In a closed kitchen, the refrigerator is background noise you leave behind when you shut the door. In an open-plan room there is no door. The fridge runs while you watch television, read on the sofa or sit at the dining table, and late at night, when the dishwasher has finished and the street has gone quiet, it can be the loudest thing in the room.
The fridge is the machine you hear last at night; where it sits among the kitchen's other noises is on our page about planning a quiet open-plan kitchen.
That changes what to look for. The parent refrigerator guide ranks the whole category by its published number. This guide asks what you will hear from the living side of the room: what the published figure describes, how the compressor starts and stops, the sounds each maker's manual calls normal, the ice maker and door alarm you can switch off, and the installation details in the manuals that decide whether a quiet fridge stays quiet once it is boxed in.
Our picks are listed above, with full specifications for each.
How we ranked them
Three kinds of figure appear in this guide, and we never rank one kind against another:
- Liebherr, declared under EN 60704-3. The US spec sheets list "Sound rating dB(A)" with a footnote tying the noise output to EN 60704-3, the European standard for declaring appliance noise. The SC5781 lists 33 and the fully integrated IC5110IM lists 34. The US product pages show the same numbers as "Noise level 33 dB" and "Noise level 34 dB".
- Miele, sound power. Miele's data sheets say "Sound emissions in dB(A) re 1 pW", the sound power quantity. The freestanding KFN 4776 ED declares 36 and the built-in KFNF 9959 iDE declares 44.
- Midea, bare dBA. Midea prints "Noise Level (dBA) 40 dBA" on the MRS25I7BST side by side and "Noice Level 43 dBA" on the MRF27I6BST french door, with no standard, distance or mode.
Liebherr's and Miele's figures may well be the same kind of number, and Midea's may be too, but no maker says so across brands. So the order of the picks is our judgment for an open-plan room, driven by how each fridge installs and what you can switch off at night, and the number comparisons stay inside each maker's pair.
Decibels are logarithmic. Roughly every 10 dB is a doubling of perceived loudness, so Miele's 8-point gap between the KFN 4776 ED and the KFNF 9959 iDE is close to twice as loud on paper, while Liebherr's 1-point gap is too small to mean much. None of these figures is the level at your ear on the sofa; sound power describes what the appliance emits, not what reaches you across the room. Our sound power vs sound pressure explainer covers the difference.
No maker here says which operating state its figure describes. A refrigerator is not one steady sound. Liebherr's user guide says it plainly: "At less cooling output the appliance saves energy but takes longer to cool items. The volume is lower." At higher output, after you load warm shopping, in a hot room or with the door open for long, "The volume is higher." It adds that SuperCool, PowerCool and, on the IC5110IM, the IceMaker each make the appliance run at higher output, so "the operating noise of the appliance may be temporarily louder", and that VarioTemp "may cause more noise". Miele says the same of Automatic SuperCool and SuperFreeze: the appliance "may make more noise than usual".
For an open-plan room that means two things. Do your big shop and your fast-chill functions in the day, and treat any published figure as the fridge settled, not the fridge working hard.
Variable speed versus single speed
A single-speed compressor is either off or at full output, so you hear it cycle: a start, a steady run, a stop. A variable-speed compressor (makers call it inverter, linear or speed-controlled) can run slower for longer, which trades those starts for a lower, steadier sound.
Only one pick names its compressor type in the documents we read. Liebherr's IC5110IM spec sheet says "Noise levels are kept to a minimum thanks to virtually silent, speed-controlled, and sound absorbing compressors". That is a claim, not a measurement, but it matches the user guide's description of volume following cooling output. Miele's and Midea's documents do not name a compressor type, and we do not guess. What they do describe is the start. Midea's manuals say the compressor "may produce buzzes during operation, and the buzzes are loud particularly upon start or stop". Miele's built-in manual says the compressor hum "can get louder for brief periods when the motor switches on" and that "Clicking sounds occur whenever the thermostat switches the motor on or off". In a quiet room at night, that click and swell is the part you notice.
The normal sounds, maker by maker
Each manual lists sounds it calls normal, and reading them before you buy tells you what you will hear.
- Liebherr (both models): "Bubbling and splashing" and "Spitting and hissing" as coolant moves, "Humming" whose volume depends on cooling output, "Whirring and murmuring" from the fan, "Clicking" as components switch, "Rattling or humming" when valves are active, and "Sipping noises" from the self-closing door.
- Miele (KFNF 9959 iDE): a compressor hum written as "Brrrrr...", a gurgling "Blub, blub...", clicks from the thermostat, "Sssrrrrr..." from the fan on frost-free models, and "Crack..." when materials expand inside the cabinet. Both Miele manuals add that the flammable refrigerant can make the appliance slightly louder and that you might hear it flowing.
- Midea (both models): "SSSRRR" from the No Frost fan, "HISSS" as refrigerant flows into the evaporator, "BLUBB" through the pipes, "CLICK" from parts "such as electric valve", and "CRACK", a "broken ice sound" from expansion and contraction of the structure and the frost in the air duct.
None of these manuals names a defrost sound directly; Midea's crack from the air duct frost is the closest. Midea's MRF27I6BST manual also warns that while you purge air from a new water line, "the noise from the dispenser may be loud".
Turn the ice maker off at night
A plumbed ice maker adds a water valve, a fill and a harvest that drops ice into the bin. Miele's manual describes that drop: "As soon as the water is frozen, the ice cubes drop out of the ice maker into the ice cube container." Midea's MRF27I6BST manual gives the rhythm. The first ice comes about 7 hours after power-up, then "each ice making time is 100 min" at 21°C with the door shut. An eight-hour night can hold four or five harvests.
