Best Dish Drying Racks for Small Kitchens

Rented kitchens are where the dish rack problem is worst. There is rarely a dishwasher, the counter is usually one short run, and the sink is wherever the previous fit-out put it. Meanwhile the worktop is laminate you are responsible for at checkout.

Here is the thing that surprised us researching this category: not one of these racks publishes how many plates it holds. Capacity is described in adjectives -- compact, large capacity, ample space -- across every brand from the cheapest to the most expensive.

So this page ranks on the two things they do publish, both of which matter more in a rental anyway: the footprint it takes on the counter, and where the water goes.

Where the water goes is the whole design problem

Every dish rack has to move water from clean dishes to the sink, and there are only three ways to do it. Which one you can use is decided by your kitchen, not your preference.

A spout that drains into the sink. The rack sits beside the sink and pours into it continuously. Best solution when it works -- and it only works if the rack can be positioned with the spout over the bowl. The simplehuman rack is the one here that solves the awkward cases, because its spout swivels a full 360 degrees.

An angled drainboard. A sloped tray under the rack that runs water back into the sink. Simple, nothing to aim, no mechanism. It also roughly doubles the counter the rack occupies, which is why the full-size option is ranked last here despite being the most capable.

A closed tray you empty by hand. The rack catches water and you pour it out. Needs no particular relationship to the sink, which makes it the most flexible on an odd counter, at the cost of a chore you will sometimes skip -- and a rack whose tray sits full is a rack sitting in standing water.

How these are ranked

Footprint first, because on a rented counter it is the binding constraint and because it is the figure every maker actually publishes. Then drainage, weighted by how well the method copes with a sink that is not where you want it. Then what the rack does to the worktop -- feet, coatings and standing water. Then price. The full method is here. We have not tested any of these; every figure is somebody else's published number.

Measure three things before you buy

1. The clear counter run beside the sink

Not the total counter -- the uninterrupted stretch next to the sink, measured with the kettle and the toaster where they actually live. The racks here run from 13.75 in to 20 in wide, and the full-size one needs its drainboard on top of that.

2. The height to the wall cabinet

The forgotten measurement. A two-tier rack at 9.5 in tall plus a plate standing up in the top tier needs more headroom than a lot of rental kitchens have under the cabinets. The 3.5 in compact rack exists for exactly this problem.

3. Which side of the sink the drainer has to sit

If the only free counter is to the left and your rack drains right, a fixed spout is useless. This is the constraint that the swivel spout is designed around, and it is worth the money in a kitchen you did not design and cannot change.

The over-the-sink option

There is a fourth shape worth knowing about: racks that bridge the sink itself on extendable arms, so the drying happens over the bowl and the counter stays completely clear. OXO makes one with arms that adjust to different sink widths; it was in and out of stock while we researched this page, which is why it is not ranked.

The trade is real either way. An over-sink rack costs you the sink while it is in use, which in a one-bowl rental kitchen means you cannot fill a pan without moving everything. If your counter is genuinely full and your sink is big, it is the best use of space in the room. If you wash up in stages, it is infuriating.

What we would skip

Coated steel racks at the cheap end. Every rack rusts where the coating chips, and in a rack the chips happen where plates knock the wires. Aluminum and stainless frames cost more and do not have that failure mode. Two of the five here are one or the other, and it is the main reason they rank above the coated-steel option.

Anything sized for a family in a galley kitchen. A rack that does not fit the clear run gets moved every time you cook, and a rack that gets moved ends up in a cupboard. Buy for the counter you have.

Capacity claims in listing titles. Large capacity is not a specification when nobody publishes a plate count. Compare footprints, which are real numbers, and ignore the adjectives.

The rest of a rented kitchen

The counter is only one of the surfaces under pressure in a small kitchen. Inside the cabinets, the risers and baskets that go in without a screw are in best kitchen cabinet organizers; the cupboard under the sink, which is the largest unused volume in most rentals, is in best under-sink organizers with the measuring method in under-sink clearance.

And the whole no-fixings plan for the room, in the order worth doing it, is renter-friendly kitchen cabinet organization.