Lazy Susan Cabinet Sizes, Shapes and the Best Corner Alternatives

A lazy susan is a rotating tray: a turntable set on a table so dishes can be spun within reach, or fitted inside a cabinet so you can turn stored items to the front instead of reaching for them. In kitchen cabinetry, a lazy susan cabinet almost always means a corner base cabinet, usually 33 or 36 inches along each wall, with two round or pie-shaped shelves that turn on a center post. The rest of this guide covers what those sizes really give you in usable shelf area, the tray shapes and door styles, the wall-cabinet version, what the lines we sell actually ship in the box, and the alternatives worth pricing before you commit a corner to one.

We sell cabinets for a living, and the corner is where more kitchen plans go wrong than anywhere else. A lazy susan is the default answer for good reasons, but it isn't the only one, and it isn't always the best one. The numbers below should make the choice easier.

Table of Contents

• What the Name Means and Where It Came From
• How a Corner Lazy Susan Cabinet Works
• Standard Sizes: 33 Inch vs 36 Inch
• Tray Shapes: Pie-Cut, Kidney, Full-Round and D-Shape
• What Happens to the Space: The Area Math
• What the Lines We Sell Put in the Box
• Wall-Cabinet Lazy Susans
• Alternatives for a Corner
• Pros and Cons Side by Side
• How to Choose: A Decision Guide
• Measuring and Ordering Without a Surprise
• Replacing, Fixing or Adding Trays
• Organizing a Deep Corner Cabinet You Already Have
• Frequently Asked Questions

What the Name Means and Where It Came From

The lazy susan meaning is simply "a revolving server": a round tray on a bearing that turns so a person can reach something on the far side without getting up or stretching. On a dining table it passes condiments around; in a cabinet it brings the back of a deep shelf to the door. Rotating trays for turning food and dishes are much older than the name. In eighteenth-century England, a tiered revolving stand for the table was often called a dumbwaiter, because it stood in for a servant.

The name itself is harder to pin down. The best-known early printed use is a 1917 Vanity Fair advertisement for a mahogany "Revolving Server or Lazy Susan" sold by the retailer Ovington's, whose copy joked that the tray was the cleverest waitress in the world. Researchers have since turned up the phrase in a 1903 Boston newspaper, though that mention doesn't say what the object was. The rest of the popular story, that it was named after a particular Susan, whether a servant, a daughter of Thomas Jefferson or someone else, has never been documented; Jefferson had no daughter named Susan. The most common theory follows the ad's own joke: the tray stood in for a servant, and "lazy" meant it did the reaching. Treat any confident origin story you read as folklore.

For cabinet shopping, the only definition that matters is the physical one: a set of shelves that rotate around a vertical post, fitted into a corner cabinet or a wall cabinet, so you can reach the back of the cabinet by turning the shelf instead of your arm.

How a Corner Lazy Susan Cabinet Works

Every L- or U-shaped kitchen has an inside corner where two cabinet runs meet. Base cabinets are 24 inches deep, so the space where the runs overlap is a two-foot square that neither run can reach from its own front. A corner lazy susan base is one box built to fill that corner: it runs a set distance along each wall, has an L-shaped (or angled) front, and holds rotating shelves in the middle.

The parts are simple. A center post or pole runs from the floor of the cabinet to the top, and two trays ride on it, usually one near the floor and one at mid-height. Depending on the design, the trays spin on the post or on bearings mounted to the cabinet floor and a fixed shelf. On pie-cut models the door is attached to the trays and turns with them; on kidney models the door is a separate bi-fold pair that swings open and the trays spin behind it. Either way, the box stands 34½ inches tall and 24 inches deep like any base, so the countertop runs over it without a break.

The glossary entry for a lazy susan covers the vocabulary, and our guide to types of base cabinets places the corner unit alongside door, drawer and sink bases.

Standard Sizes: 33 Inch vs 36 Inch

Corner lazy susan bases are sized by how far they run along each wall, measured from the corner. The two standard sizes are 33 and 36 inches on each leg. Both are 24 inches deep and 34½ inches tall. The 33-inch lazy susan cabinet is the one to use when wall space is tight; the 36 gives larger trays and a wider door opening.

The front opening row is the one people miss. The door on a corner base spans both sides of an inside L, so each side is narrow: KCD's spec book lists the opening of its easy-reach corner box at 8¾ inches for the 33 and 11¾ inches for the 36 in most door styles (8 and 11 inches in Oslo), and US Cabinet Depot's lists 11½ and 15½ inches for its two sizes. A 14-inch skillet or a large platter that fits on the tray can still refuse to come out through the door. If you store big items, the 36 is worth the extra three inches of wall on each side.

