French door is just a horrible set up..had one sold it after 2 months! Something to think about..and if it has the ice maker in one of the lower drawers you will not like it..I promise you.......side by side is the way to go...LG has a great design that allows you to open the upper right side that holds milk, pop and waters and not having to open entire refrigerator door....my LG dishwasher is honestly the best I have ever had! It has a stainless steel drum so dishes dry fast no Wet dishes! And the configuration is amazing..shallow upper shelf holds silverware and the upper shelves are adjustable if you have big items to wash..it is a winner in design overall and very quiet.

We have a Samsung 4-door flex and really love it. https://www.samsung.com/us/home-appliances/refrigerators/4-door-flex/36-wide-x-72-high-28-cu-ft-capacity-4-door-flex-food-showcase-refrigerator-with-flexzone-stainless-steel-rf28k9380sr-aa/

Thanks for your input. Hoping to get out tomorrow and start actually looking at some models. Will definitely consider the suggestions. If anyone else has some favs, please share!

We have a Kitchenaid fridge..had it for over 10 years and other than having to change once the water line tube, we didn't have any other problems. I would say do not get Liebherr..they can have many problems and not really fixable

For dishwasher, look at Miele. I know several people who have it and they like it.

1. @Home Interiors with Ease can you share a little more about why you disliked the french doors with drawer? When I first saw them I thought they made so much sense. I feel like I'm always going into my meat drawer in current refrigerator so was thinking it would be practical. What am I missing?

The drawers are freezer.......so you won’t be using them for lunch meat..

These are my 3 favorite french door fridges.

https://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/CWE23SP2MS1.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cse&utm_term=CWE23SP2MS1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwo6D4BRDgARIsAA6uN1_ba3vlLdouoZrS688zo8gxPTr1RKMHz-Ii0N6ihVgVymiTI8uEmMQaAqmTEALw_wcB

https://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/B21CT80SNS.html

https://www.homedepot.com/p/KitchenAid-25-2-cu-ft-French-Door-Refrigerator-in-Stainless-Steel-KRFF305ESS/205970003

That being said, I'm remodeling and getting a 48 inch side by side

Get a Bosch dishwasher.

Have to disagree on the Liebherr. I have had three, at three different properties, and love them. Not one service call. Especially like the non-plumbed ice maker. We travel for long periods, and I never have to worry about a leaking water line. Sub-Zero are also great, but much more expensive.

Get a Bosch dishwasher.

Had a Bosch was not impressed over priced was noisy...liked my GE Cafe gas range and dishwasher in my last home...but my LG door in door by far is my fav..and again the LG dish washer is amazing...not one con all great features...love the configuration of shelves inside.

Good Luck it is a big investment...be sure the dishwasher you get has a stainless steel interior!

I have 2 friends that have had horrible luck with LG appliances. I guess that is not the case with everyone, so good to know. I personally don't want to look at my food through a door. It reminds me of someone leaving a cabinet door open. Not appealing to me.

We also have the LG door in door and will definitely buy again for our next house. Had a Bosch dishwasher at my last house and replaced it because dishes were neither clean nor dry. Currently have a KitchenAid dishwasher and it’s okay...thinking we might try the LG with the extra top rack mentioned by HIWE next time.

Many people on Houzz like the Bosch or Milele dishwashers.

I have a recently purchased KitchenAid dishwasher (Model KDPM604KPS). It's my first purchase of a KitchenAid appliance but I am happy with it thus far. The interior is huge, the racks are easy glide, and it has a free flex third rack that can fit cereal bowls.

For refrigerators, I like the look of the quad door, which is made by Fisher & Paykel, Samsung and LG. I dislike refrigerators with the huge freezer drawer on the bottom where it seems things would get disorganized / lost. The quad door seems like it would keep food a lot more organized and easy to find.

French door fridges take two hands to open, a great disadvantage if you are a “ chef” type cook and move quickly.

However, with limited aisle space the french doors use less space. But so do side-by-side doors.

I have a Bosch dishwasher and love it--very quiet and cleans great. Downside is that the cycle is very long and the drying function isn't great.

KitchenAid french door fridge is a good choice--I've had mine for about 6 years and still works fine. If you have the budget, Subzero is the ultimate in refrigeration.

latifolia, it's great that you had no problems with Liebherr. My friends had two tall ones and the amount of issues was unbelievable ,,took forever to make ice, it would stop cooling if you had the fridge open for more than 15 seconds..they had things replaced and the technician no longer knew what to do with them..so 8k went down the drain.,,they got rid of it and got something cheaper that works much better..

You cannot go wrong with a Bosch or Miele dishwasher.

...dotsandstripes...unless there is no local service. Miele is a great brand if you can easily get it serviced. Bosch pretty well can be serviced anywhere. Miele..not so much.

Very good point about Miele service. It is not their strong point. I have had both Miele and Bosch dishwashers and it is easier to find service technicians for Bosch. When I needed service for my Miele dw, the first technician was sent from a local repair company and could not fix the problem. Miele then dispatched someone from their factory (in a Miele uniform) and he was much more capable of fixing the issue. We live in an area that has Miele technicians but this is not the case across the country. What I learned from this was to always ask for the Miele technician.

