Easy opening chest of drawers

[inolikeit]

Old age now means my dad can no longer open the chest of drawers he has, so I need to get him some new ones. Do any of the high street brands like Ikea or Dunelm etc do chests of drawers that have good drawers? Suggestions for current models would be great. Thanks.

What's does he need? Larger handles? No handles? Can you adapt the existing drawers and get new handles? Or is it the drawers are too stiff?

If you need to replace them, look for soft close as the drawer will be on a rail then like a kitchen drawer rather than wood on wood as many chests of drawers are.

As an interim measure, if it's stiffness that's the problem rather than handles, wax the runners.

Yes, I was going to say my IKEA ones are super easy, but that’s because they’re on a rail

Thanks. Current ones are wood on wood, no rails or runners, difficult to get back in as seem to end up at a bit of an angle. Definitely need to be on rails. His hands are OK at the moment, but thanks for mentioning handle types as I hadn't thought ahead about that. The bottoms have come lose and bow in our Ikea Alex drawers, so I wasn't sure if this was typical for Ikea.

No sign of that in ours. The ones I was thinking of were the ones in our wardrobe.

Bowing is caused by more weight than the drawers are designed for. And if they have hardboard bases they’re not designed for much.

I’ve got a dressing table like that. Narrower drawers in the pedestals are fine, but long drawer across the kneehole will close only if pushed exactly in the middle.