I think most tops drawers are about 3.75". that's for utensils, silverware etc.

Is that the actual measurement of the sides of the drawer? sometimes there is more 'head' room in the drawer.

did you look at pics others have posted with what they have in those shallow drawers? many have things you wouldn't expect to fit in them.

I've looked for other shallow drawer posts, but couldn't find any. The inside measurement is 3 1/2 inches deep. I think the clearance might be 3 3/4inch. What concerns me is that the next deeper drawer is 10 inches deep, which seems too deep for spatulas, whisks etc. I just found out that I can have the drawers deeper than the 3 1/2 inches, but it would cost an additional $300 per drawer run. I'm not sure if it's worth it.

My utensil drawers are 4" deep inside. I had 3.5" in the old kitchen and they constantly bugged me with all the things that wouldn't fit, or which got caught.

On a tangent topic, we asked for a "pencil drawer" for our desk area and ended up with a really stupid drawer--so shallow it can literally only hold pencils and other things less than 2 inches deep. Should have defined it better before we trusted guys to read our minds.

RJ220. What brand of cabinets do you have? How many shallow drawers do you have?
pillog, I am worried that I will also be constantly bugged with all the things that wouldn't fit. I guess 1/2 inch makes quite a difference.
Thanks for your input.

I've taken a closer look at my drawers. The opening is 4", but the sides are only 3". Maybe your drawers are like that too. In my old drawers, I could have my ladle if I positioned it bowl down, just so. Flatware often got caught if it went askew (mine doesn't stack). Lots of other things had to be eased in to make sure they didn't get caught. Oh. Caught. Framed cabinets.

The drawers in my four drawer stacks are 5-6". They have room for stacked cutlery trays or two small boxes of stacked wraps.

Chris -- my cabs are custom. However, I just realized that I measured the inside of the drawer box itself. The cabs are frameless, and in addition to the drawer box, their is an additional 1" clearance to the bottom of the next drawer. So, I have about 4 1/2 functional inches of space. That 3/4 inch makes a difference. You can see what I mean by looking at the upper corners of the drawers of the photos I posted.

Take a few of your large kitchen implements and go back to the showroom and try out the top drawer to see if your stuff fits.

As RJR noted, the clearance is affected by the depth of the drawer and whether the cabinets are frameless or framed. We have frameless cabinets and the side of our top drawer is 3", and with the drawer bottom and the cabinet design, it turns out that we have about 3" of clearance. I love the depth, but I could see it would disappoint some people who like to have more things in the top drawer. For me, it means that we get more space in our bottom drawers for things like pots, etc.

Chris-Our cabinets are from Dewills and I have 8 of those shallow drawers. There is 3 3/4" clearance. The next drawer down from it has almost 9" and I'm not sure (yet) what I'm going to do with the narrow (width wise) ones like that. We haven't really moved into the kitchen yet, so I can't give you a good answer, but when I first started putting things away, I was a little unsettled by how shallow those top drawers are (I must have been asleep when we talked about it with the cabinet guys). But after moving in just a little (without really cooking in there yet), I think it will be fine. We'll see.

rjr220 - I am wanting to do the exact same thing you have done...sliding utensil tray on top of a set utensil tray. Can you please tell me exactly what materials/ pieces were used to create that? Thanks!

I have a 36" bank of three drawers with the top drawer 3 5/8" deep. With my limited space I wish I would have equalized the size of the top and middle drawer and left the bottom deep. Although I'm not ready to put the new kitchen in use yet it would have been smarter to have a drawer below the upper food cabinet that would fit loafs of bread and other small dry goods. I will now store it over near the susan in a smaller bank of three drawers in the middle deeper one.

Doesn't DeWils have a framed and frameless line? We were in one showroom with both lines, and the drawer depth was what made us decide to go with frameless cabs (but we ended up with custom cabs - almost went with DeWils).

I have 4 drawer stacks with 3 shallow drawers and one taller one on the bottom. On these cabinets, the top drawer has slightly less height than the next 2 drawers, even though the drawer fronts and boxes are all the same height. The top one has 3 7/8 inches of clearance and the next two have 4.5 inches total clearance. Boxes of ziplock bags do not fit standing vertically in the top drawer but fit fine in the lower drawers. Smashed ziplock boxes was something I hated in my old kitchen! The bottom, taller drawer has 8 3/4 inch clearance.

Good luck to you!