The footprint row is our own arithmetic: a corner box that runs 36 inches along each wall and 24 inches deep covers 36 × 36 minus the 12 × 12 notch in front of the L, or 1,152 square inches. At 33 inches it is 33 × 33 minus 9 × 9, or 1,008. Those totals matter in the area math below.

If your layout has a leftover inch or two, the usual fix is a base filler, not a bigger corner box. Our guide to fillers, end panels and scribe molding explains how that gap is closed.

Tray Shapes: Pie-Cut, Kidney, Full-Round and D-Shape

Shelf shape decides how the door works, how much of the corner you can use and what you can buy as a replacement later. Accessory makers such as Rev-A-Shelf sort them into five families; four matter for a kitchen corner.

In practice the choice between pie-cut and kidney is made for you by the cabinet. A corner base built with a door attached to the trays takes pie-cut shelves. A corner base with a bi-fold door hinged to the frame takes kidney shelves. The fifth shape, the half-moon, is a different mechanism; it swings out of a blind corner on a hinge rather than turning in place.

The one design detail worth checking on any pie-cut model is the gap between the trays and the back of the cabinet. On the notch side, a tall bottle or a cereal box that leans off the edge of the tray can catch the cabinet side as it turns and drop into the space behind. A raised rim or a gallery rail on the tray solves most of that. If the cabinet you like has flat trays, buy rimmed ones or use shallow bins.

What Happens to the Space: The Area Math

A lazy susan is often sold as the answer to "dead corner space," but a circle in a square leaves corners of its own. It helps to see how much of the cabinet's footprint the trays actually cover. The table below is our calculation, per tray level, using the tray sizes the manufacturers list; the box footprint is from the sizes section above.

Three lessons fall out of that. First, a pie-cut tray gives up a quarter of its circle to the door notch, so at the same diameter it holds about 25 percent less than a kidney or full-round shelf. Second, the smaller corner loses proportionally more: a 33-inch box with 26-inch pie-cut trays covers well under half its own floor. Third, the uncovered area is not all wasted. The corners behind the trays are real volume, it just can't be reached by turning, and some people use it for items they need once a year by lifting them over the tray.

Now compare that with the alternative a lazy susan replaces. A blind corner without any hardware covers its whole floor, but the back half is a crawl space, reachable only by kneeling and leaning in. So the fair comparison isn't "lazy susan versus 100 percent," it's "half the floor you can reach in one turn versus all the floor, half of which you rarely reach." For most households, the one-turn access wins. For people who want every cubic inch, the blind corner with a good pull-out, covered below, is the stronger case.

Plan what goes on the trays by weight and height. Heavy pots and small appliances go on the bottom tray, where they don't have to be lifted over anything. Everyday pans, lids and mixing bowls go on the upper tray at waist height. Keep tall items toward the center, near the post, so they don't swing into the door frame.

What the Lines We Sell Put in the Box

Four of the lines we carry publish enough detail in their spec books to compare, and each one handles the corner differently. We've quoted only what the manufacturers print; the item codes are there so you can find the same page yourself.

That spread is useful. If you like a pie-cut door that swings shut with the trays, Fabuwood's LSB is the classic form. If you'd rather open a door and see the whole corner before turning anything, J&K's kidney design does that. And KCD's split, a fixed-shelf easy-reach box listed separately from a tray kit, is worth asking about if you might want flat shelves in the corner some day.

In Fabuwood's Galaxy finishes the corner bases carry the finish prefix; the Galaxy Frost set, for example, includes GF LSB33 and GF ERB33. Fabuwood also sells a replacement shelf for each lazy susan base and wall-cabinet turntables as separate parts. Our Fabuwood cabinet accessories guide lists those codes with prices, including the soft-close detail, so we won't repeat that table here. You can browse the live range on our lazy susan base cabinets page.

Wall-Cabinet Lazy Susans

A lazy susan can also go in the upper corner. The wall version is usually a turntable insert fitted inside a corner wall cabinet: either a pie-cut corner with a door fixed to the shelves, or a diagonal (45°) corner with a separate door and round or D-shaped shelves. Fabuwood's inserts, for example, come with plastic trays for a 24-inch corner wall cabinet or wood trays for a 24- or 27-inch one (18- or 20-inch trays), on an adjustable metal post; its 42-inch-tall version has three trays, and the 42-inch pole can be cut down to fit a 36-inch cabinet.

