How Deep Is a Chest of Drawers? Every One Here Is 45cm, and That Is Not a Coincidence

Height varies. Width varies. Depth does not. Every chest of drawers, every tallboy and every bedside table in the Cedora bedroom range is exactly 45cm deep, across five ranges and three different styles, and the sideboards are only a centimetre off it.

That is not laziness. Forty five centimetres is what you get when you work backwards from the thing the drawer has to hold, and it is why most chests of drawers you will ever measure land between 40cm and 50cm.

Key Takeaways

• Every Cedora chest, tallboy and bedside table is 45cm deep. Sideboards are 45cm to 46cm.
• The drawer interior is 36.9cm to 38.3cm front to back, which is a folded adult garment plus a little room.
• Allow 85cm to 90cm from the wall in total: 45cm of furniture plus the drawer travel.
• A console table at 36cm to 38cm is the shallow alternative, at the cost of real storage.
• Depth is the one dimension a narrow room cannot negotiate, so measure it before width.

Where 45cm Comes From

Start with a folded jumper. Folded the way most people fold, an adult top is roughly 30cm to 35cm across. Give it a little room to go in and out without catching and you want a drawer interior around 37cm.

Now build the box around it. Add a drawer front, a back panel, and the clearance the runner needs, and you land at about 45cm of external depth. The drawer interiors across this range confirm the arithmetic: 36.9cm on the Liverpool, 37cm on the Bristol and Manchester, 37.8cm on the Newcastle, 38.3cm on the London.

Which is why 40cm feels tight in use and 50cm feels like wasted floor. The garment sets the number, not the furniture.

The Whole Bedroom Is One Number

The practical consequence is worth pausing on. Because depth is constant, choosing between a Bristol Pine 6 Drawer Chest at 140cm and a Bristol Pine 5 Drawer Tallboy at 100cm changes only how much wall you use, not how far the piece intrudes into the room. Both stand 45cm proud of the wall.

So in a narrow bedroom the tallboy does not save you any walking room down the side of the bed. It saves you wall. Those are different constraints and it is worth knowing which one you actually have.

Liverpool Pine 6 Drawer Chest - Black

The Number You Actually Have to Plan For Is 90cm

Forty five centimetres is the furniture. It is not the space the furniture needs.

A drawer has to come out far enough to reach the back of it, which means roughly 40cm of travel on a 37cm interior. Add that to the 45cm carcass and a chest of drawers needs about 85cm to 90cm of clear floor measured from the wall before it is usable.

In a 3m wide bedroom with a 171cm queen bed, that is the whole calculation: 90cm for the chest and 171cm for the bed comes to 261cm, leaving 39cm to get past. Which is why the chest usually ends up on the wall at the foot of the bed rather than beside it, and why in a truly small room it does not fit at all. We ran the room level version of this in bed frame for a small bedroom.

If 45cm Is Too Deep

Three ways out, in order of how much storage you give up.

Go taller instead of wider. A tallboy at 100 x 45cm takes 0.45 square metres of floor against 0.63 for the chest, holds nearly as much, and still stands 45cm off the wall. It solves a wall problem, not a walkway problem.

Use a console table. At 36cm to 38cm deep a console returns 7cm to 9cm to the room, which is meaningful in a hallway or a narrow bedroom. It will not hold folded clothing properly, because the interior drops below the width of a folded jumper. It is a surface with a shelf.

Put the storage under the bed. A bed frame with base drawers uses floor you have already committed to the bed. The catch is that the drawer still needs 60cm of clear travel in front of its face, so you have moved the problem rather than removed it.

Newcastle Acacia 6 Drawer Chest

Depth Also Decides Whether It Gets Through the Door

Forty five centimetres is comfortably under a standard 820mm internal doorway, so depth is never the constraint on delivery. The width is: a 140cm chest goes through a doorway on its side, and the piece has to be turned to do it.

The place that stops people is a staircase with a landing. Measure the diagonal of the landing before ordering a 140cm chest, because that is where a piece that fits every doorway in the house will not turn the corner. A 100cm tallboy turns corners a 140cm chest cannot, which is a real reason to choose one in an older terrace.

Two Things Depth Does Not Tell You

It does not tell you capacity. Every chest here is 140 x 45 x 85cm and the drawer interiors still differ by more than half, from 16cm deep inside on the Newcastle to 24.6cm on the Liverpool. Same box, very different storage. We measured the whole set in five chests, one size, 52 per cent difference.

It does not tell you stability. A 45cm base is plenty under an 85cm chest and marginal under a 120cm tallboy with a loaded top drawer open. Depth is the base of the lever, so the same 45cm is generous in one piece and tight in the other. Both should be anchored, which we covered in how to anchor furniture to the wall.

Bristol Pine 6 Drawer Chest

Frequently Asked Questions

How deep is a standard chest of drawers?

Between 40cm and 50cm, and 45cm is the most common. Every chest, tallboy and bedside table in the Cedora range is exactly 45cm deep. The number comes from the drawer interior, which needs about 37cm to take a folded adult garment.

How much space does a chest of drawers need from the wall?

About 85cm to 90cm of clear floor in total. That is 45cm of carcass plus roughly 40cm of drawer travel so you can reach the back of the drawer. Planning for 45cm alone is the most common mistake in a narrow bedroom.

Is a tallboy less deep than a chest of drawers?

No. Both are 45cm deep. A tallboy is narrower at 100cm against 140cm, so it uses less wall and less floor area, but it stands exactly as far into the room. If your problem is the walkway rather than the wall, a tallboy does not solve it.

What is the shallowest option for a narrow room?

A console table at 36cm to 38cm deep, which returns 7cm to 9cm. The trade is real: the interior drops below the width of a folded jumper, so a console is a surface with a shelf rather than clothing storage.

Will a chest of drawers fit through a doorway?

Depth is never the problem at 45cm against an 820mm doorway. Width is: a 140cm chest goes through on its side and has to be turned. The place it gets stuck is a stair landing, so measure the landing diagonal before ordering.