Bathroom corner cabinet dimensions

[dean0866]

I’ll be embarking on my first real project of building a wall mounted corner cabinet for the bathroom and would like some advice on the unit proportions/dimensions (height vs. width) Are there any rough guides as to what would constitute correct proportions or should you just go with a guesstimate and see how it works out?

Thanks
Dean

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Consider designing your cabinet from the inside outwards so to speak. Measure up what has to be stored, determine the internal space required and go from there. In other words, you let function determine the internal dimensions, and the external dimensions are adjusted to suit.

Typically, from a visual point of view it's more common to see a cabinet, whether it's a triangular corner affair or a rectangular box, as taller than wide when viewed from the front elevation, although there are often good reasons to not follow that configuration to respond effectively to a design brief or challenge. For a start then, think of something like a 1 to 1.5 ratio, e.g., 600 mm wide X 900 mm tall; or if you prefer to work from the long side use a ratio of 1 to 0.66 which works out about the same, e.g., the long vertical edge is determined at 900 mm so if you multiply that by 0.66 you end up with a horizontal dimension of 594 mm. You can adjust the proportions to suit, or simply come up with a proportion by eye that you judge to be attractive.

You can apply rules for proportion if you want, e.g., golden section, Fibonacci, modular, etc, and some people do, but there's no need to if you don't wish to design within those strictures. Slainte.

 

[Steve Maskery]

That's all good advice from Richard.
One more thing. Remember that a corner cabinet is very inefficient in terms of storage space for any given front elevation. It has literally half the capacity of a standard, rectangular cabinet of the same depth.
One way of increasing the capacity without making it look significantly bigger is to add sided to it at the front, if that makes sense. Start with the triangle of the two walls and the front door, then bring the front door outwards a few inches and build sides between the two. You end up with a 5-sided plan elevation. Do it on a piece of paper, you'll see what I trying to describe (badly).
S

 

[DMF]

you'll see what I trying to describe
S

Irregular pentagon?! Best i can think of, has that shape got a name? Complete tangent i know but been revisiting mathematics lately trying to ensure i can work out radius etc when i need to but that shape had me stumped, i have more work to do than i thought!

Dean.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

In my response yesterday I failed to mention that corner cabinets, particularly wall mounted versions, seldom have a square back corner. The back corner viewed in plan is almost always greater than 90º, usually something like 91- 93º. The reason for this, particularly when such cabinets are built without a specific location in mind, is to account for the fact that room corners are never square: the aim therefore is to ensure the outer vertical corners of the cabinet butt against the walls whilst its rear corner, if anything, is inset slightly from the room corner.

Just how much greater than 90º you should make your custom built cabinet for your specific corner is determined by undertaking a site survey, i.e., you find out what the angle of your room corner is ... you might find it's less than 90º, so you could build your cabinet with a 90º rear corner. On the other hand you may move the cabinet to another location in the future and the new location may have a room corner greater than 90º, so perhaps you're best to build the cabinet in the first place to allow for such an eventuality. Slainte.

 

[dean0866]

Thanks all for the great advice.......I'll take into consideration both the rule of multiplying by 0.66 which seems to give a well proportioned cabinet and utilising the pentagon to increase the space.

Dean