A cabinet order is built to the measurements you give us. Get them right and the boxes drop into place. Get them wrong by an inch and you are looking at filler strips, a dishwasher that will not fit, or a return that costs weeks. This guide walks through how to measure a kitchen properly, including the part most people skip: marking exactly where your appliances and your sink are going to sit.
You do not need to be a designer to do this well. You need something to measure with, twenty minutes and a habit of writing everything down. Our team reviews every measurement before an order goes to the factory, so your job is to capture the room accurately and let us catch anything that looks off.
Requesting a free 3D design? Start here
If you have asked us for a free 3D design, this is the list we need back from you. Most requests arrive with the room size and a list of appliances, which is a good start but not enough to lay out a kitchen. What decides the design is where things sit, not just how big the room is.
The single most common gap: appliance centers.
Telling us you have a 36 inch cooktop tells us the size. It does not tell us where it goes. We need the distance from a named corner to the center of that cooktop. Same for the sink, the refrigerator, the dishwasher and the wall oven. Centers, not just widths, are what fix every cabinet on the run.
Send us all of this
- Each wall measured separately, corner to corner. An overall room size like "about 16 by 12 feet" describes the footprint but not the individual runs, and cabinets are ordered per run.
- Ceiling height, measured in two corners.
- Every window and door, located from the nearest corner, with the width including casing.
- Every appliance, with the model number and the distance from a named corner to its center.
- The sink, with the distance from a named corner to its center.
- Island dimensions, if you are having one: length, depth, and the walkway gap to the cabinets on each side.
- What is being removed or moved, including walls and soffits.
- Photos of each wall, taken straight on.
Style choices are worth sending at the same time, since they change the cabinet list rather than the layout. Crown molding, light rail for under-cabinet LED, decorative door panels on the back of an island and finished ends all get quoted as separate parts, so tell us early and they are in the first quote instead of a revision.
What a request looks like before and after
| Commonly sent | What we can actually design from |
|---|---|
| "L shaped kitchen, roughly 16 by 12 feet" | "Wall A 190 inches, Wall B 144 inches, ceiling 96 inches in both corners" |
| "36 inch gas cooktop, French door fridge, dishwasher, wall oven" | "Cooktop center 84 inches from the left corner of Wall A. Fridge center 22 inches from the right corner of Wall B, standard depth. Dishwasher immediately left of the sink. Wall oven center 60 inches from the left corner of Wall B." |
| "There is a window over the sink" | "Window starts 60 inches from the left corner of Wall A, 36 inches wide including casing, sink center 78 inches from that same corner" |
| "We want an island" | "Island 96 inches long, 40 inches deep, 42 inch walkway on both sides, raised bar on the seating side" |
The left column is not wrong, it is just incomplete. Every row on the right takes about the same time to write and removes a round of back and forth. If you send the right-hand version, your design usually comes back the same week.
What you need before you start
- A tape measure or a laser measure. Either works. A laser is quicker across a long wall, a tape is easier in a tight corner. If you use a tape, 25 feet covers most kitchens.
- Graph paper and a pencil, or a tablet. Sketch in pencil, because you will revise.
- A phone camera. Photos catch the things a sketch misses.
Work in inches, not feet and inches. Writing 128 is harder to misread than 10 feet 8 inches, and it removes a whole category of conversion mistakes. Measure to the nearest 1/8 inch and never round up to be safe. Rounding up is how a run of cabinets ends up too wide for the wall.
Measure the room as it will be when the cabinets go in. If you are removing a wall, a pantry or an old soffit, measure what will be there afterwards, and tell us what is being removed. Cabinets are ordered against the finished room, not the current one.
The seven steps
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Draw the room from above
Sketch the outline of the kitchen as if you were looking straight down at it. Do not worry about scale. You are making a container to write numbers into. Label each wall with a letter, A, B, C and D, going clockwise from the entry. Every measurement you take from here gets tied to a wall letter, which is what makes the sketch readable to someone who has never stood in your kitchen.
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Measure wall to wall, then floor to ceiling
For each wall, measure the full length from corner to corner at counter height, roughly 36 inches off the floor. Then measure the same wall again near the floor and again near the ceiling. Old houses are rarely square, and if those three numbers disagree, we need to know the smallest one. Write all three if they differ by more than a quarter inch.
Measure floor to ceiling in at least two corners. Ceiling height decides how tall your wall cabinets can go and whether there is room for crown molding above them.
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Mark every door and window
For each opening, record the distance from the nearest corner to the edge of the trim, then the width of the opening including its casing, then the height from the floor to the top of the casing. Casing matters because a cabinet cannot overlap it. Note which way doors swing, since a door swinging into a corner changes what can go there.
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Mark where every appliance goes
This is the step that causes the most reorders, so give it the most care. On your sketch, draw a box where each appliance will sit and write its measurements next to it. For every appliance, record the distance from the nearest corner to the center of the appliance, and the width of the space it needs.
Cover all of them, including the ones that are easy to forget: range or cooktop, wall oven, refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, hood or over-the-range unit, and any beverage fridge or warming drawer.
Two details decide how the cabinets work around them. The first is gas or electric on the range, which changes the cabinet directly beside it. The second is standard depth or counter depth on the refrigerator, because a standard-depth unit projects well past a 24 inch base cabinet and changes how the whole run reads.
If you already own the appliances, or have picked them, send us the model numbers. The manufacturer's spec sheet gives the exact rough opening, and that beats measuring it yourself every time.
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Mark the sink center
This is the only sink measurement we need. The sink base has to sit over the drain, so the sink position fixes where that cabinet lands, and every other cabinet on the run follows from it. We do not need supply lines, shutoff valves, gas lines or outlets: those follow from where the sink and the appliances end up.
