Picking a new refrigerator can be a daunting thing. There are so many different brands, each with it's own pluses and minuses. My final choice was a French door refrigerator. This is a refrigerator that has side by side doors over a bottom mount freezer. It wasn't just the looks of this particular refrigerator I liked, but it's styling.
I think the best part of French door refrigerators is the part that you can open them wide and see exactly what's in them. Unlike more narrow standard single door refrigerators where you have to do a lot of digging around in the back of the refrigerator behind other foods to find things, French door refrigerators give you a wide look at what's inside the fridge. They also have more crisper drawers then single door models. I also preferred side by side doors over a bottom freezer.
I learned a lot while shopping for refrigerators. I really didn't know that an empty refrigerator actually costs more to run then one that is kept fuller of food. I had a salesman tell me that I should buy my refrigerator based on the number of members in my family. He said that it's a rule of thumb that you should have 12 cu. ft. of food storage space for the first two members in the family and then an additional 4 cu. ft. of food storage space for each additional member. OK. If there were only two of us we'd only need a 12 cu. ft. refrigerator. Since there are five of us we looked for French door refrigerators that were 24 cu. ft. I also learned that the design of the French door refrigerator is trademarked by Maytag.
We looked at the LG Panorama French door refrigerators first. LG has quite a selection of French door refrigerators, some with ice/water dispensers and some with what they called Glide N' Serve Drawers. I also liked that LG offered a Titanium finish. I really do like the look of stainless steel but it smudges with fingerprints really easily and it's not so easy to clean. LG aren't cheap refrigerators, but are considered a higher-end appliance.
Another French door refrigerator that we looked at was Whirlpool. Whirlpool calls their French door refrigerators side by side refrigerators will bottom mount freezer. I didn't see a Whirlpool French door refrigerator with a ice/water dispenser. There was also price to consider. An LG 24.7 cu. ft. French door refrigerator with ice/water dispenser runs about $2200 on sale. A Whirlpool 24.8 cu. ft. without an icemaker runs about $1800.
Amana also has a French door bottom freezer refrigerator at 24.9 cu. ft. with ice/water in the door. I liked this model as it had an exterior control pad so you could adjust temperature without opening the door, although how many times do you need to adjust the temperature of your fridge? Not often. The freezer did glide very freely, like the LG Glide N' Serve model. Another thing I liked about the Amana was it was Energy Star qualified. It also had lots of goodies like a door alarm to tell you when you've left the refrigerator or freezer door open and humidity controlled crispers. Lots of bells and whistles, but also lots to go wrong too.
We decided on the Whirlpool model and have been very happy with it.
