New Dimensions

If you’ve ever tried to stuff a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs into your jam-packed refrigerator, there’s good news. Thanks to some nifty engineering, the interior space of today’s refrigerators has been reshaped to give you more space for food storage than ever before. In some cases, there’s even enough room to jam in another gallon of milk.

The highest capacity refrigerators this year are bottom-freezer models that have 28 cubic feet of refrigerator storage space, compared with 26 feet in 2009. You’re likely to pay about $200 more for that extra capacity, but the prices of other bottom-freezer models remain the same for the same capacity that they had 2 years ago. Bottom-freezer models start at $900.

Two years ago, side-by-side refrigerators had a maximum of 25 cubic feet of capacity and were priced at more than $1,000. Today you can get a side-by-side model that has 27 cubic feet for as low as $800. (Top-freezer models haven’t seen much change in either capacity or price since 2009.)

John Lash of Kenmore says he expects refrigerator-makers to squeeze another cubic foot or two of capacity into their premium products in the next year. During the first half of 2011, you can count on seeing premium models that cost at least $2,600 that have at least 30 cubic feet of storage or more. But that might be as large as refrigerators get for a while due to tougher Energy Star standards, which likely will go into effect in 2012, and new Department of Energy minimum standards, which are expected to begin in 2014.

The manufacturers with whom we spoke say they will build thicker walls and add more insulation to their refrigerators to meet DOE’s new minimum standards, which means that the capacity of their refrigerators will stop growing.

However, the new standards will not affect the price or reduce the capacity, says David Goldstein, who is the co-director of National Resources Defense Council’s energy program and an expert on refrigerator efficiency. That’s good, because the new standards won’t save you much money beyond what today’s energy-efficient models deliver, he says. You’ll save just $19 over the lifetime of a bottom-freezer model, $22 for a top-freezer model and $37 for a side-by-side model, compared with the electricity costs of refrigerators that conform to older standards.

NEED YOUR SPACE. Manufacturers constantly tweak their refrigerators to create more storage space. The latest redesign involves relocating one of the bulkiest parts of a freezer—the icemaker, which usually takes up space on the top shelf—to the inside of the refrigerator door. Now all manufacturers offer refrigerators that have in-door icemakers. These models begin at $1,000.

Relocating the icemaker frees up significant space on the refrigerator’s top shelf, but in exchange it takes away all of the storage space that is in the door—except for two models that give back that space. In 2010, Kenmore and LG introduced French-door models (refrigerators that have two doors that swing out and a pullout bottom-freezer drawer) that have in-door icemakers that are 3 inches slimmer than are traditional in-door icemakers.

As a result, the doors on these models can hold up to 12 cans of soda or items of an equivalent size. Although no other manufacturer has introduced a refrigerator that has a slim in-door icemaker, we expect them to follow suit in the next 2 years. We’re hopeful that competition will bring down the price: The Kenmore and LG models cost $2,800 apiece.

Models that have frameless shelves—shelves that don’t have plastic spill-containing sills on all of the edges—also will be more common in the next 2 years. We found that if you take away the sills, you can gain enough space for three or four more cans of soda on each shelf. Bosch has a $3,100 side-by-side model that has frameless shelves; Kenmore will introduce its own frameless-shelf models this year but wouldn’t reveal the price.