Ikea Besta Deeper Drawer Hack

The large drawers in the Besta storage system from IKEA can be made about 3cm deeper with this hack.
The drawers come in two heights:
- small: 15cm, using the 26cm high front panel
- large: 25cm, using the 38cm high front panel

The front panels for the small drawers have 2 sets of attachment holes, offset by 32mm. This is to accommodate a drawer at the bottom of the cabinet: it's front panel must be mounted in the lower position, this way it hides the bottom part of the cabinet.

The front panels for the larger drawers can also double as doors for the 38cm-high cabinets. Therefore they have two holes in them for the hinges. This seems to be the exact reason why IKEA could only provide one set of attachment holes for the drawer: one of the hinge-holes is exactly where one of the second set of attachment holes should be.

This instructable shows that you can easily fill the hinge hole, and then drill the second set of attachment holes. This way, all your large drawers, except those at the bottom of the cabinet obtain 32mm extra deepness.

- Besta cabinet with large drawer (front panel of 38cm height)
- some spare wood of 12mm thickness
- an electric drill
- a hole saw set for wood
- a 5mm drill bit for wood
- a saw table (only if you can't find wood of 12mm thickness)
- wood glue

The IKEA drawer package contains two plastic parts to fill the hinge holes. The whole idea of this step is to recreate exactly that part out of wood and glue that in place.

Find wood of the same thickness as the plastic part (12mm). If you can't find any, take it slightly thicker, and cut to size on a saw table or by any method you prefer. The picture shows how I cut it on the saw table (note that I did this before drilling those holes, I only took the picture afterwards).

Drill with the hole saw a round piece of about the same diameter as the plastic part (34mm). I had a 38mm hole saw in my set, which resulted in a left-over round piece of 34mm. One or two mm difference won't be a problem.

Check that it fits nicely in the hinge hole, then glue it in the hinge hole closest to the drawer attachment holes.

Draw centerlines over each set of two attachment holes.

Now offset the existing holes 32mm towards the hinge hole you just filled up. Two of your offset holes will be just in the middle between the existing holes. One of the others will be just on the edge of your wooden piece filling the hinge hole.

Fit your 5mm wood drill into one of the existing holes, and attach a drill stop on the drill to indicate how deep you should drill. You can also just use some masking tape, but be careful not to drill too deep to prevent ruining the front of the panel.

Drill as precisely as possible. Not an easy job since one of the holes is on the edge of your wooden piece. I had to do two drawers: on one, the hole was as measured, on the other one the final hole was exactly on the edge, as that's where the drill wanted to roam. Both drawers turned out nicely, so both holes were OK.

Screw the original mounting bolts in your newly drilled holes.

Mount the drawer sliders inside the cabinet one hole lower than indicated in the manual.

Fit your drawer(s). Done!