Sheet yield, doors, drawers, hinges, slides and cost for a cabinet run.
Estimates are planning aids, not a professional quote. Double-check quantities and product coverage — and any local code or permit requirements — before you buy.
| Doors & Windows | $708–$958 |
| Lumber & Decking | $513–$695 |
| Connectors & Brackets | $321–$435 |
| Fasteners & Hardware | $81–$109 |
| Total | $1,624–$2,197 |
Excludes tools, delivery, tax and permit fees. Labor not included — this is a DIY materials estimate.
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About this calculator
Enter the length of your base and wall cabinet runs, the box material, and whether you're building face-frame or frameless boxes, and the Cabinet Calculator turns that into a real cut list: how many sheets of plywood or melamine the carcasses actually eat, how many doors and drawer fronts to order, and the hinges and slides each one needs. Cabinets are priced and built from 4×8 sheet stock, but almost nobody shops in sheet units, which is exactly the gap this calculator closes before you order material or price a job.
Switch between face-frame construction, which adds hardwood stiles and rails, and frameless European-style boxes, which skip the frame but need every exposed edge banded instead — the materials list changes with it. Set the ratio of drawer bases to door bases and it adjusts the hinges versus slides you need, since a drawer stack and a door front pull from entirely different hardware.
Step by step
A step-by-step walkthrough to go with your plan above. Follow the product instructions and any local code or permit requirements as you work.
Measure total linear feet of base and wall cabinets separately, and decide on face-frame or frameless construction before ordering sheet stock — the materials list depends on which one you pick.
Cut box sides, bottoms and stretchers to size on a table or track saw, working from a cut list so every piece for a box comes off the same sheet in the same pass.
Glue and screw or pocket-screw the carcasses square, checking each one with a framing square and clamping until the glue sets before moving to the next box.
For face-frame boxes, glue and pocket-screw the stiles and rails to the front; for frameless boxes, iron on edge banding to every exposed cut edge and trim it flush.
Order or build doors to the box openings and assemble drawer boxes to fit the slides you've chosen, double-checking reveal gaps before installing any hardware.
Bore 35mm cup holes at the standard setback with a hinge jig, mount the hinge plates to the box, and hang each door to check the reveal before final adjustment.
Mount slide members to the box and drawer box at the correct height, then test the drawer's travel and adjust for a smooth, even close before loading it.
Drill and install pulls or knobs at a consistent height and reveal across every door and drawer, then do a final pass checking all hinges are adjusted flush.
Equip the job
Hand-picked categories that match the shopping list above. Links open a current selection so you can compare brands and prices.
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Keep planning
Interior & Finishing
Answers
It depends on total linear feet of run and box height, not just floor-plan square footage, since a cabinet box is built from its sides, bottom and back rather than one flat surface. As a planning rule of thumb, a run of standard 34.5"-tall base cabinets eats roughly 4 square feet of 3/4" sheet stock per linear foot when adjacent boxes share interior partitions, plus a separate thinner sheet for the back panels. This calculator runs that math from your actual base and wall run lengths and adds a waste allowance for offcuts.
Face-frame boxes get a hardwood frame of stiles and rails glued and screwed to the front, which hides minor squareness errors in the box behind it and is the traditional American style. Frameless, or European-style, boxes skip that frame entirely for a cleaner look and marginally more interior storage access, but every cut edge is exposed and has to be banded to match, and the box itself has to be cut and assembled dead square since there's no frame to correct it. This calculator swaps the materials list between the two automatically.
It comes down to cabinet width and how many bays you dedicate to drawer stacks instead of doors. Cabinets around 24 inches or narrower typically get a single door; wider cabinets get two so no single door is too heavy or wide to hinge cleanly. A common layout runs a quarter to a third of base cabinets as three-drawer stacks for pots, utensils and linens, with the rest as door-front storage — set that ratio and the door and drawer counts, along with the hinges and slides each needs, follow from it.
Most cabinet doors use two concealed, soft-close hinges per door; a tall wall cabinet over about 40 inches — a pantry-height upper, for instance — needs a third hinge to keep the door from sagging over time. Drawers each get one pair of full-extension slides rated to the drawer's expected load, sized to the drawer box depth rather than the cabinet's overall depth. This calculator counts hinges and slides from your door and drawer totals so you're not guessing at hardware quantities separately from the boxes themselves.
Yes, and it's a common way to keep a kitchen project DIY-friendly — boxes are straightforward plywood or melamine construction with a circular or table saw, while doors are commonly ordered pre-made from a cabinet door shop in your choice of style, species and finish rather than built by hand. This calculator prices both halves separately by default so you can compare building doors yourself against buying them, or mix the two: build the boxes and order the doors, which is exactly what many DIY kitchen remodels do.