Whether it's worth it is a closer call than in the base cabinet. A wall cabinet is only 12 inches deep, so a diagonal corner with fixed shelves is already easy to see into at eye level, and a turntable insert can cost as much as the cabinet it goes in. Where a wall turntable earns its keep is for spices, oils and small jars that get lost at the back of a deep corner shelf. For the full set of wall sizes, see our wall and tall cabinet sizes guide, and for the inserts on sale now, the lazy susan insert page.

Alternatives for a Corner

There are five other ways to handle an inside base corner. Each trades something different: wall length, money, moving parts or reach.

Blind corner base with a pull-out

A blind corner cabinet is a standard rectangular box that runs past the corner, with part of it hidden behind the neighboring run and one door facing the room. It uses less wall on the second leg than a 33- or 36-inch corner, which is why tight L-shaped kitchens often have no other option. On its own it's the worst corner for access. Fitted with a pull-out, it can be the best: two-stage mechanisms bring the front shelves out first, then slide the hidden shelves across into the opening. Kesseböhmer's LeMans (curved, kidney-like trays that swing out) and Magic Corner (linked shelf sets) are the best-known names; similar systems exist from other hardware makers. The fittings need a minimum box width and door opening, so choose the hardware before the cabinet, not after. J&K's spec book, for example, notes that its 42-inch blind corner base (BBC42) must be pulled at least 3 inches from the wall when it is installed.

Easy-reach corner with fixed shelves

The same L-shaped footprint as a lazy susan base, but with flat, fixed L-shaped shelves and a bi-fold door. Nothing moves, so nothing wears out, and the flat shelf holds sheet pans, a stand mixer or a stack of baking dishes that won't sit on a round tray. You reach the back by leaning in rather than turning. Several lines sell the easy-reach box and the lazy susan as siblings of the same size (Fabuwood's ERB and LSB, for example), so the decision can wait until you know what you'll store. Browse easy reach base cabinets to see the finished look.

Corner drawers

A stack of drawers with V-shaped fronts that pull straight out of the corner diagonally. They offer the best ergonomics of any corner, because a drawer brings everything to you without bending or turning, and they suit an accessible or aging-in-place kitchen. They are also the most expensive corner and the least available. None of the stock spec books we keep on file lists one, so treat a corner drawer as a custom or modified item and ask before you design around it.

Diagonal corner base

A corner box with a single flat door on a 45° face. It gives a wider, more natural door than the L-shaped front, and it can take a full-round or D-shaped lazy susan, which holds more than a pie-cut one. The angled face projects further into the room than an L, which changes countertop and walkway geometry, so check the aisle in front of it.

Dead corner

Leave the corner empty: run one cabinet into the corner and butt the other run against its side, or fill the gap with a blocked filler. It's the cheapest option and a common one in rental units. You lose about four square feet of floor on each shelf level, but you gain two things: no hardware to fail and no corner door clashing with the drawers beside it. A variation is to open the corner from the other side, for example from the back of a peninsula, where the "dead" square becomes a deep cabinet you reach from the dining side.

For narrow pull-outs, roll-out trays and other storage hardware that pairs with any of these, see space-saving cabinet solutions. To compare the box options themselves in one place, including sizes and prices, browse our corner base cabinets.

Pros and Cons Side by Side

Three honest drawbacks of a lazy susan that listings leave out. The door is narrow, so big items can fit on the tray but not through the opening. Things fall behind a pie-cut tray unless it has a rim. And on some lines the corner door doesn't close as softly as the rest of the kitchen, which is worth knowing if silent doors were a reason you chose the line.

How to Choose: A Decision Guide

1. Measure what the corner will hold. Mostly round items such as pots, bowls and canisters suit a lazy susan. Mostly flat, wide items suit an easy reach or a blind pull-out.
2. Measure the wall. If either leg can't give up 33 inches to the corner plus any filler, a lazy susan or easy reach won't fit, and a blind corner is the answer.
3. Check the neighbors. A dishwasher, range or drawer base right next to the corner needs a filler so its door or handle doesn't hit the corner door or the adjacent pulls. Plan that filler in the drawing.
4. Set a hardware budget. If you'll spend on a quality blind-corner fitting, it often beats a lazy susan for access. If not, the lazy susan is the best reach per dollar.
5. Think about who's reaching. For a seated cook or someone who can't bend, a rotating shelf or corner drawers beat any design that requires leaning in. Our guide to ADA kitchen cabinets, heights and clearances explains why the back of a blind corner falls outside the accessible reach range.
6. For rentals, keep it simple. Fixed shelves or a dead corner survive tenants better than any moving part.

