How to Measure Your Kitchen for New Cabinets

You do not need a designer to get a cabinet quote. You need a tape measure, a pencil, and about twenty minutes. This page walks you through it. Do it in this order and the numbers you send us will be good enough to price your kitchen.

What to grab first

A 25-foot tape measure. A pad of paper. Your phone, for photos.

Write everything in inches, not feet. Measure to the nearest 1/8 inch. Do not round up to be safe. Rounding is what causes a cabinet to get ordered a size too big.

Draw the room first, then measure

Sketch the outline of your kitchen on one sheet of paper. It does not have to be neat or to scale. Label the walls A, B, C, D going clockwise from the door.

Now every number has somewhere to go, and we will know which wall it belongs to.

Measure wall by wall

Take one wall at a time. Three numbers for each:

Corner to corner. The full length of the wall.
Corner to each opening. Measure from the corner to the near side of a window or doorway, then measure across the opening itself.
Anything that sticks out. Chimney chases, pipe boxing, columns.

Measure at counter height, around 36 inches off the floor. Old walls are rarely square. If the top and the bottom of the same wall come out different, write both numbers down and tell us.

Ceiling, soffits, and everything else on the wall

Measure floor to ceiling in a few spots, not just one. Buildings settle, and a room can lose an inch across its length. If there is a soffit or bulkhead above the cabinets, measure how tall it is, how far it drops, and how far it sticks out.

Then mark on your sketch:

Windows and doors, including the height from the floor to the bottom of the window sill.
Which way each door swings.
Outlets, switches, and the hood vent.
Radiators, baseboard heat, and the shutoffs under the sink.
Where the sink is now, and where you want it.

These are what decide whether a cabinet actually fits. Worth two extra minutes.

Appliances come first, then the layout

We design the kitchen around your appliances. That means we need appliance sizes before we can draw anything.

For each one, tell us:

Refrigerator. Width and height. Is it counter-depth. If it is counter-depth, does it take cabinet panels on the front.
Cooking. Either a free-standing range, or a cooktop with the oven somewhere else. It is one or the other, not both.
A free-standing range needs the width. That is all.
A cooktop needs the model number.
A built-in or wall oven needs the model number too. Tell us whether it is a single wall oven, a double oven, or going into a tall cabinet.

Why the model numbers: we cut the cutout for a cooktop or a built-in oven, and the cutout is different on almost every model. The cabinet is built to it. A free-standing range slides into a gap, so width is enough.

Above the stove. A standard hood, a decorative hood, an over-the-range microwave, or nothing. If the microwave goes somewhere else, tell us where.
Sink. Undermount, drop-in, or farm, plus the width. A farm sink needs a model number too, because the sink base is built to match it.
Dishwasher. The width, and whether it takes a cabinet front or has a finished front of its own.

Have not bought the appliances yet? Say so. Give us the sizes you plan to buy and we will design to those.

Take photos of every wall

One photo per wall, standing back far enough to get the whole thing. Then one from each corner of the room.

Photos catch what a tape measure misses. A vent in an odd spot. A radiator. A door that swings into the space you wanted cabinets in. Photograph the sketch too.

What you do not need to worry about

Do not measure your existing cabinets. We are not matching them.
Do not work out linear feet, cabinet sizes, or cabinet codes. That is our job.
Do not worry about being off by a hair. Small differences are normal and we plan for them.
Do not stop because one number is missing. Send what you have and we will ask about the rest.

Enough to quote, not enough to order

Straight answer on what your own numbers can and cannot do.

They are enough for us to design your kitchen and give you a real, itemized price. They are not enough to order or cut from. Before anything gets ordered, the numbers get verified, either with you against your photos or by measuring the space ourselves.

If you would rather not measure it yourself, we will come and do it. No charge, no obligation.

That is not us hedging. It is how you avoid paying for a cabinet that does not fit.

Send it to us

Two ways. Pick whichever fits where you are.

You already have a cabinet list. Paste it into the Instant Quote and get an itemized price in under a minute.
You have measurements but no cabinet list. Request a free design. Send the wall lengths, the ceiling height, and where the windows, doors, and appliances go. We design the layout and send back a quote. Free, no obligation.

Would rather just talk it through? Call the Chicago team at (773) 245-8888, or come by the showroom at 2627 N Kildare Ave.

What you get, and when

If we come out and measure for you, here is exactly how it works.

We measure your kitchen. It usually takes about an hour.
You get a full 3D design of your new kitchen, free. Take your time with it and change whatever you want.
When you are ready to order, we take a deposit, and your dimensioned plan comes with it. That is what we build from.

The design is yours either way. The measured drawing is part of your order.

About your 3D design

We draw every kitchen in 2020 Design, the same software the industry uses. It gives you a real sense of your finished kitchen: the layout, the door style, the color, and how it all fits together.

There are a few details the software simply cannot draw. Double crown molding is one, and there are other small trim details it will not render. Those still get built the way we discuss them, even when the picture does not show them. If a detail matters to you, ask us and we will tell you exactly what you are getting.

Finishes also look different on a screen than they do in your kitchen, so we will always show you real samples before you order.