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Design Dilemma Bathrooms

How big should a medicine cabinet be?

last year

We are replacing a vanity. Photo 2 is the existing 60 inch vanity. Sink will be centered. Resulting vanity will look like picture1.

Featured Answer

chispa

last year

There is no one universal size for a medicine cabinet. Depends on the space you have, what you want to store and the look you want.

In my master bath I have two medicine cabinets and each is 24" x 48".

Guest bathroom with narrower vanity, but still has high ceilings, so these are 20" x 48".

Another one I did in my previous house. Smaller vanity and lower ceilings. This one is approximately 30" x 40".

And another one in my previous house. Two medicine cabinets with plain glass between them. Takes a bit of planning to get a nice precise fit, but a competent contractor should be able to figure it out.

For any recessed medicine cabinet make sure to take into account the height of your faucet. Don't use a faucet with a top mounted handle (advice from personal experience!)

Don't mount the medicine cabinet too high, which is a common mistake.

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Comments (9)

Lyn Nielson
last year
generally, standard inset medicine cabinets fit in the stud cavity (between two wall studs)

wall mounted cabinets are mounted on the finished wall...

you can have a custom built, wall mounted cabinet to you specifications.

You are use to a lot of mirror, it will be a change, for sure.

Decide what you need in storage before you make a decision.
PRO
Design with Vision
last year
Minimize is the word. As shallow as possible. Again minimize
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I have a better picture now. I agree a 15 inch wide cabinet be too small. If you got a wider cabinet 20-30 inches you could put the sconces on either side. I think this would look to scale. If you are looking to save some money, how about a light fixture above the cabinet and using your old mirror by cutting it down into two pieces placed on each side of the cabinet? This would give you a the look of a full wall mirror. Is it possible to put the cabinet on one of the side walls? If yes, then cut the mirror down to 30 inches wide and then install sconces on either side. I think this would look better if the cabinet could be installed flush to the wall.
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Thanks. I hadn't thought about using the water pik in the center cabinet -- I'm not sure how long the hose is -- it would need to reach the sink and as I said, in our bathroom, there is more space between the cabinets so the center cabinet is farther from the sinks. I will make sure we put an outlet in each cabinet so that is an option. In my opinion, I kind of figured the center cabinet would stay closed most of the time and we would mainly use the ones above our respective sinks. But I will have to measure the cord on the water pik and see if it would work to use the center one as the main one. On the subject of two sinks, we only have one sink now and I never understood the desire for two sinks (it always seemed like people on househunters were completely irrational about it, LOL!). In my opinion, a second sink was just more work to clean. But here we are putting in 2 sinks because my dh has a lot of dental problems and his dentists keep adding steps to his nightly tooth care ritual to the point where it takes him like 20 minutes to brush, floss, use this other weird gum cleaning tool, water pik, rinse with special prescription rinses, etc. In the meantime, I am standing there exhausted waiting my turn at the sink so I can brush for a minute and go to bed (I was blessed with good teeth thankfully!). So I cannot WAIT to have two sinks even though I will end up cleaning them both.
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palimpsest
last year
Do you even need one if your vanity has drawers?
kandrewspa
last year
Are there two sinks in your vanity? I know it's hard to get good pictures in bathrooms sometimes because there isn't a lot of room. I like to have sconce lighting in a bathroom, meaning lights on either side of the mirrors instead of overhead. It's better quality lighting for grooming. Is (are) the sink(s) going to be in exactly the same position relative to the edges of the vanity? I would choose skinny light fixtures since the vanity butts up against a wall, then measure to see how much room you will have for a medicine cabinet after placing sconces. While they are meant to be placed in stud cavities, when you open the wall if the cavity isn't in the right place you can still make it work. When we remodeled our master bath not too long ago DH had to move the cavities because of a design change from old to new. If you aren't DIYing your contractor should be able to do this easily. Medicine cabinets come in certain standard sizes, so once you figure out which size you have room for you can choose one. If your ceilings are 8' I think 30" tall is enough. If 9', you can easily use a 36" one. I don't know if there's any value to a taller once since at that point the upper shelf might be hard for shorter people to utilize well. Place them so the bottom of the door won't interfere with the faucet when the door is open.
kandrewspa
last year

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BeverlyFLADeziner
last year
IMO the easiest solution is to purchase medicine cabinets designed to be inserted between studs and install them at either end of the vanity. Can you ever have enough storage for medications etc.
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
last year
IMO big enough to hold whtat you need and as for fitting between studs all you need is to build a header lust like for a window if you want bigger. We do not actually have medicin cabinet we have drawers to hold all the items we would put in a wall cabinet any stuff that would be dangerous is in our bedroom since we have a small great grandson . IMO a wall of mirror is a great choice and you have lots of drawers so use them . I keep extra TP in the vanity cabinet under the sink
cbnie
Original Author
last year
Definitely looking for medicine cabinet vs. mirror wall. This will be a 60” vanity with one centered sink. A lighting fixture will go above not on the sides. Cabinet will be surface mount. Contractor has suggested a 48” medicine cabinet; that seems big to me. But will a narrower cabinet (30 or 40”) look too small?

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