Bath vanity drawer size

[Paul Greathouse]

I will be building a couple of bathroom vanities for my son's house. We are trying to decide how narrow of a drawer bank that we can go with and still have it look right and also be functional.

How narrow is too narrow? What we are considering right now is an opening with a 10" width (which would end up with 9" wide drawers after allowing for full extension slides and roughly an 8" inside the drawer width after subtracting the 1/2" drawer side material.

There would be 4 drawers and the heights would be 4 1/2", 5 11/16", 6 13/16" & 8". This is considering 1 1/2" rails in between the drawers with overlaying drawer fronts.

I went with 4 drawers because with a 9" wide drawer, it just seemed that they would be too deep for the width if I went with 3 drawers instead.

So whats the narrowest drawer that any of you have built and considered feasable.

[Steve Clardy]

I have gone down to a 6" wide opening.
Just depends on the size of vanity, where the bowl is, etc.

Anything under 6" would be pretty worthless.
Try for as wide as you can get.


4 drawers make a nice system.
3 drawers would be deeper drawers, but three wide drawer fronts aren't as good looking as 4 are.

[Paul Greathouse]

I have gone down to a 6" wide opening.
Just depends on the size of vanity, where the bowl is, etc.

Anything under 6" would be pretty worthless.
Try for as wide as you can get.


4 drawers make a nice system.
3 drawers would be deeper drawers, but three wide drawer fronts aren't as good looking as 4 are.

Hey Steve, Thanks for the response, I was afraid no one was going to answer.

I also like the look of 4 drawers better.

What I'm starting with is an 8' vanity with a 24" knee space in the middle and a bowl on each side. The two bowl sides are 36" each. I want the drawers on each side of the knee space so they would be easily accessable from the knee space. Then I would go with 2 doors on the opposite side of each drawer system.

Would you arrange it differently?

[Steve Clardy]

Ummm. Depends.
Is this a wall to wall vanity? l-------l

If so, your bowls will be against the wall.
Some like that arrangement, some do not.
I can see why you would want the drawers next to the knee area.

Bowls need about 18" of room inside the cabinet.

That should leave you with plenty of space for drawer widths.

[Paul Greathouse]

Ummm. Depends.
Is this a wall to wall vanity? l-------l

If so, your bowls will be against the wall.
Some like that arrangement, some do not.
I can see why you would want the drawers next to the knee area.

Bowls need about 18" of room inside the cabinet.

That should leave you with plenty of space for drawer widths.

It's not a wall to wall, there should be plenty of elbow room on the ends for bowl access. Thanks again Steve, I thought it would work, but I haven't ever built one quite like this before. I just wanted some reassurance from someone that's "been there and done that".

[Steve Clardy]

Sounds good Paul.

Put some pics up when you get it done ;) :D

[Tim Lynch]

FWIW, here's how we did our drawer layout. The deeper drawers are nice for towels, and the small drawers give a his and hers affect. Which for now is "hers and hers" and will probably stay that way. ;)