Standard Kitchen Cabinet Sizes You Should Know Before You Design

Custom doesn't mean starting from nothing. Almost every kitchen — no matter how unique the layout looks — is still built on a small set of standard heights and depths that have barely moved in decades. Knowing them cold means you only have to think hard about the parts of a job that are actually unusual.

Base cabinets

Base units are typically built around 720mm of carcase height, bringing the worktop to roughly 870–900mm once you add the top and any legs or plinth — the height most people find comfortable to work at while standing. Depth is usually 560–600mm, mostly driven by what standard worktops and appliances expect to sit on.

Wall cabinets

Wall units run shallower — usually 300–350mm deep — and are hung with roughly 450–600mm of clearance above the worktop, enough room to work underneath without ducking. Heights vary more here, from short units over a cooker hood to tall ones stretching toward the ceiling.

Tall units

Full-height units — larders, oven towers, fridge housings — typically run 2000–2100mm, matching ceiling heights common in most homes while leaving room for a cornice or filler panel at the top.

• 300, 400, 450, 500, 600mm — common single-door base widths
• 800, 900, 1000mm — common double-door base widths
• Corner units are the outlier — their width depends entirely on the corner solution used

Why these numbers have barely moved

Standard sizes exist because everything else in a kitchen is built to match them — worktops, appliances, hinges, even plumbing rough-ins. Straying from them isn't wrong, but every millimetre of deviation is a millimetre nothing else in the supply chain was designed around, and it's usually the installer who ends up solving for it on site.