The gap is usually there before you are. Six hundred millimetres of empty cabinet somewhere along the run, a power point behind it, a tap fitting under the sink, and either a dead machine to pull out or a cupboard standing in for one.
Then you go looking, and the first thing anyone offers you is a row of four words: freestanding, integrated, slimline, drawers. Four options, one list, as though picking one ruled out the other three. A dishwasher showroom is the only place you will be asked to choose between a width and a hinge as if they were the same kind of thing.
They aren't. Two of those words answer a question about size and two answer a question about how the machine meets your cabinetry, and they are close to independent of each other. This guide settles both, in the order your kitchen decides them: which size the gap allows, and whose front the machine wears.
Two decisions, not one
We list 247 household dishwashers - the catalogue also holds six commercial machines, which the quiz never shows you.
Sorted by what they physically are, they fall into four size classes: 223 full-size machines, eight at 450mm wide, 14 dish drawers and two compact benchtop units. Sorted by how they meet the kitchen, they fall into four cabinetry classes: 127 freestanding, 62 built-under, 46 fully integrated and 11 semi-integrated - and one machine that states no installation type at all, which is 247.
Two sorts of one catalogue, and almost every combination exists. The showroom's single list of four is two lists wearing one hat.
Width shows it most clearly, because the market offers three widths and nothing between them. Eight of the machines we list are 448-450mm wide. Two are 550mm. The other 237 are 595-600mm. Nothing at 500mm, nothing at 570mm. You don't size a dishwasher; you measure your gap and it picks one of three.
Start with size, because it can foreclose the other decision. Not one of the 14 dish drawers we list is freestanding - every one sits under a benchtop or behind a cabinetry panel. Choose that form and the cabinetry question is already answered.
The gap decides the size
A full-size machine is what the 600mm gap is for, and it is 223 of the 247. Of the 222 stating a capacity the median is 15 place settings, and 115 hold 15 or more. A place setting is one person's plates, glass and cutlery, so on paper that is a machine for fifteen people. What actually fills a dishwasher is cookware, and past about 14 settings rack design matters more than the headline number.
The 450mm class is eight machines, and its trade is not the one it's sold on. They hold 9-11 place settings against that median of 15 - the part everyone tells you. Here is the part nobody does. All eight cost about the same to run as a full-size machine: a median $57 a year for the eight, against the full-size median of $58.80, on the label's basis of 280 washes at around 30c per kilowatt-hour. Same annual bill, two-thirds of the load: per place setting that is 0.068kWh against 0.0486. They are also louder - 121 of the 220 full-size machines that state a figure are quieter than the quietest of the eight, which is 46dB - and not one rates above 3.5 energy stars, where 152 of the 213 full-size machines stating a rating are at 4 stars or better.
Worth knowing: three of the eight carry a price in our records, so we won't put a median on the class.
You buy 150mm of bench and pay for it in capacity, running cost, noise and rating. If the gap is genuinely 450mm, that's the trade. If it's 600mm, there is no argument for taking one.
A dish drawer is a different object, and the number on its card describes half of it. We list 14, all Fisher & Paykel. Seven are single drawers holding seven place settings; seven are doubles holding fourteen. But a double is two independent drawers stacked, each running its own cycle. The fourteen is two sevens.
That changes the arithmetic. Reading the singles alone, where one drawer is one cycle and nothing has to be assumed, a drawer uses 6.9 litres and 0.373kWh for seven place settings - 0.99 litres per setting, against 0.81 for a full-size machine. Wash a full fourteen-setting load in a double and it is two cycles: 13.8 litres and 0.75kWh, against a full-size median of 11.3 litres for fifteen settings. More water and more power, for one fewer place setting.
A drawer isn't frugal per plate, then. It's frugal per cycle, because the cycle is smaller - a real advantage if the alternative is running a big machine half empty every night, and no advantage at all if you fill one.
What drawers do buy is quiet and position. All fourteen run at 42 or 43dB, with no loud one to avoid, and a single drawer sits at bench height rather than under it. But consider: the cheapest drawer we list is $1,699 and the median full-size machine we hold a price for is $1,590. Only 35 of those 99 priced full-size machines cost more than the cheapest drawer. That is a full-size price for seven place settings, from a category that is one brand deep.