Measuring and Ordering Without a Surprise

Where the corner sits in the room matters as much as what goes in it; our kitchen layouts guide shows how L- and U-shaped plans create these corners in the first place.

Measure each wall from the corner to the first obstacle (a window casing, a range opening, the end of the run) and note whether the walls are square. A corner that is out of square by half an inch can leave a lazy susan box unable to sit flush on both walls, which the installer fixes by shimming and scribing, so flag it in advance.

Order the corner as a unit with its trays; don't assume trays come separately, or that they don't. As the table above shows, some lines include them in the cabinet, one ships them in a second carton and another sells them as a kit. Check the finish too: the door on a corner cabinet is often a two-piece L, and on a pie-cut model it's fixed to the trays, so a replacement door is a specific part, not a standard door. Sample the finish before you order a whole kitchen; our door samples page lists what's available.

Finally, confirm on the drawing which panel of the corner door carries the pull and that it clears the hardware on the cabinets beside it. Our free 3D design shows the corner and its neighbors in place before anything is ordered, and free 3D kitchen design explains how that process works.

Replacing, Fixing or Adding Trays

Trays are the part that wears. Plastic ones crack at the hub, wood ones loosen on the post, and the bearings under a heavily loaded shelf eventually grind. The good news is that replacement trays are a standard aftermarket item. Rev-A-Shelf, the best-known maker, sorts them into the same full-circle, D-shape, kidney, pie-cut and half-moon families described above and sells its kidney base trays in 24, 28 and 32 inch diameters, with 18-inch versions for wall cabinets. Its own site listed base-cabinet pie-cut sets from about $121 in polymer to about $513 in natural wood at the time of writing.

To order a tray that fits:

1. Match the shape to the door. If the door turns with the shelves, you need pie-cut trays. If the door is a bi-fold hinged to the frame, you need kidney trays. A diagonal corner with a single door takes full-round or D-shape.
2. Measure inside, not outside. Take the interior width and depth of the box from the back corner to the inside of the face frame on each leg, and the height from the cabinet floor to the underside of the top. Rev-A-Shelf's product finder asks for exactly those three openings.
3. Pick the largest standard diameter that turns freely. The tray has to clear the face frame and the hinges as it spins, so trace a circle of the candidate diameter in the box on paper before you order.
4. Check the post. Most kits use a post that telescopes or is cut to height; a few mount on a bottom bearing with no post at all. If your box has a fixed mid shelf, a bearing-mounted top tray may be the only option.
5. Keep the old door if it is a pie-cut. The door panels usually unscrew from the old trays and fix to the new ones, so the finish still matches the kitchen.

Three common faults can be fixed without new parts. A pie-cut door that no longer lines up with the frame has usually slipped on the post; on most kits each tray is clamped to the post by a hub with a set screw, and loosening it lets you rotate the tray back into line. A tray that sags at the rim is overloaded at the edge; move cast iron toward the post. A tray that sticks is usually rubbing on a bottle or bag that has fallen behind it, which is another argument for rimmed trays.

Organizing a Deep Corner Cabinet You Already Have

Not every corner is getting replaced. If the cabinet is already built, the aim is to stop its back half becoming the place things go to be forgotten. What works depends on which corner you have.

• Blind corner with no hardware. Treat the hidden half as archive storage: holiday platters, the roasting pan, spare paper goods. Put them in lidded bins with the handle facing the door, so each one comes out in a single pull instead of a shoulder-deep reach. Keep the half behind the door for things used every week.
• Corner with fixed L-shaped shelves. A freestanding turntable on one shelf turns it into a budget lazy susan for jars, oils and cans. Leave the other shelf flat for sheet pans, a stand mixer or baking dishes.
• Lazy susan base. Group by use so a single turn finds a whole category: baking on one quadrant, canned goods on the next. A rim or a non-slip liner keeps small items from dropping behind the tray.

When bins and turntables aren't enough, the fix is hardware, and it is easier to buy with new cabinets than to retrofit. Fabuwood, for example, lists a blind base pull-out, handed left or right, for its 42/45 and 48/51 blind corner bases (BPO-BLB42/45 and BPO-BLB48/51) but lists none for the smaller two boxes, so the size of the corner decides whether that option exists at all. For roll-outs and organizers elsewhere in the kitchen, see our space-saving cabinet solutions guide.

Sources: box sizes, tray sizes and door openings are from the Fabuwood, US Cabinet Depot, J&K and KCD spec books; tray families, replacement diameters and list prices from Rev-A-Shelf's lazy susan catalog; area figures are our own arithmetic.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a lazy susan in a kitchen cabinet?

