You have decided to splash out on a new refrigerator. Perhaps your old one has malfunctioned, isn’t big enough, or maybe you’ve moved home and the old one doesn’t fit. Here’s a handy guide to help you decide what you should be looking for.
Probably the most important thing is to decide where you are going to place your fridge. Then measure that space where it is going to stand, height, width and depth. Then knock off a few inches to allow air to circulate behind and above the fridge. That’s the size of fridge you should be looking for. Even the best fridge in the world is useless if it doesn’t fit in the space you have allocated it!
Almost as important: doors. Where do you want the hinge- left or right-hand side? Is there enough room for the door to open wide enough for you to get at the contents in the door? Have the door put on the way you want it before it’s delivered.
Next up what type of fridge do you want- a pure and simple fridge with no freezer compartment? (maybe you have a chest freezer somewhere outside of the kitchen)
Or maybe you like refrigerators with the freezer on the top, with a separate door. If you will be going to the freezer quite a lot, then it’s an advantage to have it at eye level or thereabouts, so you don’t have to bend or crouch to get at freezer produce.
If you aren’t going to use a freezer much, than have it in the lower part of the appliance. You won’t be bending that often.
A quick word about shelves, trays and baskets inside the fridge. Flexibility is the watchword here. Have glass fridge shelves (easier to clean) that can be slotted into a variety of different positions to suit you. You don’t want to be caught out when you have a party and want to put lots of wine and bottles of beer in the fridge, but the shelves are all fixed, with only one tall enough to accommodate opened white wine bottles.
There are also side by side appliances that have a fridge on one side and a freezer on the other. The shelves are likely to 
be narrow, so storing larger items could be a problem.
Here on the right is a luxury side-by-side frost-free fridge from Panasonic with a host of features- the NRB53V1XB.
Finally colour. Yep, fridges come in many designs and colours these days, not just boring old ice-white. However that outrageous pink and cerise fridge may have looked nice when you had a similarly trendy/bohemian kitchen- but now you have an all-white kitchen, it stands out like a sore thumb. Probably better to get a white one and then have a fridge transfer laid over the front to give your fridge a personality and vibrancy, but one that you don’t have to keep forever!
So armed with these basic requirements, you can then start to look at other things, such as price, efficiency, and any add-ons it may have, like a built in cold water/ice dispenser.
For more information on fridges, please visit this website: http://slimlinefridgefreezers.com/
