Enjoying good wine in your home doesn’t mean that you have to have a basement for a wine cellar; instead, you can simply install a built in wine cooler to keep your wine stored properly. You can take basically any area of your home and turn it into a built in wine cooler with just a little bit of effort. By following these simple steps, you’ll be able to have a wine cooler or wine refrigerator built right in to your home.

Step One: Find Your Built In Wine Coolers

The first thing you should do is find and purchase a wine cooler. You’ll want to spend some time shopping around and reading user reviews to know which model to purchase. There are a few basic things that are important when choosing a wine cooler however. These are:

  • Temperature: How does the wine cooler regulate temperature? Does it include just one or multiple temperature zones? Can you set a specific temperature? Is humidity regulated as well as temperature? Does it have a dual zone wine temperature option?
  • Protection: How will this wine cooler protect your wine? What kind of protection does it offer, and will it keep your bottles safe from UV rays, earthquakes and other hazards?
  • Quality/Durability: Is the wine cooler you’re thinking about buying durable enough to last for several years? (You don’t want to go to the trouble of installing a wine cooler just to have it burn out on you after a year or two of service.)
  • Capacity and Size: Does the wine cooler hold enough bottles? What are the physical dimensions of the wine cooler?
  • Price: How much does the wine cooler cost? (A good way to compare the cost of wine coolers by features is to take the total cost of the wine cooler and divide that by the number of wine bottles it can store. This gives you the per bottle cost, making it simple to see what you’re getting for your dollar)

Answer those questions and make sure the wine cooler you purchase has the features mentioned. You might make a list of models and products you can compare. You don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a wine cooler just to find out the one you purchased doesn’t have the features you need.

Step Two: Know Where You Want To Install It

After you’ve purchased your wine cooler model, you can begin to look around your home for where you want to install it. Make sure to use its dimensions so you can know exactly where to put your built in wine cooler. You’ll want to select a place out of the way but convenient. You certainly don’t want to have a wine cooler sitting in the middle of your floor, but it can’t be too difficult to access, either. Placing it in a closet or pantry can be a good idea.

Electricity is an important factor in placing your wine cooler. When you’ve found where you think your wine refrigerators would go best, you should make sure that that location has a power outlet you can use to power your built in wine cooler. If you don’t have a power outlet available, you can call an electrician to have one installed. If you don’t want to go to the hassle of installing a new outlet, you can drill a hole in your wall and run an extension cord inside the wall and have it emerge in a place where it can stay plugged in to power your cooler. You always want to be careful when dealing with electricity, to make sure you shut off the power for the part of the house you place your wine cooler while you are either installing the new outlet or running the extension cord through the wall.

A common place to put a built in wine cooler is in a closet or pantry. These are out of the way but don’t require that you build a completely new space for the wine cooler. You’ll have to make sure you install vents near where the wine cooler has its own vents and exhaust to make sure you don’t overheat the unit if you get a heavy duty wine fridge. You shouldn’t have to worry about it too much in most cases, though.

Step Three: Installing the Wine Cooler

Finally, it’s time to actually install your built in wine cooler. If your wine cooler is tall enough to fill the closet or pantry you intend to install it in, all you really have to do is place the cooler inside, make sure it’s plugged in and let it go. If your wine cooler is shorter than the closet, you can either elevate your wine cooler by placing in on top of shelving or by adding shelves on top of your cooler to make the most of your space. If you want to make your wine cooler look as nice as possible, you can consider using wood panels (or whatever your closet it made of such as stainless steel) to frame the cooler so it looks more like it was part of the home when you moved in.

You should make sure there is ventilation for the space where you installed your cooler, though. You don’t want this space to get too hot because that will cause the cooler to overheat and burn out faster. Installing an air vent above the closet door (or even in the closet door) could be a simple way to make sure enough air can get in and out.

Step Four: Enjoy Your Wine

Once you’ve installed your built in bottle wine cooler, you’re ready to fully enjoy your wine. Wine coolers will keep your wine storage at the proper temperature and humidity just like wine cellars so you can taste all of the subtle flavors. You’ll impress party guests with your built in wine cooler, and romantic evenings with your significant other will be much more accessible since your wine will be ready to go at any time. It takes a little bit of preparation and planning to make sure you have your built in wine cooler in the right place and properly installed, but the rewards are certainly worth the effort.