Sliding Shelves and Trays

  What are the differences between sliding shelves and sliding trays and which is best to use in my application?

  That is a question we are asked often so I will attempt to clarify the difference between the two and the uses of both.

  A sliding shelf typically referes to a flat shelf that has drawer slides attached, and slides in and out of the enclosure that the shelf is installed into. This is not the best method in most applications as a flat shelf usually is difficult to grasp and slide in and out.Most flat sliding shelves have a lip on the bottom front of the shelf for this reason. Also a flat shelf will allow items to slide off the back of the shelf . In my opinion flat shelves are only good if they are stationary. If you need to roll out the shelves for easier access. Then sliding trays are the only method to use.

  Sliding trays have sidewalls, a front, and a back. Items that are going to be put into motion need some type of vertical to help support and  confine the item. The most critical vertical is the back and sides.

  The back of a sliding shelf should be one half the height of the tallest item in the shelf. This will give the item the necessary support to prevent the item from tipping over and out of the shelf.

  So, you may be asking yourself,” why do people call them sliding shelves rather than sliding trays”?. The answer: I do not know.

  If you were to ask someone to describe a sliding or pull out shelf. Usually the description will resemble a pull out tray or drawer more than a flat shelf with slides. After all, look at our business name “Slide Out Shelves LLC”. The name implies a flat shelf, yet what we produce is actually more of a tray or drawer. Then there is the slide out part of our name, you could change it to roll out, pull out, glide out,etc. and they would all be describing the same item.

  So no matter what you call them, the idea is to have a method of containing items in an enclosure yet give the ability to easily access the items by having them  come out of the encloure while still being contained.

In what areas do sliding trays or shelves make sense?

  Any enclosure or cabinet that is 12-14 inches deep or deeper is a canidate for pull out shelves. Any cabinet less than 12 inches deep typically does not present an accessibility issue.

  Base kitchen cabinets have always been the prime area to install roll out shelves as these cabinets are deep and dark

  Pantry cabinets typically hold more items than base cabinets and can be even more difficult to access.So installing sliding trays in a pantry will create a pull out pantry.

  Bathroom cabinets hold many small items that are typically stuffed inside 2 or 3 drawers because most bath vanities do not have drawers under the sink area. Pull out shelves can easily be installed in the bottom of a bathroom vanity cabinet to allow easy access and organization.

  Bathroom and hall closets are also areas that can benefit from shelves that slide out.

  Garage cabinets and utility cabinets can be fitted with slide out shelves or drawers. How often have you searched through a tool box looking for a small item? If you have slide out shelving inside your garage cabinets, you could organize the tool box items and have easier access to everything.

How tall does the sidewall need to be?

  As I stated earlier, the sidewalls should be one half the total height of what the shelf is holding. Personally I like slanted sidewalls on my slide out shelves as they give me the needed height to prevent items from falling or tipping off the back, yet allow the items to be viewed and removed from the front.

  In our base kitchen cabinets we have an area that we stack our pans. When these pans are stacked ontop of each other the total height is 6 inches. In this area we installed a 6 inch slanted shelf. The shelf is 6 inches in the back and slants to 2 3/8 inches in the front. The taller back and slanted sidewalls keep our pans contained, and when the shelf is slid out, we do not have to look down into a six inch deep drawer.

  In our pantry cabinet we have a mixture of 6 inch slanted and 7 3/8 inch slanted shelves. We have found that these two sizes work best in pantry cabinets as taller items such as cereal boxes are usually 12-16 inches tall, so the taller shelves give us the height needed to contain the items, yet the smaller items do not get lost as they are in the front of the shelves where the sidewalls are lower.

In the bathroom cabinets we installed 7 3/8 slanted shelves. These especially work great where we keep the bath towels. Before installing the slide out shelves in our bathroom, attempting to remove one bath towel, would ocaassionally have one or two other towels follow the one we wanted which resulted in refolding towels. Now we can roll out the shelf, and remove the towel from the top without others following.

 See all of our shelves at http://www.slideoutshelvesllc.com