You need to purchase a refrigerator made to do what you want to do if you want a true built in look.

You're probably going to need at least 3" or so on each side of the refrigerator. You may need more - it depends on how deep the wall is in comparison to the refrigerator, how the hinges are mounted/work, etc.

Check the specs for the refrigerator. Sometimes they tell you how much room is needed, but not always. Your best bet is to find it in a showroom and, using boards or similar, test it out....or wait until you have it to test it.

I wonder if the expense of creating this alcove will match the cost of a true built-in refrigerator....

I thought about doing this, but then decided it would look worse because you'd have a significant unusable border to the left and right of the refrigerator, as well as the recessed trim which won't hide the door anyway because of the width required.

A 0 clearance refrigerator is needed for that. Check Liebherr.

The reason everyone is encouraging you to get the right fridge is that non-built in units have air requirements and hinge clearance requirements that if ignored will ruin your fridge and void you warranty, and if followed will undermine the look you're going for.

The other thing is that a fridge surrounded by only wall looks, well, bad. Others have done this on GW so it may just be that I find it odd looking but check out the finished kitchens blog (i.e. look) before you leap, and consider a cabinet surround of some sort. The image below is of a built-in fridge in a wall. Your gaps will be much bigger. Compare that look with that of the cabinet surrounds in the threat below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fridge Thread

Joke post, right? No one would "picture frame" their fridge with enough recessed fillers to do this and lose all of that space, right? Plus have that indent in the wall around the fridge? If you're serious, there are a LOT of reasons no one's done that.

I agree about checking the fridge in person. You may not need to purchase a special fridge. Our 2 fridges are just $500 top freezer standard depth fridges. We have them pushed all the way back into the recessed area and have no problem opening the doors. Of course, ours are surrounded by cabinet, not wall, but same concept.

It looks like you are thinking about French door from your concept picture ?

Your doors will still hit the adjacent walls if you open them too vigorously, and the side of the fridge will still show, because it has to with that type of fridge's door hinge. And the recess will merely exacerbate that this is a non standard installation.

The other thing to say is that it actually looks fine to build an enclosure around a standard-depth refrigerator such that the door comes out beyond the wall or cabinet. It's fine.

When I realized the issue with the border requirements, we thought about going to a built-in. But we went with a standard-depth refrigerator. It has way more space than a built-in, is more functional, and about 1/3 the price. If I only had room for a counter-depth I might have gone the other way, but if you have room for standard depth, I would use it.

Thanks for all the input. I've done and thought about most of the things suggested by everyone, including taking a template of a wall to the store for testing. The fridge will be in the walking path to the dining room so minimizing the amount sticking out was part of the goal. Sorting through all the dimension options left me unsatisfied. When my husband came up with this idea, I figured it was worth looking into. @ Live Wire...your drawing was very useful. Thank you for taking the time to produce it. If my GC can find me six more inches of width, I may revert to 42" built in, but otherwise, I'll just have to adjust to the downside of a standard depth. Sure wish they would make one you could built in. Murphy's Law says probably see one next year! :)

Remember that there aren't just two sizes of refrigerator. Depending on the model, you can get almost any depth of refrigerator you want, regardless of whether they call it standard depth or counter depth. The Samsung we got had 2.5 less inches of depth less than their top-end model and the additional depth of the door and hinge is only 2.8 inches.

Thanks, calumin. I'll look again with this in mind.

A friend did something similar, though he surrounded his fridge with cabinetry so it looks like a hutch. He had to do it with custom cabinetry. He is an engineer and did all his own drawings and calculations and the cabinet maker guys would not take any responsibility for how it came out. Fortunately he knows what he's doing and it came out beautiful...looks like a hutch, not a fridge. The big issue is understanding how the doors hinge and move when they open and close. You can't have any framing interfere with that and you need to do it in such a way that the doors can open completely, otherwise you can't get the drawers inside open.

Oh, with a true integrated built in fridge, you can make it look like anything you want. You just can't do that with a regular freestanding fridge. It's not just the hinges. It's the ventilation that's needed.