread from the kitchen forum. Is there a way of searching just the kitchen forum? Otherwise if users could post links to those old threads about drawer depths in 3 vs 4 drawer stacks that would be very helpful to others who have this question.

Here's a couple :)

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/2706027/yet-another-dish-drawer-question#n=7

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/3849562/bank-of-3-or-4-drawers-for-dishes#n=12

A 24” framed drawer stack is too small in width to be a good dish storage cabinet. The interior space of the drawer will be around 18”-19”, depending on hardware choice. In frameless, you get more like 21”, depending on drawer material choice.

The most used dish in any kitchen is the dinner plate, at 11” round. That leaves right at 6”- 10” for either bread plates, or glasses, or cups. If glasses and cups is your choice, as they are actually used more than the plates, then the 24” drawer is significantly undersized.

You don’t stack glasses and cups. That means having a much wider heavy duty drawer to combine both those and plates, or another drawer, with glasses and cups in the top drawer. That’s at least a 10” drawer, and it won’t align with the standard 6” top drawers of most cabinets, breaking the line around the kitchen.

There are ways of doing this, but there are going to be trade offs on function vs aesthetics.

I stack my glasses in my drawer. They are a style that is stackable and the med/large size are stacked 2 high. The small size can be stacked 3 or 4 high. I also stack some cups, but most aren't designed to stack. I have the waffle/rubbery liners to stop them from sliding.

Interesting. I tried stacking glasses, but they ended up getting chipped because the top glass always moved, even if the bottom one didn’t. Maybe it was the glasses? Just your garden variety Libby. What brand do you use that stacks and doesn’t have issues?

To overcome the width issue that live_ wire_ oak mentioned above, a hidden drawer in a three-drawer stack would give you two layers of storage behind a single drawer front without locking you into the depths of a four-drawer stack. If your storage needs change, the hidden drawer is easily removed. I have a couple of four-drawer stacks, but put one hidden drawer in each of my two and three-drawer stacks. You can specify the depth of the hidden drawer to accommodate your various stack heights. It also spreads the weight.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2457034/everything-i-wanted-to-know-about-drawers

Here's one of my hidden drawers. Pyrex over Corningware.

LWO, the glasses are Duralex. I think we bought them at Williams Sonoma or Sur La Table. You can get them on Amazon now!
https://www.duralexusa.com/collections/picardie-tumblers

They are pretty sturdy, but you can chip the rim if you hit them hard with another glass bottom as you are stacking them. It has only happened a few times in the 20 years we have been using this style glass. We also stacked them when we stored them in an upper cabinet.

I’ll have to check them out. I can always use sturdier glasses.

The sound of glass on glass also does me like chalk on a blackboard. That’s a personal thing though, and obviously doesn’t bother everyone. I did the glasses in a drawer in a showroom display. I just couldn’t make it work for me.

For a customer design I always add extra shelves to the cabinet order for the upper that is going to be the glass storage cabinet, so nothing has to be stacked.

LWO, I ordered extra shelves for all my upper cabinets. I don't have a lot of drawers, so I have to maximize uppers. I love not having to stack anything!

As for the 3 vs 4 drawer question - it all depends on what you will be storing. Use tape to outline the interior dimension of your drawer, and stack your dishes inside the tape line. That will tell you what will (and will not!) fit in a single drawer. Then measure the stacks. 12 Corelle plates will not be nearly as tall as 6 heavy stoneware plates. Measure what YOU have.

I agree that 23" wide isn't going to be terrific for dishes.

Kristin S, I did an organization map using How Do I Plan For Storage? first, measuring all my larger kitchen gadgets, pans, etc. In fact I measured cans, bottles, everything. Then I spoke with the cabinet people and asked how much clearance and usable space I'd have inside each drawer. Then I measured again. Took a while, but so worth the effort. I wanted 4-stack drawers until I started measuring, and realized I needed 3 stack. Now I have an organized kitchen, and most everything fits (I ended up buying a few extra things, ha!).

Also, you can look at old posts until you're blue in the face, but cabinet makers sometimes use different sizes for face frames, etc., so asking your cabinet maker is the guide you should use.

For your reference from the inside left it is 21" to the middle of the posts on the right side of the 10.5" dinner plates. This drawer box is 32" wide x 19.5" deep and I have three sizes of plates and three sizes of bowls plus the napkin holder in this drawer. The drawer face is 33.5" inset. You have 3" more in depth so a 23" frameless drawer should hold quite a bit.