IKEA METOD front dimensions — nominal cm vs real millimetres

A front for a cabinet labelled "60 cm" measures 597 mm, not 600. METOD fronts — doors, drawer fronts and dishwasher fronts — finish 3 mm smaller than their nominal size, on both axes: a 60 × 80 cm cabinet takes a 597 × 797 mm front, a 40 × 100 cm cabinet takes 397 × 997 mm. Those 3 mm are a gap built into the system, identical at every size — not an allowance for imprecise cutting. It is why the numbers on an IKEA shopping list can never be handed to a cut-to-size shop as they are.

The nominal size is the cabinet, not the front

"60 cm", "80 cm", "40 × 100" — the numbers IKEA describes a METOD kitchen with are carcass sizes. That is the useful thing to plan with: carcasses line up as modules along a wall, and it is their widths that have to add up to the length of the run. A front is an overlay part — it covers the front edge of the carcass and hangs on cup hinges — so its size follows from the module without being equal to it.

The rule is simple, and it is very nearly all the arithmetic in this guide: nominal size minus 3 mm on each axis. 60 × 80 cm → 597 × 797 mm. 40 × 40 cm → 397 × 397 mm. 45 × 80 cm, the dishwasher front → 447 × 797 mm. For a door the nominal size is the cabinet's; a drawer front's width is the cabinet's too, while its height (10, 20 or 40 cm) is the front's own nominal.

It is not one shop's house convention, and it is not our interpretation: the dimensions are verified and match the IKEA METOD system.

Where the real millimetres come from

The gap is a system dimension, not an error margin. A front hangs centred on its module: a 997 mm panel on a 1000 mm module leaves 1.5 mm above it and 1.5 mm below. Neighbouring fronts in a run are separated by 3 mm of air in total — just enough that an opening door does not rub the front beside it, and that a slightly imperfect installation (which is most of them) does not jam the first time someone uses it.

The best evidence that this is a dimension rather than a tolerance is that it never changes. A tolerance grows with the part: the bigger the panel, the bigger the acceptable error. Here, 3 mm comes off a 20 × 80 cm front and a 60 × 200 cm door alike. There is also no such thing as "mine came out at 598, so 598 is probably fine" — a front 1 mm oversize is 4 mm across a run of four cabinets, and there is nowhere to put those 4 mm.

Not every METOD part follows the rule, and generalising "minus 3 mm" across a whole kitchen is an easy way to get one part wrong. The plinth is cut at its full nominal size: it fills the space between the floor and the carcass and gets trimmed to length on site. Cover panels have their own cut width per panel family, which is neither the nominal size nor the nominal size minus 3. That is why, for a panel family we have not checked, we simply do not generate a drawing rather than derive a size from a rule that does not apply to it.

The size table

The full list — every supported METOD nominal size with the finished front size beside it — is on the size table. We deliberately do not repeat it here: numbers should have one place where they are kept current, and a guide's job is to explain where they come from.

The table covers door fronts from 20 × 80 cm up to 60 × 200 cm, drawer fronts 40, 60 and 80 cm wide, the 45 × 80 cm dishwasher front, cover panels and the plinth. If your size is not listed, it is one we have not checked — and then we do not produce a drawing rather than guess at it. Cover panels and plinths can also be ordered at any size within the range the configurator accepts, because they carry no hinge boring.

What to give the shop

Give millimetres. "A sixty" or "60 × 80" is ambiguous at a cut-to-size counter — it reads like the size of the panel to cut, and it is sometimes taken that way. "597 × 797 mm" leaves nothing to interpret. It also makes plain which figure is the width and which is the height, which matters on a 40 × 100 cm front and not at all on a 60 × 60.

Give the board thickness: 18 mm recommended, 16 mm at the least. Our drawings are dimensioned for 18 mm board and every drilling depth assumes it. 16 mm — the thickness of many IKEA fronts — also works, but the same depths then leave only a few millimetres behind the bore, so the shop has to set the depth stop carefully; anything thinner is out. The thickness is printed in the title block of every sheet, so the shop has it in front of them — but say it out loud when you ask for a quote.

Settle what happens with the edge banding. The size on the drawing is the finished front, after banding, with the gap to the cabinet already taken off. Banding adds to the panel, so the blank has to be cut smaller by the band thickness on every banded edge. A 597 mm front given 2 mm banding on both sides measures 601 mm and no longer fits a 60 cm cabinet. This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the whole process, because it only surfaces at installation, when the board has already been cut and banded. So say it explicitly: which edges are to be banded, in what thickness, and that the figure on the drawing is the final size.

One more thing that is easy to forget on a decor with visible grain: say which way the grain should run. The drawing gives dimensions and holes, not the direction of the pattern.

The common mistake: measuring an old front

The instinct is natural — unscrew an old front, run a tape over it, give the shop that number. It is the single most common source of wrong dimensions, and it is worth knowing exactly why.

First, you are measuring a part that is already banded. The tape shows the finished size, banding included on both edges. Hand that over as a cut size, have the shop add its own banding to it, and the front grows and no longer fits.

Second, you are measuring a part that has been in use. Fronts under a sink or beside a dishwasher live in damp air, edges can swell, and corners get knocked while being unscrewed. You are measuring that front's history, not its specification.

Third, a tape stretched across a full door width, hooked over a rounded banded edge, is realistically good to about a millimetre. The cut has to land on the millimetre, so the measurement needs to be more accurate than the result, not equally accurate.

Fourth, and worst: the old front may not be METOD at all. Older IKEA kitchens, FAKTUM included, have different carcass dimensions and different mounting-hole spacing, so a number copied off one of them is a correct figure from the wrong system.

The right direction is the opposite one. Take the cabinet size — from the shopping list, from the planner, or from the label on the carcass — and derive the front from it. Measure the old front or the cabinet opening as a sanity check ("is this really a 60?"), never as the source of the number you cut to.

Next

You can see your own fronts' dimensions straight away in the configurator — the free 2D preview shows the outline and the sizes before you order anything. Once you have them, the guide to ordering from a cut-to-size shop covers what to ask for, what to confirm, and what not to do. The other guides take it from there: which hinges fit, what to make the fronts from, and how to keep the kitchen from looking like a catalogue.