Technical Articles
2025-01-16

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

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This issue highlights:Embedded appliance design Estimated reading time:5 minutes

Hello everyone, I am your super cute JiaJia~

With the improvement of living standards, to meet different living needs, from household appliances to cooking appliances, people have more and more appliances at home!

Especially in kitchen spaces and balconies, whether it’s large or small appliances, they take up a lot of space. Cluttered appliances on the countertop or placed against the wall can make the space look very messy and uncomfortable. Therefore, embedded design solves this pain point by hiding all appliances in cabinets or walls.

So, how should this embedded appliance design be done? What factors need to be considered?

With these questions, let’s discuss together~

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
This article focuses on analyzing the following aspects:

How to do the “embedded appliance” design?

1. What is embedded design?

2. Prerequisites for embedded appliance design

3. Dimensional requirements for embedded appliances

4. Design requirements for embedded appliances

5. What are the benefits of embedded appliances?

01

「What is embedded design?」

It refers to embedding commonly used household appliances, such as refrigerators, ovens, steamers, microwaves, sterilizers, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, televisions, etc., all installed in custom cabinets or walls.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
This saves space, makes the entire space appear more cohesive, cleaner, and aesthetically pleasing, greatly improving the usability of the space and reducing waste.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

02

「Prerequisites for “embedded appliance” design」

Embedded appliance design is not suitable for all spaces, and all designs should be pragmatic.

Therefore, the design of embedded appliances must meet these conditions:

1. Sufficient space area

Generally speaking, balcony spaces mostly adopt embedded designs, embedding washing machines, dryers, and sinks into custom cabinets.

The main issue is the kitchen space; embedded appliances are not about tearing down part of the wall and stuffing the appliances in, but rather flexibly arranging the appliance locations from a holistic perspective.
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
Essentially, it still occupies the kitchen’s space area; the appliance doors and standing space require enough dimensions. Therefore, if the kitchen is too small to accommodate storage and passage space, then embedded appliance design cannot be implemented.
2. Sufficient client budget
Embedding appliances incurs costs for both the appliances themselves and the custom cabinets, which are significantly higher than designs without embedding. Therefore, the feasibility depends on whether the client’s budget is sufficient.
3. Appliance dimensions and after-sales service

Embedded appliances differ from regular appliances as they require installation. It is crucial to pay attention to the dimensional relationship between the appliance and the cabinet; otherwise, installation will not be possible. Additionally, after-sales service must be considered for future maintenance and repairs.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

03

「Dimensional requirements for “embedded appliance” design」

1. Cabinet size requirements

When considering cabinet size design, the dimensions of the appliance doors and standing space must be taken into account. Appliances are generally embedded in base cabinets or full-height cabinets, with standard cabinet depths around 600mm. After arranging the cabinets, ensure there is at least 1200mm of passage space.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
Embedded appliance doors generally open outward, thus occupying passage space. The door opening size is approximately over 500mm, so after the door opens, sufficient standing space should be ensured, generally at least 600mm in width. Therefore, for embedded appliance cabinets, the passage area dimensions must be at least 1200mm.

Passage area width ≥ appliance door opening size + standing space

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
2. Appliance size requirements

As for which appliances need to be embedded and the dimensions of embedded appliances, all must be determined before making cabinets to facilitate the reservation of sizes and pre-emptive placement of electrical sockets.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

04

「Design requirements for heat dissipation and plumbing/electricity」

1. Heat dissipation design requirements

For these embedded appliances, an important factor is heat dissipation, especially since they are in a closed cabinet, which can slow down the heat dissipation rate, thereby affecting efficiency.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

On the other hand, high temperatures can also adversely affect the cabinet itself. Different appliances have different heat dissipation methods and positions. Some dissipate heat from the back or bottom, while others do so from all sides. Therefore, this should be considered during design.

