Galaxy Pistachio Green Drawer Bench Seat Cabinets

Draw it from above. The first leg runs along one wall right into the corner. The second leg runs along the other wall and stops against the front of the first. Where they meet there is a square of bench, as deep as the benches are on both sides, that belongs to the first leg but sits behind the end of the second. Whatever box of the first leg occupies that square has its drawer front covered by the second leg. It cannot open.

Every cabinet banquette has this square, and there are three honest ways to deal with it:

• Put the narrowest box there and accept it. Make the corner box of the first leg a GPG DBS24, the cheapest, so the drawer you lose is the smallest one. Its drawer becomes deep storage you reach only by pulling the second leg away, which is fine for the spare tablecloths and not much else.
• Open the corner from above. Have the carpenter make the seat over that square a hinged lid, so the corner box is reached by lifting the cushion. This is the solution most built-in banquettes use, and it turns the dead square into the most accessible storage in the bench for bulky, occasional things.
• Leave the square empty. Stop both legs short of the corner and have the carpenter build a plain platform to fill it. You lose the storage, keep every drawer working, and save a box.

The one thing not to do is discover the problem on installation day, when the second leg is already fixed to the wall. The depth of these boxes is not on the listing, and the corner square is exactly that depth on each side, so confirm the number with us before the nook is drawn.

The other thing about the inside of an L is that sitting there is awkward. The person in the corner has knees pointing at their neighbour on the other leg, and no room to slide out without everyone else moving. In a family nook it becomes the child’s seat; in a larger L it is usually better used for something that is not a person — a stack of bolster cushions, a lamp on a small shelf above, the cat. Plan the seat count accordingly: an L seats roughly one person fewer than its two legs added together.

That also argues for keeping the second leg short. A long first leg against the main wall, with a second leg just long enough for one or two people, gives the corner its purpose and saves a box or two. If only one leg is really needed, the straight version is simpler and cheaper, and the other side of the table can take chairs.

A banquette is really one piece of furniture with the table, and the table is where an L succeeds or fails. The rules are few but firm:

• No legs at the corners. A four-legged table in an L puts one leg exactly where the people on the bench want to put their knees. A pedestal or a trestle base keeps the whole bench side clear.
• Rectangular or oval, not round. A round table leaves the inside corner of the L out of reach and pushes the corner diner further away. A rectangle with its long side along the first leg, or an oval, puts every seated person within reach of the surface.
• Let the top overlap the seat. Most banquette plans bring the table edge a few inches over the front of the seat, so people sitting back against the wall are not stretching to their plates. That overlap is why the table base matters; a pedestal lets you slide the top in close.
• Leave a way out. Somebody on the inside of an L has to get out past someone else. The open end of each leg should face space, not a wall or a door swing.

Seat height and cushion thickness are a separate calculation, worked from the height of the table you choose, so choose the table before the cushions are cut.

A bench puts your shoulders and head against a wall several times a day, and in an L it puts them against two. That wall is the part of the nook people forget to design, and with a green bench it is a genuine colour decision. There are three good answers:

• Match it. Painting the wall, or panelling above the bench, in a colour matched to the cabinets makes the nook read as one built-in piece — the look people mean when they talk about colour-drenching a room. Any paint store can mix a match from a door sample, but treat it as a close approximation rather than an exact one: a wall and a factory-finished door rarely read identically, so view the match in daylight and in the evening before painting the whole wall.
• Lift it. A warm white or a pale plaster tone above the bench makes the sage read as furniture set against a wall, which is lighter and easier to live with in a small nook.
• Panel it. Beadboard or simple square panelling above the bench, painted white or matched to the cabinets, takes the scuffs from heads and shoulders far better than a flat painted wall. Whatever the finish, pick something scrubbable; the wall behind a banquette gets more wear than any other wall in the house.

Two practical checks while the wall is open: the height of any window sill over the bench, which limits how tall a back cushion can be, and an outlet above seat height for a laptop or a phone, which an electrician can add far more easily before the bench goes in than after. Hold a door sample against the wall colour you are considering, and see the green cabinets guide for how this sage behaves beside whites and woods.

Here is a real-sized example rather than a price per box. The first leg is 96″: two GPG DBS36 at $425.75 and a GPG DBS24 at $338.00 in the corner, $1,189.50. The second leg is 54″ of boxes: a GPG DBS30 at $383.50 and a GPG DBS24 at $338.00, $721.50. That is $1,911.00 of cabinets. The second leg has one open end, finished with a GPG SK BASE skin at $62.40, and the two fronts need 150″ of toe kick, two 8-foot lengths of GPG TK8 at $55.90, $111.80. The finished L comes to $2,085.20 as displayed, before the seat panels, the cushions and the carpenter’s time for the corner lid.

All of it — boxes, skin and toe kick — belongs on one order so the green comes from a single batch; the skin sits right beside the bench front, where a mismatch shows. Carcass-only versions for a job building its own fronts are under loose parts at $217.75, $247.00 and $273.00. The boxes arrive pre-assembled with soft-close drawers, in seven days to three weeks.