On benchtop machines we can't help you. We list two, and one turns out to be a compact integrated unit rather than a benchtop. We'd rather say that than generalise from one machine.
The front decides the price
With size settled, the second question is how the machine meets the kitchen.
Freestanding has a finished top, sides and front. It slides into a gap, needs no cabinetry work, and comes with you when you move. The largest group we list, at 127.
Built-under loses the finished top to sit beneath a continuous benchtop, keeps its own front and its controls where you can read them. 62 machines.
Semi-integrated takes a cabinetry panel on the door and leaves the control panel visible along the top of the front. 11 machines, our smallest group.
Fully integrated moves the controls to the top edge of the door, hidden when it's shut, and takes a panel across the whole front. 46 machines.
Built-in costs more, and here is the honest size of it. Across the five brands that price both a freestanding and a built-in full-size machine, the gap runs $200-$475 - Fisher & Paykel $200, Bosch $250, Smeg and Whirlpool $450, Haier $475. Pooling every brand together gives $591, but that figure is inflated by which brands sell what: the cheap end of the freestanding set is one brand that barely sells built-in. Read $200-$475 as the real number and $591 as the uncontrolled one. Only 99 of the 223 carry a price at all, so take it as direction rather than a quote. And it is before the cabinetry: a panel is joinery, quoted by your kitchen, not by us.
What integration buys is a kitchen that reads as cabinetry rather than as appliances. What it requires is less obvious, and the catalogue shows it. 27 of the 38 fully integrated full-size machines have a door that opens itself at the end of the cycle, against 56 of the 122 freestanding ones. That isn't a luxury feature clustering at the top of the market. A machine behind a panel dries by condensation with the door shut, and a door that pops open is how the moisture leaves. Interior lighting runs the same way, 14 of those 38 against six of the 122 freestanding: you can't see into a machine whose front is a cupboard.
But consider: integrated doesn't always mean invisible. Of those 38 fully integrated machines, 20 are panel-ready and 18 carry a named visible finish, steel and black fronts sold as an alternative to a cabinetry panel. If the point is that the dishwasher disappears, check you're looking at the panel-ready version.
What your kitchen will actually allow
Read this section with a tape measure. It's the one that rules machines out.
Height. The full-size machines we list run a median 845mm tall. 108 of the 223 state a height range rather than a single figure - adjustable feet, a median 60mm of travel - and 75 will come down to 820mm or lower. If your benchtop sits low, that last figure is your real shortlist: a third of the class, not all of it.
Depth. A median 598mm, with 68 of the 223 at 570mm or shallower.
The floor in front of it. The measurement nobody takes. Of the 61 full-size machines that state one, the open door reaches a median 1,165mm out from the wall, from 1,150mm to 1,205mm. In a galley kitchen that is most of the way to the cabinets behind you. Our records state no equivalent figure for dish drawers, so we can't compare the two and won't estimate it.
Noise. 71 of the 223 full-size machines are at 43dB or below. That's where the genuinely quiet machines live: drawers are uniformly quiet, and nothing in the 450mm class is. Worth knowing: some manufacturers publish a band rather than a single figure, so read a number at the loud end as the bottom of a range rather than a measurement.
What you can safely ignore
Program count. The full-size machines carry a median of eight programs and one carries 21. Twenty-one doesn't wash anything eight can't.
Tub material. 133 of the 223 full-size machines don't state one, and those that do spell it three different ways. We won't rank a field the field itself doesn't fill in.
Country of origin. Stated on 36 of the 247. Same reason.
Semi-integrated versus fully integrated, as a performance question. It isn't one. The difference is whether you can read the controls with the door shut.
You now hold the two answers this decision turns on: which size your gap allows - one of three, not a spectrum - and whose front the machine wears, yours or your cabinetmaker's. The first is a tape measure across the opening, down the height, and out to whatever stands behind you. The second costs $200-$475 plus joinery.
Take the dishwasher quiz and it'll work through the rest against the 247 machines we list, with the reasoning shown on every match.
Once the form is settled, our guide to the seven dishwasher specs that actually matter covers what separates models within it. This guide is about what fits; that one is about what to buy.
If you want the wider view first, our dishwashers buying guide covers the full spec list alongside the type breakdown.