For most homeowners, a residential fridge and freezer combination–whether an all-fridge and freezer, a top- or bottom- freezer fridge, a side-by-side model, or a French door style–will suit all of their storage needs.

However, if you have a large family, run a small business from your home that involves cooking, or simply enjoy cooking and sharing food with family, friends, and your community, you might find yourself in need of more storage than what you can easily find in a residential fridge.

At this point, you have one of three options: you can either live with what you’ve got; buy an additional fridge, freezer, or both; or invest in a commercial refrigerator and perhaps freezer to go along with it. Today we’ll look at the pros and cons of choosing a commercial fridge and freezer for a home kitchen; as you can imagine, there are some unique challenges to keep in mind before choosing this option. We’ll walk you through them.

Commercial fridges will give you nearly endless storage in your kitchen

Perhaps the main draw to commercial fridges is the massive amount of space they’ll give you compared to residential fridges. There are other benefits to consider, including their minimal, stainless steel look or the glass front doors they occasionally feature, but their large capacities are the primary advantage and the reason most people initially consider commercial fridges for home use.

The 52″ side-by-side reach in commercial refrigerator from WP Restaurant Fridges is a perfect example of what we’re talking about.

Built for restaurant use, it features 49 cubic feet of internal capacity, more than twice as much storage as what you’ll find in a high-end residential French door fridge like the Thor Kitchen HRF3601F (reviewed here), which tops out at 21 cubic feet of combined fridge and freezer capacity. What this means is you’ll be able to store far more food and drink in a commercial unit than you ever could in a residential unit, whether to feed your family, stock up on supplies, run a small business or food pantry, or simply become the hub of your social network or neighborhood. Checking the links above, you’ll also note that you won’t pay any more for the commercial fridge than you would for a French door residential model despite enjoying 2.35x as much internal storage. If you want as much room as possible for food and drink, there’s no question about it; you want a commercial unit over a residential one.

However, commercial fridges are noisy, energy-inefficient, and poorly organized

That said, there are a number of reasons why people don’t choose commercial fridges. First of all, they have a reputation for being noisy. This doesn’t apply to every commercial refrigerator; the 52″ unit described above, for example, is one of the quietest models on the market for its size, and can comfortably be used in a home kitchen without disturbing conversations or daily life. However, other units can be much louder; this is due to the compressors, or cooling motors, which are designed to cool the fridges and freezers as quickly as possible instead of as quickly and quietly as possible. Commercial fridges tend to have poorer insulation, which also leads to greater sound leakage. This isn’t an issue in most commercial environments, where fridges and freezers are usually isolated from customers and clientèle. However, if you’re using one in your kitchen, you might be in for an unwelcome surprise if you choose the wrong model.

Beyond noise levels, energy efficiency is another area where you’ll have to adjust your expectations. Commercial fridges don’t have to abide by the same energy requirements as residential fridges, much as vehicles over a certain tonnage don’t have to meet the same fuel efficiency requirements as passenger cars. To put it simply, you’ll want to prepare yourself for slightly higher energy bills to accompany your greater storage capacities.

Third, you’re going to need to practice making decisions about where things go and how to best arrange your food supplies, because as a rule, commercial fridges don’t tend to come with organizational aids. This means you’re not going to find drawers for produce or meats, door bins, or other conveniences you’ve probably gotten used to if you’ve only used residential fridges. You’ll simply find shelves, and lots of them. You’ll soon get comfortable using plastic bins to store your supplies, but the adjustment can be a bit of a shock for people new to the field. The SABA Heavy Duty Commercial Reach-in Refrigerator pictured above is a typical example of what you can expect; it has a 46.5 cubic foot capacity, but you’re going to need to figure out how to make the most of it on your own.

Most importantly, many commercial fridges aren’t warrantied for home use

Finally, while the advantages of a commercial fridge are undeniable, perhaps the most important drawback to keep in mind is that most manufacturers will not honor their warranties unless their fridges or freezers are used in commercial settings. In other words, if you buy a commercial fridge to use in your home kitchen, you need to plan on either fixing it yourself if something goes wrong or paying for professional service down the line, because you won’t get it from the manufacturer. The good news is that commercial fridges are generally built to much tougher standards than residential fridges due to the expectation that they work ceaselessly in money-making enterprises where downtime means significant profit losses. If you still want a commercial fridge after keeping the potential drawbacks in mind, we’d highly recommend one of the models we’ve profiled above. The WP Restaurant model or the SABA are excellent choices if you’re in search of a commercial fridge offering somewhere between 40 and 50 cubic feet of capacity in stainless steel and with low noise and energy consumption levels.

You can buy the WP Restaurant 52″ side by side commercial refrigerator with 49 cubic feet of capacity here on Amazon. Alternatively, you can buy the SABA Heavy Duty Reach-in Refrigerator here. If you’d rather have a residential fridge, we recommend the Thor Kitchen HRF3601F French door fridge here.

Canadians, while the WP and SABA commercial fridges aren’t readily available, you can buy a similar model, the Maxx Cold 49 cubic foot reach-in refrigerator here on Amazon. Similarly, the HRF3601F is not yet available. However, you can buy the LG 24 cubic foot French door refrigerator here instead.

If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home appliances by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.