Thanks everyone. Your input has been very helpful. We went looking at appliances yesterday (we have some time before we need to purchase). We are now considering the side by side Refrigerator because it seems like we would be able to keep our freezer more organized. The models with the freezer drawer had depth but seems like we would be digging thru drawer to get to items on bottom.

@Design Girl it looks like we have similar taste. Did you pick a side by side model yet?

As for dishwasher, we've had Bosch and didn't like it. We will be looking for dishwasher with food grinder/disposal so that will narrow down our options pretty quicly.

Is there a reason you didnt like the Bosch? You'll find that the best rated dishwashers very rarely have food grinders. Grinders are noisy. Quality dishwashers only require the filter to be be checked once a month at most and at least on Mieles it takes about 15 seconds.

@Linda YeshMcMaster - I'm going with a Sub Zero 48 inch side by side for my remodel. My favorite 36 side by sides are the Cafe and the Kitchen Aid. I lean towards Cafe because they are usually easier to service if you need it.

@jar G We didn't like Bosch because our dishes never seemed clean. We would clean the darn filter prior to every wash and still had issues. I ended up washing most of dishes by hand and using the machine as a "dish dryer"

In my last house when we replaced the dishwasher we got a Bosch. A large factor in this was that we knew we were selling and Bosch is perceived as desirable. Full disclosure it was not a premium model but still. I was very unimpressed with it.

We moved and just remodeled the kitchen here. I never got all one brand in the past, but this time for my sanity and expedience I went with all one brand. My thought was that since I was replacing 25 year old appliances, whatever I got would be a vast improvement. I was right!

We went with GE.

In particular I am really pleased with the dishwasher. I am happy with the other appliances, but I guess unless there is a problem I don't really notice them.

This is the Dishwasher we got.Dishwasher we are happy with. The link is to HD but we got it elsewhere.

We did get a counter depth French Door fridge with internal water dispenser ( a must have for DH). We had French door in our last house and I really prefer them.

It's amazing that different homeowners have such different experiences with the same brand of any appliance. All advice here is anecdotal, and thus unreliable to make a decision. I'd do some research on your candidates on Consumer Reports or JD Power. They poll a much larger universe of users.

We have had our Liebherr French door fridge for about eight years now. We took a chance on a floor model, and have been very happy with it. Just had add that we needed a fridge with stainless steel finished sides, and Liebherr was the only one we could find that met that requirement.

Hate my freezer drawer and ice maker in bottom. It came with the house. Uuggh. Everything gets lost!

We had a GE at our lake house which I replaced with a Liebherr.

The GE had one large freezer drawer with a wire basket which slid forward and back. My elderly mother could not remember that one couldn't load the lower front because then the basket couldn't slide forward and the drawer didn't close properly.

The Liebherr, as is common among European counter-depth fridges, has drawers inside the freezer door. This makes it easy to organize and find things. It could make it hard to freeze a really big turkey, but narrow side-by-sides have the same issue.

I have a Miele dishwasher. It is super quiet and cleans well.

I am also shopping for appliances and after lots of research and opinions, have come to the conclusion that I have to think of appliances as something that WILL need repair. Period. Probably in the first few years. Once I shifted my thinking from "which brand is most reliable?" to "which brand is most easily fixed?", decision making got a lot more clear. I'm going GE fridge, BlueStar range, Bosch or Kitchenaid DW, Sharp drawer microwave, and am doing my best to avoid features I don't really need, like WiFi and Bluetooth and touch screens - just one more thing that can go wrong. . Haven't picked a hood yet. BlueStar is the only manufacturer in this list that has limited service options in my area, but they are so simple that any qualified repair person can resolve any problem. I'm pretty confident that with youtube I could fix most things on it myself.

About Bosch dishwashers - you will hear they don't dry well. I have one in a vacation rental property I own. It's true that stuff can still be dripping wet at the end of the dry cycle BUT - it's only the plastic items. The chemical makeup of plastic is incompatible with the drying process of a Bosch. If you don't have kids' cups and plastic plates and plastic food storage items, the Bosch will dry just fine and the thing is INCREDIBLY quiet. You can be standing right in front of it when running and not hear it.

And about side by side fridges - if you have never owned one it's important to realize that a side by side fridge can have the same cubic square feet of storage as a bottom freezer style fridge, but the side by side will not hold as much or as well. There's a lot of wasted space in side by sides because of the narrowness. For example, you can't fit a large pizza box or a party platter of food in a side by side, but you can in a bottom freezer style fridge, and if you bring home a lot of groceries at once it will be much harder to fit it all in a side by side. While I agree that the thought of having to root around to find things in a bottom drawer freezer is unappealing, I've decide to deal with it rather than buy another side by side because I use the fridge many many times more in a day than I ever will use the freezer, so I'd rather deal with the freezer inconvenience than the fridge inconvenience of a side by side.