Measuring for New Cabinet Doors and Drawer Fronts

Published: February 02, 2021

Beautiful new kitchen cabinets and drawer float-endonts

When it comes to measuring cabinets for new cabinet doors and drawer fronts it can make you a little uneasy. Just the thought of measuring incorrectly and ending up with a new cabinet door that is too big or too small, we want to assure that getting the correct measurements is a lot easier than one would think.

Before You Start

Measuring for new cabinet doors and drawer fronts doesn't require any special tools. There are three maybe four things you will need; a good tape measure, paper and pen or pencil. Now you will likely want to take a cabinet door down to get a good measurement and a screw driver will likely be required to do so. Before you start measuring you may want to sketch out a diagram or number and list each cabinet door and drawer front so you have an organized list of what you measured and the correct measurements.

Are You Replacing or Reusing Your Hinges

The easiest way to measure for new cabinet doors would be to measure the old cabinet doors; however there are issues that can arise here if you are doing so. First if you plan on replacing your hinges the new ones could have a different overlay than the old hinges which can cause issues with sizing. Another issue with measuring the existing cabinet doors is that your older doors may have shrunk or began to warp which can affect your measurements. If you are replacing your hinges with new ones note that they may not have the same overlay and this can create sizing issues if you're measuring based on the current dimensions. To prevent any sizing issues with new hinges you can determine the overlay difference between the two and figure that into your measurements.

What is an Overlay?

Most cabinet doors are not the same size as the opening in the cabinet they are covering; they are actually slightly bigger and "lay over" the edge of the opening covering a part of the cabinets face frame. You want overlay so the doors are all uniform and flush with one another instead of being inset into the cabinet frame.

Measuring the Overlay

The overlay on your cabinet doors is likely 1/2 inch or maybe 1-3/8 inch, but you should always figure out what it is before finalizing your dimensions. Determining your overlay is a rather easy task following these few steps.

Close the cabinet door you are measuring
Using a pencil make a mark along the outside edge of the door on the hinge side
Remove the cabinet door
Measure the distance between your pencil line and the adjacent inside edge

Measuring for a Single Cabinet Door

When measuring no matter if it is a single door or a double door, you will want to measure to the nearest 1/16th of an inch; most standard tape measures have these increments. Now that we have all the basics out of the way when it comes to measuring for new cabinet doors, we can start with the actual measuring. This is a relatively simple 3-step process.

Remove the Cabinet Door
Measure the opening from top to bottom to get the height and then left to right for the width. Write these measurements down.
Take your inner dimensions and add your overlay measurements

Measuring for Double Cabinet Doors

It's not all that uncommon to have double cabinet doors covering one cabinet opening. When replacing these doors there is a slight difference. When measuring for double doors you want to accommodate for a gap between the two doors to allow them to open and close properly. To get your measurements and have 2 identical doors you will want to measure the height like you would for a single door and then measure the entire width add in your overlay, then subtract 1/8 inch from that number and then divide it by 2 to get the width of each door.