Galaxy Horizon Vanity Sink + Drawer Combo Cabinets

Six combos are sold in this finish. The 30- and 36-inch ones come in a drawers-left or drawers-right version; the 42- and 48-inch ones are a single listing each; and the 60-inch size comes with one bowl or two.

The question that decides it is not how many children there are but whether they need the basin at the same moment. Young children brushing teeth under supervision take turns anyway, and one bowl with more drawers is the better use of the wall. Two children leaving for the same school bus at the same time are the case for two bowls, and at 60 inches the two-bowl version is also the cheaper of the pair. Where the bowl sits on the 42- and 48-inch combos is not stated on the listings; ask us before planning the mirror and the light over it.

The most useful thing a combo gives a shared bathroom is a set of drawers that can be assigned. Once each child has a drawer of their own, the arguments about whose hairbrush is whose mostly stop, and the counter stays clearer because each child has somewhere to put things away. Label the fronts on the inside of the drawer box rather than the outside, so the labels can change as the children do without leaving marks on the finished face.

Give the youngest the lowest drawer. It is the one they can open without a stool and see into from above. The top drawer, the one nearest the counter, belongs to the adults: it is where the nail scissors, the thermometer and anything else sharp or medical should live, with a latch fitted on the inside if the children are small. Medicines themselves are better still in a locked or high cabinet, not in any drawer a child can reach.

How many drawers each combo carries, and how deep each one is, is not published on the listings. If the plan depends on one drawer per child, ask us for the drawer count of your size before ordering. Every drawer is a ⅝-inch solid-wood dovetailed box on full-extension soft-close runners, which is to say it will survive being slammed by an eight-year-old, and the soft-close means it mostly cannot be.

The box is 34 inches tall, and once a top is on, the counter sits at about 35 to 36 inches, the height most adults find comfortable. For a young child, that puts the basin rim near shoulder height. A step stool is the usual answer, and it brings two design decisions with it.

First, where it lives. A stool left in front of the drawers blocks them; a stool pushed into the corner is not used. Plan a spot for it: beside the combo against the wall, or tucked under a towel hook. Second, what it touches. A stool knocked against the cabinet every morning scuffs the toe kick and the lower edge of the doors. A stool with rubber feet and rounded edges, and a gap left between its standing position and the box, saves years of marks.

The faucet matters too, though it is not part of the cabinet. A tap with a long spout that reaches well over the bowl lets a small child rinse without leaning across wet stone, and a single lever is easier for small hands than two cross-heads. Your plumber and your designer can choose one to suit the combo's bowl.

Children's bathrooms are wet. Water runs off the counter edge onto the drawer fronts and the doors under the bowl, and the base of the cabinet gets splashed every bath night. Fabuwood's care advice for its finishes is short and worth teaching to anyone old enough to hold a towel: blot water off, do not wipe it across the surface, and never spray cleaner straight onto the wood. The care guide has the full version.

Scuffs are the other daily event. On a stain, a surface scuff sits on the clear coat over the colour; a chip that goes through to the wood shows as a paler spot, because the wood under the stain is lighter than the finish. Fabuwood makes no spray-can touch-up for its stained finishes. What it offers, and what is sold in this finish as a loose part, is a touch-up kit of a stick, a marker and a scraper at $62.40, which handles nicks on door edges and the corners of drawer fronts. Buy it with the vanity and keep it in the combo's top drawer.

In our view a mid-tone stain with visible grain is a forgiving surface in a children's bathroom. Small marks tend to lose themselves in the figure of the wood more readily than on a flat, opaque paint, where every mark sits on a single even colour. It will not hide everything, and it is not a reason to skip the blotting, but it is a practical argument for a stained finish in this particular room.

A vanity is fitted for fifteen or twenty years. A child who is five when it goes in will be a teenager for half its life, and teenagers use a bathroom differently: longer, with more products, often with hair tools that need a socket and somewhere safe to cool. That is a reason to lean toward the larger combo that fits the wall rather than the one that suits the children today, and to have an electrician place a socket at a sensible height when the room is opened up.

It is also a reason to keep the cabinet itself grown-up. Theme the room with things that can change in an afternoon: the towels, the bath mat, the art on the wall, even the hardware, which unscrews. A grey-taupe stained shaker cabinet does not look like a nursery and will not need replacing when the dinosaurs come down.

A combo is one carcass, which makes it quicker to fit than an equivalent run of separate boxes, but also a single large object to carry up a stair. Measure the route before the order is placed. Each combo also has a carcass-only listing, VSD48-BO at $627.25 for example, for replacing a damaged box and keeping the fronts; the vanity base page explains what those are. The whole range is on the vanities page, and the vanity guide sets out the family.

Order a $35.00 door sample from the sample page and look at it in the children's bathroom itself, whose light may be nothing like the rest of the house. Then let us draw the room through the free design service: a designer replies within one business day, and the full design and quote follow within 24 to 48 hours. For more of the collection, or for a quick question, call (609) 900-3358.