It is a set of rotating shelves on a centre post or bearing, fitted into a corner base or corner wall cabinet, so you reach the back of the cabinet by turning the shelf rather than stretching. The name means "revolving server" and was borrowed from the table turntable. In a kitchen plan, the term usually refers to the whole corner base cabinet that holds the trays.

What size is a standard lazy susan base?

The two standard sizes run 33 or 36 inches along each wall from the corner, and both are 34½ inches tall and 24 inches deep like any base cabinet. The trays inside are smaller than the box: about 24 to 28 inches across in a 33-inch corner and about 27 to 32 inches in a 36. Wall-cabinet versions use 18- to 20-inch trays.

Is a 33-inch corner lazy susan big enough?

For a small kitchen, yes, but it gives up proportionally more space than the 36. A 26-inch pie-cut tray covers under 40 percent of the box's floor, and each side of the door opening is only about 8 to 11½ inches wide, depending on the line. If you can spare three more inches on each wall, the 36 is the better cabinet.

What size lazy susan tray fits a 36 inch corner cabinet?

Most 36-inch corner bases take a 27- to 32-inch tray, depending on shape and brand. Fabuwood's 36-inch corner ships with 32-inch pie-cut trays, and US Cabinet Depot lists a 27½-inch tray for its corner. For a replacement, measure the inside of the box, not the outside, and choose the largest standard diameter that turns clear of the face frame.

What are corner cabinets called?

They're named by what's inside and how they turn the corner. An L-shaped base with rotating trays is a lazy susan base (LSB on a Fabuwood quote); the same footprint with fixed shelves is an easy-reach corner (ERB). A rectangular box that runs past the corner and hides part of itself is a blind corner base (Fabuwood's BLB, J&K's BBC). Upstairs, the equivalents are the diagonal corner wall cabinet and the blind wall cabinet.

How do you measure for a corner cabinet?

Measure along each wall from the inside corner to the first obstacle. A lazy susan or easy-reach base needs a clear 33 or 36 inches on both walls, plus any filler beside a dishwasher or range. Blind corners are sized on the long wall, and Fabuwood names them with two numbers: a BLB36/39 uses 36 inches set tight to the corner, or 39 when pulled out up to 3 inches with a filler. Check the corner for square as well.

Which is better, a lazy susan or a blind corner?

A lazy susan gives easier access for less money than a blind corner with a quality pull-out. A blind corner uses less wall on the second leg and, with a good two-stage pull-out, can match the lazy susan's access, but the fitting can cost more than the box. Without any pull-out, a blind corner is the poorest corner option for everyday use.

What's the difference between pie-cut and kidney lazy susans?

Pie-cut trays have a square quarter removed, the corner door is screwed to that notch, and door and trays turn together. Kidney trays have only a shallow bite taken from the front; the doors are a separate bi-fold pair hinged to the frame that you open first, then spin the trays. At the same diameter a kidney tray holds noticeably more, because only a shallow bite is missing.

Can you add a lazy susan to an existing corner cabinet?

Often, yes, if the inside dimensions and door opening suit the hardware. Kidney and full-round trays retrofit most easily because they do not carry the door. A pie-cut retrofit usually means changing the door as well. An easy-reach box with a fixed shelf may need the shelf removed or a bearing-mounted tray fitted above it; measure all three openings first.

Are lazy susans and corner cabinets out of style?

No. Corner cabinets aren't a style at all: any L- or U-shaped run has an inside corner, so the only question is what fills it. Lazy susans are no longer the automatic choice. Blind-corner pull-outs and corner drawers have taken the high end, but a lazy susan remains the best reach per dollar for pots, bowls and canned goods, and all four lines in the spec-book table above still list one.

Why is it called a lazy susan?

Nobody knows for certain. The best-known early use is a 1917 Vanity Fair advertisement for Ovington's "Revolving Server or Lazy Susan," which pitched the tray as a tireless waitress; a 1903 newspaper mention exists but does not describe the object. Stories about a specific Susan, including the Thomas Jefferson one, are unproven.

Get the Corner Right Before You Order

Send us the wall lengths on both sides of the corner and a note on what you want to keep there, and we'll come back with a free 3D design and an itemized quote showing the corner, the fillers beside it and the tray or pull-out it needs. Contractors ordering corners across many units can get trade pricing through Captivating Pro.

Start on our design service page, write to us through the contact page, or call 609-900-3358. If you're still choosing a line, the Fabuwood brand page is a good place to see the corner styles in finished kitchens.