I have a 36" base with two drawers and I love it for my kitchen appliances (vitamix, food processor, instant pot, etc, etc.). It's so easy to place things in without trying to "squeeze" them to fit. I have another 36" base with 2 equal drawers and we use that one for tupperware (top drawer), large salad/mixing bowls (middle) and baking pans (bottom). I think you will like the deep drawers.

I would stick with the two deep drawers. You can stack glass pyrex and casserole containers and pans, but still have room for tall pasta pots. It gives you more options.

We have two deep draws under the rangetop, perfect depth for storing my deepest and widest pots and pans, plus lids.

Deeper pot draws are great for storing big/tall items like appliances and deep pots, but for smaller items like pyrex dishes, you can only stack them so high. I'd go for more draws, it will give you more storage space to arrange things, provided you can fit the larger of the pots in the bottom draw.

It is best to ask the cabinet maker what the usable inside height is and then measure your pots and pans to make sure that they will fit, especially if you have taller stockpots. We have two drawers under our range top and wanted to store our fry pans vertically to avoid nesting so equal sized drawers didn't work for us. Luckily I was able to customize the height of each drawer. This is the middle drawer of a separate three-drawer stack with a hidden drawer for Pyrex. I really like having all of my glass bakeware in one spot. Hidden drawers can utilize air space and help you to layer items to keep a drawer organized.

OP, you need to measure what YOU will store in those drawers. Hopefully you have a storage plan in place - you have identified where things will go in the new kitchen. Once you know what you will be storing to the left of the range, you mark out the inside dimensions of the drawer with masking tape, stack your items within this space, and measure how tall the stack is.

By doing this, I learned that storing cake pans on their sides (with dividers to keep them upright) required a certain interior height. There was no sense in having the drawer much taller than it needed to be. I gave the required height (with a little cushion) to my cabinet maker. He built me a 3-drawer stack: small top drawer, bottom drawer to fit my cake pans, and the middle drawer got the remaining space. If he had made the 2 bottom drawers the same height, the cake pans would not have fit.

I did the same thing with my super susan, where I store small appliances. The tallest appliance is my rice cooker, so I specified that the shelf needed to be spaced to allow the rice cooker to fit. Again, equal spacing would not have provided enough room for MY needs.

The fabulous advantage to true custom cabinetry is that it IS customized to exactly suit your needs. Figure out what you need, and tell the cabinet maker.

I agree with home chef.

I do plan to put my plates on their sides in the bottom drawer next to the refrigerator which my cabinet maker made it that deep. I think I will switch to three so that I have a smaller drawer on top to put my foil sandwich bags etc...

3 for sure! Don't lose that top drawer. Two big drawers look like office filing cabinets to me.

I have 2 36” drawer cabinets for my pots but the top drawers are 2 18” shallower ones for all my gadgets and I still can put even my tall pasta/ stock pot in a drawer.

Every cabinet line will have different interior drawer space. The lowest drawer under my range top has a usable height of 12" My two-drawer stack has a usable height of 12.5". That dimension was critical to me. Our deep drawers in the three-drawer stacks have usable height of 9.75" which wouldn't have worked for vertical storage of fry and sauté pans or for my deepest stockpots. It really depends on what the OP needs to store.

Go with 3, 2 huge drawers look like filing cabinets to me too.

You want three drawers and have the fabricator line them up no matter the width of the drawer.

I agree with Beverly above. Three drawers with the top one being shallow and the other two deep. I have many drawers in my kitchen including the island and below the cooktop. My top drawers are 5 inches deep and the bottom 2 are 10 inches deep. These are the same measurements throughout the kitchen.

Two will give you deeper drawers. Set all your pots and pans on your dining table and consider what pans you would put in what drawers to decide the actual depth of the drawers.

For more shallow baking pans, you might consider a vertically divided space in an overhead cabinet to store them along with serving trays and cutting boards.

You really don't need drawers deeper than 10 or 12 inches. Ours are two 10" drawers on the bottom and 2 5" drawers on top.

I did have that originally at the very beginning. I know why he changed it to one deeper, then medium sized and then small/shallow because I wanted to set my dinner plates vertically in the bottom drawer and they are 12". But you guys think go with top shallow and then split the difference with two of the same deep drawers. So then my plates won't fit at 10".

I'll check with cabinet maker but I agree that the bottom drawer face regardless should be the same height as the bottom drawer face on both sides of the sink. Otherwise it will look bad.

I agree with homechef59 that those small top drawers can be valuable real estate. A deep drawer full of tin foil and melon ballers can quickly become a jumbled mess unless everyone who accesses the drawer is disciplined.

Fundamentally, it comes down to what you want to store and where you like to find it. If you already have all the short drawers you could possibly need for holding boxes of ziploc baggies and garlic presses, then the big drawers might be useful. If you have lots of big pots and yogurt makers to store, then those big drawers could be the answer.

For instance, beyond the essential shorts drawers, I like a drawer for knives (I like knife blocks, but I don't like them on my counter), one for spices (my new favourite thing) and one for junk (either I have a junk drawer or it ends up on the counter - I admit defeat). So, I need lots of short drawers. My friend loves having the right appliance for the right job, so she needs lots of deep drawers.

Mentally unpack in your new kitchen and see what kind of space you need and want.

If you are on the fence about what you need - you can add things to deep drawers to provide short drawer functionality (e.g. stores things in tupperware in the deep drawer or add some fancy drawer hardware), but you can't make a drawer deeper. I vote for three drawer stack, though.

I think the three drawers make a much better visual and still remain very functional. I would actually change the drawers on the left of the stove to 3 as well. I think it brings everything together in a cohesive manner. Are there drawers on the island?

If you need the height for your dishes then make it look like a three-drawer.

Storage Beyond the Norm! · More Info

I have lots of 5" (height of rough opening) drawers and they are the most coveted real estate in my kitchen. My drawer configurations include two 36"-wide 3-drawer stacks (5/9/14, or thereabouts) that have pots in the middle drawers and pans/skillets on edge in the bottom drawers. I also have one 4-drawer stack for prep items and don't need any more drawers of that height.

All of these drawer units have a 5" drawer at the top, and I still wish I had more 5" top drawers! Go with 3.

AnnKH nailed it! It all comes down to the actual sizes of the items you plan to keep in those drawers. I like your island design by the way-we have something very similar!

I like my 3 drawer set up. The smaller drawer is where I store my cutlery, serving spoons, ladles, knives, measuring spoons etc. Middle drawer for pots/pans I use daily, and bottom drawer for misc. items I use less frequently.