Standard Cabinet Dimensions Part 1: Base Cabinets

Often times I come across people asking if kitchen cabinets are customized for each kitchen or they are modular. I try to explain them that in most instances the modular units allow enough flexibility to accommodate almost any kitchen design. Which leads me to write a series of articles that explain the different kitchen cabinet sizes and options commonly available. Part 1 of this series will cover information for the base cabinets in a kitchen. Part 2 covers the dimensions of wall cabinets.

I consider Base cabinets the most important cabinets in terms of storage. Sure there are pantries, but pantries in my experience not good to store cooking utensils. Base cabinets is where we save the largest and heaviest items we have at home. So it is very important to have cabinets that can fit these items.

Before we go into the details I should point out that in the United States we use inches for cabinet designs; however many italian cabinetry and foreign cabinets use millimeters for the cabinet dimensions, resulting in a slight difference in dimensions to those using the “American standard”.

Cabinet Height and Depth

Base Cabinets have a standard height of 34 1/2″(thirty four and a half inches) and a depth of 24″(twenty four inches). This is true to 90% (ninety percent) of the base cabinets, the exceptions are the corners which we will cover later.

Cabinet Width

Base cabinets width range from 9″(nine inches) to 42″(forty two inches) with increments of 3″(three inches). This means that the base cabinets available are 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39 and 42. These cabinets can be divided into two categories:

Cabinets with 1 door and 1 drawer, which range from 9″ to 21″.

And Cabinets with 2 doors and 2 drawers which range from 24″ to 42″.

Corner Cabinets

Besides the regular base cabinets we also have base cabinets for the corners, we will call these corner cabinets. There are three types of corner cabinets widely used:

The Lazy Susan, the most popular of all corner cabinets due to its convenience. The lazy susan allows easy access to the corner space and it fully utilizes the corner space. During my career I’ve seen different lazy susan dimensions such as 27×27 and 36×36 which is the most common. I find that a lazy susan with a width smaller than the common 36×36 is too small to be considered convenient.

The Diagonal Corner base is very similar to the lazy susan and it offers the same convenience and access to the corner space. However it is not carried by everyone. In addition its design may disrupt some kitchen designs. The dimensions for the diagonal corners are the same as for the lazy susan; the smallest dimension I recommend is 36×36 but the optimum dimension for this type of corner is 42×42.

Blind Corners are the least convenient of the corner cabinets. The space it offers is limited and its not as comfortable to use as the previous options. However it is the last option if you want to utilize your corner spaces, otherwise you end up with a dead space in the corner. Blind corners come in three widths 36, 39 and 42. The depth and height of the blind corners are the same as the ones found in a regular base cabinet.

Continue to…

Part 2: dimensions of wall cabinets.