Don't Impulse-Buy Your Next Dish Rack — These Are 10 That Work With Every Kind of Kitchen Setup

The ideal dish rack is different for every household. Depending on the size of your kitchen sink and counter space, you may find in-sink or over-the-sink set-ups to be more practical than countertop options.

The Best Dish-Drying Racks:

1. The User Favorite: KitchenAid Full-Size Dish Rack
2. The Tester Favorite: simplehuman Kitchen Compact Steel Frame Dish Rack
3. Best Two-Tier Dish Rack: iSPECLE Dish Drying Rack
4. Best Roll-Up Dish Rack: Five Two Over-the-Sink Drying Rack
5. Best In-Sink Dish Rack: iPEGTOP Expandable Dish Drying Rack
6. Best Plastic Dish Rack: OXO Good Grips Foldaway Dish Rack
7. Best Bamboo Dish Rack: Bambüsi Premium Bamboo Dish Drying Rack
8. Best Dish-Drying Mat: OXO Good Grips Large Silicone Drying Mat

There are a few things to consider when you're searching for the best dish rack: size, material, configuration, modular capabilities, and drainage. Let's break that down a bit more.

Our Criteria:

It may seem like common sense, but you shouldn't buy a dish rack just because you like the look of it. Instead, determine where it makes the most sense to dry your dishes and then measure that space to really narrow down your options. You shouldn't be surprised by how big or small the piece is when it arrives.

When thinking about dish rack material, there are three main types that we found in our research, which are metal, plastic, and bamboo wood. These all have their own pros and cons. Metal dish-drying racks tend to be the most attractive racks available, but they run the risk of rusting because of their constant exposure to moisture. Plastic racks are inexpensive and fairly easy to clean, but they stick out a bit more, decor-wise, than metal and bamboo do. And we're not the biggest fans of bamboo racks, because while they look nice, they almost always require an additional mat underneath them to catch drips, and mildewed wood is trickier to clean than metal or plastic.

You'll also want to think about the configuration and modular features of the racks that appropriately suit your needs. Do you need a rack with specific hooks for frequently drying baby bottles or wine glasses? Do you need something big enough to dry lots of cookware at once? Is this drying rack meant to fold up and move from place-to-place or stay in one fixed spot? Can you shift the configuration of the rack to dry certain objects?

And finally, drainage — the water that drips off of your dishes needs to go somewhere. Water that sits in at the bottom of a tray will get gross pretty quickly, and that means that you'll have to clean it more. This isn't an issue with over-sink or in-sink models, but we like countertop drying racks with clever drainage features that mean less maintenance for you in the end.

How We Chose:

We researched the best dish-drying racks by consulting consumer review sites, reading user reviews, and comparing feedback. We didn't consider rack models from sites that do not display reviews. Knowing that setups widely vary, we kept our aforementioned criteria in mind when looking at these models and were able to narrow it down to the 10 best dish-drying racks in this piece across different categories. Check out our finds below.