This post is about how we picked out high end kitchen appliances for our custom home.
With the current long lead times for kitchen appliances, we were instructed by our builder to order our appliances very early (our blueprints are not even 100% finalized at this stage).
We started the process not knowing anything about kitchen appliances and feeling very overwhelmed at first on which to choose for our custom home. We went to various appliance showrooms to start to narrow down our search.
In this post, we’re sharing how we picked out luxury kitchen appliances for our custom home, our whole thought process, all the appliances we considered, and which ones we ended up choosing!
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Our Jumping Off Point for Researching Kitchen Appliances
When researching what kitchen appliances to go with for our custom home, the first thing we based our choices on was narrowing down which 48-inch range to choose.
Our kitchen is around 19 ft long so we knew we needed a 48-inch range for our kitchen design to look proportionate.
We ended up purchasing the Monogram 48” All Gas Professional Range for our custom home.
You can read our detailed Monogram appliances review here for our experience with this professional range!
Typically, there are promotions for each brand where you can get credits towards your appliance package (or even certain free appliances thrown in) if you purchase the brand’s range or fridge. So generally we wanted to stick to one brand to receive the promotional discounts.
In our case, we were purchasing kitchen appliances at Ferguson who works with our builder, so we received a builder’s discount and promotional discounts based on the brand, meaning we could mix and match brands if we wanted.
We determined that we would first find a 48-inch commercial range we loved and made sure we loved the accompanying fridge as well.
Our budget would not allow for column refrigerators (would love to get these in the future), but we narrowed our search down to 48-inch built-in refrigerators. This was our compromise between budget and making sure we had enough fridge and freezer space since the refrigerator would be counter-depth.
In our current townhouse, we just have a regular GE fridge which is regular depth, so we were surprised to learn that counter depth fridges cost MORE to not stick out past the counter (which makes the kitchen look better) but results in less storage capacity AND costs more.
Tip: Start Early!
Especially if you have no idea where to start with choosing high-end kitchen appliances (which was us), start browsing super early without any pressure to have to make your final decisions yet.
We started visiting appliance showrooms a couple of months before having to decide anything.
With each visit, we narrowed down our search more and relied on a process of elimination to not get overwhelmed with all the choices!
All The Other Kitchen Appliances We Considered
At the couple of kitchen showrooms we visited, we browsed through Subzero, Thermador, KitchenAid, Monogram, JennAir, and Cafe Appliances. We weren’t intending to spend so much on our appliances at first – we just knew we needed to go with a 48″ range to be proportionate to the size of our kitchen (19 ft in length).
Little by little, the budget kept increasing, especially as we wanted to make sure there was enough fridge and freezer capacity.
Cafe 48″ Smart Dual-Fuel Commercial-Style Range
Sold at: Build With Ferguson, Wayfair, Home Depot, Lowe’s
Cafe Appliances have been super popular on Instagram and we LOVED the idea of getting the matte black 48″ cafe commercial-style range but at the time of researching, there were some availability issues so we ended up not going with Cafe Appliances.
I was really excited about having a black range with bronze handles for our kitchen design though! This was definitely my initial first choice for our kitchen and definitely would have been a showstopper.
Cafe 48″ Built-in Refrigerator
Sold at: Build With Ferguson, Wayfair, Home Depot, Lowe’s
When we considered the 48” Cafe range, we looked at the 48” built-in fridge to match. The Cafe fridge looks very similar to the Monogram line on the interior since they’re both from GE.
Cafe Beverage Center 24 Inch
Sold at: Build With Ferguson, Wayfair, Home Depot, Lowe’s
The Cafe beverage center in white with the brushed bronze handle caught my eye and would’ve been so pretty in our drink area!
If we went with this one, we wouldn’t panel the drink fridge (we’re planning on having white kitchen cabinets).
Watch this IG Reel with our kitchen appliance selections below!
The Kitchen Appliances We Chose For Our Custom Home Build
Range – Monogram 48 inch Gas Professional Range with 6 Burners and Griddle
Refrigerator –
- Original Pick: Monogram 48 Inch Built-in Side By Side Refrigerator
- Updated Pick: JennAir 24 Inch Column Freezer (see why we had to change our fridge selection below!)
Microwave – Monogram Drawer Microwave
Dishwasher – Monogram Smart Fully Integrated Dishwasher
Drink Fridge – JennAir Panel-Ready 24” Under Counter Refrigerator
Range Hood Insert – Best 46 Inch Under Cabinet Range Hood
- We talked to two different kitchen showroom reps who both recommended the brands Best and Zephyr for custom hood inserts. We ended up picking the Best brand.
Fridge Update: We’re Getting Column Refrigerators Instead!
Originally, we were set on ordering the Monogram 48″ side-by-side built-in fridge to match the 48″ Monogram range we’re getting. But when we went to place our order, it turned out that the fridge isn’t available now at all and they’re not sure when it could ship (could be like 18 months or more – it’s just very uncertain). Our appliance rep said another option would be to get a temporary fridge and wait until the actual fridge arrived, but that wasn’t really my preference.
We were going with the 48” built-in fridge to save a little money (and still have adequate fridge and freezer capacity) but because it’s not available anymore, now we’re looking at column refrigerators.
The JennAir column fridges caught Timmy’s eye when we first visited the showroom and he’s been obsessed with the black interior and LED lights. Now that we’re considering column refrigerators, you can customize whatever size you want.
Originally we just assumed we would get the 18″ freezer, which is a similar size to the original 48” built-in fridge. In our blueprints, we had planned for 48″ total for our fridge/freezer size (30″ fridge + 18″ freezer = 48″)
But when we saw the JennAir 18” column freezer in person, it looked pretty small inside and it started to worry us that it would be too small and not as functional in the long run. That led us to one size up – the 24” column freezer.
JennAir 18” vs. 24” Column Freezer Capacity
- Our originally selected Monogram 48″ built-in fridge had a freezer capacity of 11.44 cu ft.
- In comparison:
- JennAir 18″ column freezer – 8 cu ft.
- JennAir 24″ column freezer – 13 cu ft. (what we ended up picking!)
We added the 24” freezer into SketchUp to see what this kitchen area might look like and see how a larger freezer might impact the rest of our kitchen design.
These were just rough measurements to get a general idea – we still need to discuss the actual measurements with our kitchen cabinet person.
The only thing was a bigger 24″ freezer would mean a smaller drawer area next to our 24” drink fridge by approximately 6 inches, which we would rather sacrifice if it meant having more functional freezer space!
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