The Best Kitchen Appliance Features: My Ten Faves

Looking for the best kitchen appliances? These are the features that sold me on mine!

It’s been about three years since we finished our kitchen remodel (see my “before” and “after” kitchen reveal {here} if you missed it) and we enjoyed every minute in our new space until our recent move! I’ve since gotten a lot of questions from those of you planning a kitchen remodel of your own, especially when you’re at that intimidating point of making final choices on everything that goes into it. One of the hardest decisions is choosing which kitchen appliances to buy – it can be pretty overwhelming and you want to make a smart decision because appliances aren’t cheap.

After living with my Monogram appliances for a while now, I found that some of my favorite features are ones I was specifically looking for when appliance shopping but others are unexpected ones that I actually lucked into and hadn’t even known to look for. By sharing my ten favorite features with you, I’m hoping to help you create a must-have list that you can use to find the best kitchen appliances for your new space!

This post is in partnership with Monogram, who I reached out to about working together on my kitchen remodel after deciding that their appliances were the best fit for my new kitchen! Some affiliate links are included in this post (full disclosure statement available {here}).

1. Wifi Connected Appliances with App Alerts

One of the coolest new features of my Monogram dishwasher (I have {this one}) and refrigerator (I have {this one}) is that they have “Wifi Connect”, which enables me to get app alerts on my phone! For my refrigerator, I get alerts for things like someone leaving the door open or the water filter needing to be replaced and for my dishwasher, I get alerted if I’m running low on dishwasher pods or rinse agent and even if a leak is detected. Knowing several people who have had their kitchen floors ruined by undetected dishwasher leaks, this feature is huge!

The app also has easy links to both appliance manuals so there’s no more running around to track down the owners manual booklets that came with them!

2. Refrigerator That’s Counter Depth Without Sacrificing Space

When you’re shopping for a refrigerator, it seems like your choices are to (1) get a regular, full size refrigerator with lots of storage space or (2) a more streamlined, counter depth refrigerator with limited interior space. I went on a mission to find a refrigerator with a counter depth profile but still plenty of storage space for food and that’s exactly what I got with my Monogram fridge:

Do you see how deep the refrigerator door bins are? Those babies hold a TON of stuff inside:

My refrigerator’s total capacity is over 23 cu ft with almost 16 cu ft of that for the fridge! Our old counter depth refrigerator had about 16 cu ft of space for the fridge and freezer sections combined so it’s a big difference. Keeping these bins inside so that everything has a place and it’s neat and organized helps too:

My freezer is also much larger than my old counter depth refrigerator and it includes a roll-out drawer to maximize my storage space. My freezer is also much larger than my old counter depth refrigerator and it includes a roll-out drawer to maximize my storage space. I love this baby and have even figured out how to keep the stainless steel having that just-like-new shine – see my post on how to clean stainless steel appliances {here}.

3. Customizable Refrigerator Shelving

While it’s common for refrigerators to have shelves that are height adjustable by taking them completely out and putting them back in at a new height, my refrigerator also has some customizable shelving options that you can change up without taking out a thing. For example, on the inside of one of my refrigerator doors, there’s a drop down tray under the top enclosed shelf where I currently keep my cream cheeses and spreadable butter:

But if I have some taller items I want to store in the bin below it (like if a guest brings over a bottle of wine), I can simply push the tray up to provide that needed additional space:

One of the large glass shelves in the main part of my refrigerator has an in-place height customization option too – love that!

4. LED Appliance Lighting

Good appliance lighting is something that I didn’t even know I was missing out on when I had my old kitchen with my dark-inside appliances. My new refrigerator has the best LED lighting (those little silver pucks along the side and top!) so that I can easily see all the way to the back on every single shelf:

My dishwasher has LED lighting too so it’s super easy to see whether or not the dishes are clean:

And along with having lights in both of my ovens that stay on the whole time something’s cooking, my range (I have {this one}) has LED lights you can turn on to illuminate the knobs:

5. Dishwasher With a Built-In Look

I knew when I bought my dishwasher that it had hidden controls (definitely a must-have!) and that it’s designed to be installed completely flush with the cabinetry. What I didn’t realize is that the bottom kickplate of my dishwasher is recessed so that I was able to run our white kitchen toe kick in front of it – it gives it so much more of a built-in look!