Every plumbed pick lets you stop it:
- Liebherr IC5110IM: deactivate the IceMaker from the display. If a batch is in progress, "the system completes the process", then it stops.
- Miele KFNF 9959 iDE: touch the ice maker sensor until its indicator goes out. The ice maker can be switched off "independently of the freezer section". For a long break, close the water shut-off valve.
- Midea: each model has an on/off button, and the MRF27I6BST has one for each of its two ice makers. Both manuals say the ice makers are on by default.
Two picks avoid the issue: the SC5781 uses a hand-filled EasyTwist-Ice tray, and the KFN 4776 ED ships with ice cube trays. The cost of switching off is simple: less ice in the morning. A full bin also stops production on its own on Miele and Midea, so a well-stocked bin is a quiet one.
Door alarms, beeps and lights
A door left ajar is one of the few fridge sounds that is designed to be heard, and in an open-plan room it carries.
- Liebherr: the door alarm is on at delivery and can be set to 1, 2 or 3 minutes, or Off. The display dims to 40, 60, 80 or 100 %.
- Miele KFN 4776 ED: the delay runs from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. You can change "the volume of the alarms and audible signals" or "switch the alarms and audible signals off if you find them annoying", and turn the keypad tone off. The display brightness adjusts to the room.
- Miele KFNF 9959 iDE: the alarm sounds if a door or drawer is open "for more than 3 minutes", and touching the alarm sensor stops it.
- Midea MRF27I6BST: after 2 minutes open, "the buzzer will sound". The MRS25I7BST lists a Door Alarm, but its manual gives no way to change it. Both Midea displays switch off 30 seconds after the last button press.
Sabbath mode on the Liebherr and Miele models also silences alarms and turns off interior lighting, but it is built for religious observance, it turns off the safety alarms too, and Miele's switches itself off after about 120 hours. It is not a night mode.
Counter-depth and built-in: what flush really means
Counter-depth models are freestanding boxes shallow enough to line up roughly with the cabinets. Built-in and fully integrated models go inside the cabinetry and take its panels. Both look quieter than a big standard-depth fridge. Neither is quieter by definition: the one built-in 36-inch french door with a declared figure, the Miele KFNF 9959 iDE, declares the loudest number in this guide.
What matters for noise is the air path. A fridge pushes its heat out through a condenser, and each maker says how much room that needs:
- Liebherr IC5110IM: a dedicated cabinet box with a ventilation shaft at the back "at least 38 mm (1 1/2 in)" deep and at least 200 cm2 (31 in2) of ventilation cross section in the plinth and the housing cabinet, plus a toe kick grill.
- Liebherr SC5781: for a semi built-in fit, 31 in2 of airflow at the inlet and the outlet.
- Miele KFNF 9959 iDE: ventilation "occurs via the ventilation slit in the appliance plinth", and you must use only the plinth panel supplied.
- Midea MRS25I7BST: "over 100 mm of clearance at both sides and the top, and 50-75 mm at the back", which sits oddly with its "built-in look".
- Midea MRF27I6BST: more than 1/8 inch (3 mm) at the sides and 2 inches (50 mm) at the back, or more than 1 1/2 inches plus the handle depth beside a wall.
Miele spells out why this matters: if the appliance is not ventilated sufficiently, "the compressor will run more frequently and for longer periods". A fridge squeezed into a niche tighter than its manual allows runs more, and in an open-plan room you hear every extra minute.
Installation details that stop hum and vibration
The manuals share a short list of fixes, and most of them are cheap:
- Level it. Liebherr lists vibration as an "Error noise" caused by an "Unsuitable setup" and says to adjust the feet until the appliance is horizontal. Midea says "To avoid vibration, the appliance must be leveled." Miele says to realign it with a spirit level if it rattles.
- Do not let it touch. Miele's fix for rattling includes an appliance "touching another appliance or piece of furniture": move it away. Liebherr and Miele both warn that the power cord must not touch the back, because vibration can damage it.
- Use the rails. For the IC5110IM, Liebherr requires leveling rails in recesses taller than 1400 mm (55 1/8 in), because "The leveling rails minimize the sound level."
- Check the water pressure. Liebherr lists 21.76 to 87.02 psi for the IC5110IM and says the right pressure matters for flow rate, ice cube size and "noise level".
- Secure the inside. Liebherr lists clattering from objects inside the appliance and says to leave a gap between items; Miele says to separate bottles or containers that touch.
What quiet costs
The two Liebherr models with the lowest declared figures are small: 9.0 cubic feet in the integrated IC5110IM and 12.8 in the SC5781, against 24.5 in Midea's counter-depth side by side. The integrated model needs a dedicated cabinet box and your own panels, and Liebherr publishes no US prices. Built-in 36-inch units cost the most and, on the one declaration we found, are not the quietest. And the night settings have costs of their own: an ice maker switched off makes no ice, and a door alarm switched off will not warn you about a door left ajar.
For the full ranking by published figure across every configuration, see the quietest refrigerators. If you are also choosing a hood for the same room, our range hoods for an open-plan kitchen guide works through sones at the speed you cook on, and how quiet is quiet enough covers targets room by room.
How we chose
We started from the parent guide's catalog and kept models that fit an open-plan kitchen: counter-depth, semi built-in, fully integrated or built-in. We reopened each maker page, data sheet and manual we quote on September 27, 2026 (Miele's product pages refused our requests, so Miele figures come from its data sheets), and read the user guide, operating instructions or installation guide for every pick. We added the Liebherr IC5110IM from Liebherr's US page, spec sheet, user guide and installation guide. Beko's US site refused our requests, so its models stay out of the ranking.
We did not measure any of these refrigerators. Every figure is the maker's own, quoted as published with the basis the maker gives, and every sound, setting and clearance comes from the maker's own manual.
