For decades, the dish rack has been the one kitchen object nobody really chose but everyone kept: a wire or plastic tray parked next to the sink, dripping onto the counter. In 2026, it’s quietly disappearing from well-designed kitchens. And the idea replacing it isn’t new at all: one country has used it in almost every home since the 1940s.
Table of Contents
Why the dish rack is on its way out
The case against it is simple: it eats counter space. In an April 2026 piece, Homes & Gardens kitchen appliance editor Chiana Dickson said traditional racks “often dominate the counter, trap water, and make even the tidiest kitchens feel cluttered,” and called rethinking the everyday items you leave out “one of the easiest ways to make a kitchen feel instantly more organized.”
Design site 99% Invisible put it the same way years earlier: sink-side racks “add labor and clutter while taking up space on kitchen counters.”
The Finnish solution: a cabinet that dries the dishes
In Finland, the answer has been hanging above the sink for about 80 years. The dish drying cabinet looks like a normal upper cabinet, but its bottom is open and its shelves are made of wire or dowels. Washed plates and glasses go straight in, drip into the sink below, air-dry, and stay there until you need them. No rack, no towel, no puddle.
According to Wikipedia’s entry on the cabinet, it was developed in 1944 and 1945 by Maiju Gebhard, head of the household department at the Finnish Work Efficiency Institute, which began selling it in 1945. Industrial production started in 1948, and a plastic-coated steel wire version followed in 1954. Gebhard estimated that a Finnish housewife spent 30,450 hours of her life washing dishes, and that the cabinet cut that time by half.
It worked. The cabinet is now “a standard accessory in virtually every Finnish home,” Wikipedia notes, and 99% Invisible reports that the Finnish Invention Foundation named it one of the most important Finnish inventions of the 20th century.
Other ways designers are clearing the counter
Not every kitchen can swap an upper cabinet, so Homes & Gardens points to lighter alternatives:
- An over-the-sink drying rack: it sits above the basin, so water drains back into the sink instead of onto the counter.
- A built-in rack inside a cabinet above the sink: the closest thing to the Finnish version, closed once the dishes are dry.
- Pot rails: heavy pans hang within reach. Helen Parker, creative director at deVOL, calls hanging storage “one of those simple touches that instantly elevates both style and function.”
- If you have cabinets right above the sink: the magazine suggests a compact over-sink rack or an expandable draining board.
In a narrow layout, like the ones in these galley kitchen ideas, every inch of counter freed up counts.
The limit
A true drying cabinet has to sit directly above the sink, with an open bottom, so it usually means replacing an existing upper cabinet. Homes & Gardens notes that bespoke built-in racks require a kitchen redesign, and that over-the-sink racks may not fit if cabinets already sit above the sink. If you’re planning work anyway, it’s worth adding to your list of cabinet makeover ideas. And none of these options replaces a dishwasher: they’re for the hand-washed pieces, and they only stay tidy if the dry dishes eventually get put away.
In a nutshell
- Classic dish racks take up counter space and trap water.
- Finland replaced them in the 1940s with a cabinet above the sink that drains and dries.
- Over-the-sink racks and pot rails offer the same idea without renovation.
- A real drying cabinet needs to sit right above the sink.
The Trendir take: the best place to dry dishes was never next to the sink. It was right above it.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?