The core logic of heat dissipation is to maintain a distance between the appliance and the cabinet while ensuring cabinet protection.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

Therefore, when reserving cabinet dimensions, ensure a certain distance between the appliance and the cabinet. Additionally, the material choice for the cabinet must not be the same as that for conventional cabinets; it should be heat-resistant and deformation-resistant. Alternatively, heat-insulating boards can be arranged inside the cabinet to extend appliance lifespan and protect the cabinet.
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls
Different appliances have different heat dissipation measures and requirements
1. Oven
If the oven is to be embedded, it is best to choose one with front heat dissipation, and the cabinet for the oven should not have a back panel. Maintain a gap between the oven and the cabinet for ventilation. The cabinet material should be heat-resistant.

If the oven is installed in a base cabinet, it should not be placed under the stove, as both the gas stove and oven have high heat dissipation needs, and placing them together can cause damage to the appliances and even lead to explosion hazards.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

2. Microwave oven

The heat dissipation logic for the microwave is similar; it needs to maintain a distance from the surrounding cabinet. There should be at least 100mm of space between the microwave and the cabinet above, and 50mm on either side to facilitate ventilation. The microwave should also be of the front heat dissipation type.
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

3. Sterilizer

Sterilizers are generally installed directly below the stove, maintaining a gap of ≥150mm between them, and a square ventilation hole of 120mm should be reserved in the cabinet behind for ventilation.

4. Refrigerator

For embedded refrigerators, the sides and back are the main heat dissipation sources; therefore, there should be a certain distance from the cabinet or wall, with a gap of at least 100mm.
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

Tips:

For example, ovens and steamers are typically embedded below the countertop, but this height requires us to squat down when using them!
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

If conditions permit, some embedded appliances should be designed for ergonomics. If space is limited, then conventional embedding solutions should be adopted.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

2. Plumbing and electrical design requirements

1. Layout of sockets
It is necessary to consider the layout and placement of appliances in advance for socket design. Generally, sockets should be placed on the side or in nearby cabinets (pre-drilling required), and should be avoided directly behind the appliances.
Why is this important? Imagine if the appliance dissipates heat from the back, and the socket is exactly behind it; this could cause damage to the appliance and also pose safety risks.
From a dimensional perspective, placing the socket behind the appliance occupies part of the depth of the embedded appliance, causing it to protrude from the cabinet, severely affecting the aesthetic effect.
Generally, the sockets for embedded appliances are set behind the embedded compartments, meaning that once the appliance is placed inside, the plug cannot be directly plugged or unplugged. To disconnect the power, the circuit breaker must be turned off!
Therefore, to facilitate cleaning and the ability to disconnect power, an additional switch can be added to the power line of the embedded appliance socket for easy power disconnection at any time.
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

2. Layout of water supply and drainage

Before making cabinets, the positions of water supply and drainage pipes, as well as the dimensions of the appliances, should be reserved in advance. Remember, in cases of limited depth, do not place the water inlet directly behind the appliance,

as this will also cause the appliance to protrude, affecting aesthetics. The floor drain should not be placed directly below the appliance, as this will affect drainage. It should be arranged beside the appliance.
Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls

05

「What are the benefits of embedded appliances?」

1. Free up countertop space

For instance, kitchen appliances that occupy countertop space hinder cooking operations, especially in small kitchens where counter space is limited. By embedding appliances in cabinets, countertop space can be freed up for easier cooking tasks.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls▲ Embedded appliances in cabinets free up countertop space

2. Simple and beautiful design

Embedding appliances into cabinets creates a cohesive look, making the entire space appear more streamlined and aesthetically pleasing.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls▲ Embedded appliances make the space more simple and aesthetically pleasing.

3. Easy maintenance

For example, kitchen appliances that are not embedded and placed on the countertop create cleaning dead zones. However, when embedded in cabinets, only the surface of the appliance is exposed, eliminating cleaning dead zones.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls▲ Embedded appliances only expose the surface, eliminating cleaning dead zones.

4. Space utilization

By embedding appliances into cabinets, vertical space can be maximized. For instance, custom tall cabinets designed specifically for appliances can accommodate several appliances in a single tall cabinet.

Essential Guide to Embedded Appliance Design: Avoid Common Pitfalls▲ Embedded appliance arrangement maximizes vertical space utilization.
These are the considerations and advantages of embedded appliance design summarized today. Reasonable design is necessary for maximizing space utilization. How is your kitchen design plan structured? Feel free to share in the comments!
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