Measure from the nearest corner to the center of the sink and write it on the sketch. If the sink is going under a window, measure to the window center too, since the two are usually meant to line up.
Get this one wrong and the whole run shifts. If the sink center is 4 inches off from what the sketch says, every cabinet after it moves 4 inches, and whatever sits at the end of the wall no longer fits.
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Note anything else that sticks out
Walk the room and look for soffits or bulkheads above the wall cabinet line, chimney chases, support columns, exposed ductwork, and baseboard that will stay in place. Measure how far each one projects from the wall and how high it sits. These are invisible in photos taken straight on, and they are the reason a wall cabinet run sometimes has to stop short.
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Photograph every wall
Stand back and take one photo of each wall, straight on, plus a photo from each corner of the room looking across it. Then take one photo along each run at counter height, so we can see how the walls meet. Photos routinely catch something the sketch missed, and they cost you two minutes.
What the finished sketch should look like
The measurements that run up the wall
The overhead sketch handles the floor plan. It cannot show you height, and height is where wall cabinets, hoods and tall pantries either fit or do not. This is the same kitchen seen from the side.
A worked example
Here is what a finished set of measurements looks like for a galley kitchen in a South Florida condo, the layout we quote more often than any other. Ceilings in these units are usually 8 feet, which is why the wall cabinet choice matters.
| What was measured | Recorded as |
|---|---|
| Wall A, corner to corner | 144" at counter height, 143" at the floor, 144" at the ceiling |
| Wall B, corner to corner | 96" |
| Floor to ceiling | 96" at both corners |
| Window on wall A | starts 60" from the left corner, 36" wide including casing, top of casing 80" off the floor |
| Range | gas, 30" wide, center 36" from the left corner of wall A |
| Refrigerator | 36" wide, standard depth, on wall B, 6" off the corner |
| Dishwasher | 24" opening, immediately right of the sink |
| Sink | center 78" from the left corner of wall A, under the window |
| Obstructions | soffit above wall A, projects 13" from the wall, starts 84" off the floor |
Two things in that list changed the design. The soffit at 84 inches meant 30 inch wall cabinets rather than 36, because a taller box would not fit underneath it. And the sink center at 78 inches from the corner fixed where the sink base had to land, which in turn set where every other cabinet on that wall went.
Notice there is no guessing anywhere in that list. Every number is tied to a named wall and a named corner. That is the whole job.
Standard dimensions worth knowing
You do not need to memorise these, but they help you sanity check your own numbers as you go.
| Element | Standard | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Base cabinet | 34 1/2" high, 24" deep | Reaches 36" once a countertop is on top |
| Wall cabinet depth | 12" | Deeper wall cabinets exist but crowd the counter |
| Wall cabinet height | 30", 36" or 42" | Driven by ceiling height and whether you want crown |
| Counter to wall cabinet | 18" | The standard backsplash gap |
| Toe kick | 4 1/2" high, 3" deep | Already built into base cabinet height |
| Cabinet widths | 3" increments | Gaps that are not a multiple of 3 get filler strips |
| Dishwasher opening | 24" | Nearly universal, but confirm against your model |
| Range width | 30" or 36" | Confirm against your model before ordering |
Cabinets come in 3 inch increments, walls do not. Almost every kitchen ends up with a gap that is not a clean multiple of 3, which is what filler strips are for. Leave the fillers to us. Send the real wall measurement and we will work out where the gaps land.
Five mistakes we see most often
- Measuring to the wall instead of the trim. A cabinet stops at the casing, not the drywall behind it.
- One measurement per wall. Walls bow. Take three heights and give us the smallest.
- Forgetting the refrigerator depth. A standard-depth fridge projects well past a 24 inch base run.
- Leaving the sink center off. The sketch looks complete, then there is nothing fixing where the sink base lands.
- Rounding up. Round down, or better, write the exact fraction.
What to send us
When your sketch is done, send us a photo of it along with your wall photos. Include ceiling height, appliance model numbers if you have them, and a note about anything being removed or moved. That is enough for our team to build a free 3D design and a full cabinet list, so you can see the room before anything is ordered.
If you are still choosing a finish, order a few door samples first. Colors read differently under your own lighting, and it is far cheaper to decide with a sample in hand than after a pallet arrives. You can browse the full range on our cabinet pages while you wait.
Send us your measurements
Our team reviews every layout before it goes to the factory. If something looks wrong, we flag it first.
Get My Free 3D DesignFrequently asked questions
Do I need exact measurements to get a quote?
No. Rough numbers are enough for a first pass, and we can give you a ballpark from a sketch. Exact measurements matter before the order is placed, because that is what the cabinets are built against.
What if my walls are not square?
Most are not, particularly in older houses. That is why we ask for three measurements per wall. Give us the smallest, and note the difference. Scribe molding and filler strips absorb the rest.
Should I measure before or after removing the old cabinets?
After is more accurate, because you can see the actual wall and the plumbing behind them. If you have to measure first, tell us what is coming out so we can allow for it.
Do I need to know my appliances before ordering cabinets?
Yes, at least the sizes. Cabinet runs are built around appliance openings, so a change from a 30 inch range to a 36 inch one after ordering usually means new cabinets. Model numbers are best, because the spec sheet gives the exact opening.
Can I move the sink or the range?
You can, and plenty of people do. Just decide before you order, because the cabinet layout is built around where the sink and the range end up. Tell us the position you want rather than the one you have, and your plumber can work to the same plan.
What if I measure wrong?
That is what the review step is for. We check every layout against the measurements you send and question anything that looks inconsistent. Catching it at that stage costs nothing. Catching it after delivery does.