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Such a small thing but it makes everything look so much more clean-lined and it will now always be a feature that I look for.

6. Bottle Jets for Water Bottles & Vases

I feel like people fall into two camps when it comes to washing dishes – some hand-wash almost everything other than their standard dishes and silverware and others throw pretty much everything they possibly can into the dishwasher. I’m definitely in the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-goes-in camp so the feature I was most excited about when I chose my dishwasher is that it has bottle jets that spray water all the way up into the hard to reach areas inside of water bottles to get them clean. The fact that I can now kiss hand washing our water bottles goodbye is a beautiful thing (and it works great for my narrow mouthed vases too)!

7. Handle Styles That Complement Your Kitchen

Don’t underestimate the impact that the design of your appliance handles will have on the feel of your kitchen! You should put just as much time into deciding on the right appliance handles as you do into figuring out your cabinet knobs and pulls. Even if I loved every interior feature of a set of appliances, ugly handle options would be a dealbreaker for me. Fortunately Monogram has two different handle styles to choose from and they’re both beautiful! I went with their “Professional” handles which are nice and chunky yet streamlined:

I know a lot of people mix and match appliances but while I’m not a matchy-matchy person in general, I’m all about having my appliances match for a uniform look:

8. A Double Oven (Bonus if One is Smaller!) + Oven Probe

I had a double wall oven in our old kitchen and while I didn’t use it a ton, it was so nice to have when I needed it. When I decided to forgo a wall oven in our new kitchen, I knew I wanted a range that had two ovens. What I didn’t know initially is that some like mine have a full-size oven plus a smaller size oven – I absolutely love it!

Most of the time, the smaller oven is all that I need. It’s perfect for your typical 9″ x 13″ casserole dish or baking sheet:

I love that it heats up faster than a full-size oven and uses less gas. Another feature I love about my range is that the full-size oven has a built-in temperature probe feature. You simply insert one end of the probe into the outlet inside the oven, put the other end into the thickest part of your meat, set it to the desired internal temperature, and then your oven will alert you when your food is done!

I’m looking forward to using it when I cook my first Thanksgiving turkey in our new kitchen later this month!

9. Built-In Griddle

I’ve never been a big griddle person but that’s in large part because our stand-alone griddle is a pain in the butt to store and clean. So while I thought the built-in griddle on our range was a nice feature, it didn’t influence my appliance choice one way or another. But let me tell you… I love it! So much more than I thought I would! Now that my griddle is so convenient, I find myself using it all the time and it’s actually a lot easier to clean than our stand-alone griddle. My daughter loves it too and has treated us to pancakes the past several weekends in a row – if that’s not a win, I don’t know what is!

10. Range Hood Controls Within Easy Reach

Our Monogram Range Hood (I have {this one}) has a really cool feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else – the controls for the lights and fan are remote mountable! Similar to how most new kitchens have the garbage disposal control button installed in the countertop, you can now do the same thing with your hood controls. So you have the option of leaving the controls in the original position under the hood like this:

or remote mounting them in your countertop or even on your backsplash! Not only are they easier to access but you don’t have to lean over a hot stove to get to them. Being the shorty that I am, it’s a feature that I loved and planned to use in my new space. As it turned out, because my kitchen is a little unique in that we have low (only 7 ½ foot) ceilings, my hood ended up at a lower than typical height so I decided to leave the controls as-is. But assuming I have more typical 8-9 foot ceilings in a future home (fingers crossed) this will definitely be a feature that I look for.

So what do you guys think? Do you also have and love some of these features? Do you have a favorite that’s not on my list?

If you want any more detailed sources on anything you see in my kitchen, visit my full kitchen remodel reveal {here} and check out the full source list at the end of the post. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll get back to you!

XO,