Base 600mm deep, wall cabinets 300–350mm, plinth 100–150mm — the dimensions every Malaysian kitchen is built to, plus the gas cylinder compartment and oven clearances that catch people out.
Every kitchen, however elaborate, is assembled from four kinds of box. Base cabinets stand on the floor and carry the countertop. Kitchen wall cabinets hang above them. Tall cabinets run from floor to ceiling as larders, appliance housings or brooms. And specials — the sink cabinet, the stove cabinet, the corner unit, the gas cylinder compartment — are base cabinets modified for a specific job. Understanding the dimensions of each is what lets you read a 3D render critically instead of admiring it, because a render that looks right can still be built at the wrong depth.
Standard sizes exist because appliances, sinks, worktop slabs and human beings are standard. Deviating is possible in a custom kitchen — and sometimes necessary in a small condo — but every deviation has a consequence, usually an appliance that no longer fits. For what the whole kitchen costs rather than how it is dimensioned, start at the kitchen cabinet cost hub.
The base run is dimensioned around the person using it. Local practice puts the finished worktop at roughly 850–900mm above the floor including the countertop, with the carcass and plinth making up the rest. Depth is 600mm, which is not arbitrary — it is what accommodates a standard sink, a built-in hob and a dishwasher, and it is why a shallower run to gain floor space almost always causes an appliance problem later. The countertop typically overhangs the door face by around 20mm so drips fall clear rather than running down the doors, which is directly relevant to the swelling problems in the cabinet water damage guide.
Two adjustments are worth raising before the boards are cut. Height can be tuned to the primary cook — unlike a modular system, a custom kitchen is simply built at the height you want. And the floor finish matters: a cabinet set on bare screed and tiled around afterwards loses plinth height, so say whether the floor is finished before the measure.
Internally, drawers versus shelves changes daily life most. A door and a shelf means kneeling and reaching to the back; a bank of drawers brings everything to you. Drawers cost more because of the runners — see the hinge and runner guide — and earn it wherever you store pots and pans.
Wall cabinets are shallower than base cabinets for a simple ergonomic reason: at full 600mm depth you would hit your head leaning over the worktop. Local practice is 300–350mm deep, which holds standard crockery and glassware comfortably. The gap between the worktop and the underside of the wall cabinet — the backsplash zone — is generally kept in the region of 500–600mm, enough to use the worktop without stooping and enough for a kettle or a stand mixer to sit under the cabinet.
Height above that is a trade-off. Running wall cabinets to the ceiling gains storage and removes the dust ledge, but the top shelf needs a step stool; stopping short leaves a gap that collects grease. A common compromise under a high slab is standard-height wall cabinets with a bulkhead or shallow top box above. Whatever you choose, the wall must take the load — hollow block and some partitions need proper fixings or a backing plate, which the site measure should establish. The tiling that fills the gap is covered in the kitchen backsplash guide.
A tall cabinet is a full-height box — floor to ceiling, or to the wall-cabinet line — used as a larder, broom cupboard, appliance tower or fridge surround. It is the most useful storage upgrade in a small kitchen because it claims vertical space that would otherwise be a dust ledge, and pull-out larder mechanisms bring the back of a deep cupboard out to you.
The commercial point people miss is that a tall unit is not charged at the base-cabinet foot rate. It is a much bigger cabinet in the same linear foot — more board, more edging, more doors, more hinges — and the market quotes it as a multiplier of roughly 1.6 – 2.2x a base-cabinet foot (market estimate 2026, indicative Klang Valley). That is legitimate and it should be visible on your quotation as a separate line rather than appearing in the final invoice, which is one of the classic surprises in the hidden charges guide.
Doors on a tall unit are heavy and long, so they need three to four hinges rather than two, and a full-height door over 1.8m generally needs more. Under-hinged tall doors are the ones that start catching within a year.
The sink cabinet is a base cabinet with the top rail and back panel modified to clear the trap and the waste pipe, and usually no shelf, because the plumbing occupies the space. It is the cabinet that takes the most abuse in the kitchen and the one that fails first, so it is worth specifying differently from its neighbours.
Three specifics. Build the base panel in MR plywood, rigid PVC board or aluminium rather than plain particleboard, or fit a bonded liner or drip tray. Leave a service gap at the back so the trap can be reached without dismantling the cabinet. And plan what lives in there: a pull-out bin, a filter, cleaning bottles. The sink and tap selection that dictates the cut-out is covered in the kitchen sink and tap guide; the cut-out itself is made when the countertop is templated, not from the drawing.
A hob cabinet is a base cabinet whose worktop carries a cut-out for the hob, with the carcass below modified to clear the hob body and its gas or electrical connection. Built-in hobs sit into the counter and need a specified clearance below, so the cabinet under a hob is normally a drawer bank with a shallower top drawer, or a cupboard with a reduced-height opening — not a full-depth drawer that would foul the hob underside.
Two things belong on the quotation. The cut-out is a chargeable operation on the countertop, along with the sink cut-out, and both are commonly omitted from a headline per-foot price. And the hood above dictates the wall-cabinet layout: a chimney hood interrupts the run, while a slim or under-cabinet hood sits inside a modified wall box. Get the actual hood model before the wall cabinets are drawn — the sizing detail is in the hob and hood guide. Heat also matters at the edges: the doors and panels immediately beside a wok burner are where edge banding fails first.
Most Malaysian kitchens still cook on an LPG cylinder, and the cabinet that houses it is treated differently from every other box in the kitchen. The general guidance issued by gas suppliers and by Suruhanjaya Tenaga for domestic LPG is that a cylinder should be kept upright in a well-ventilated position, away from heat sources and drains, with the regulator and hose accessible for checking — which is why cylinder compartments are built with a louvered door or a ventilation grille and often a slatted or vented base rather than being sealed like an ordinary cupboard. LPG is heavier than air, so the reasoning behind low-level ventilation is that any escaping gas can disperse instead of collecting in a closed box at floor level.
Practical points for the cabinet itself: size the compartment to the cylinder you actually use so it stands upright without being wedged; keep the hose run short, visible and not pinched by the door; make sure the regulator can be reached and the cylinder exchanged without dismantling anything; and do not use the compartment as general storage. Because the requirements and the approved fittings are a gas matter rather than a joinery matter, treat this section as background and confirm the arrangement with your gas supplier or a competent gas installer for your specific setup — the piping side is covered in our gas piping installation guide. If you are considering piped gas instead of a cylinder, the compartment can often be dropped entirely and the space reclaimed for storage.
A built-in oven lives in one of two places: under the worktop in a base cabinet, or at chest height in a tall housing. The tall housing is more comfortable to use and much more common in newer Klang Valley kitchens, and it is built as a tall unit with an aperture sized to the oven.
The rules that matter are the manufacturer’s, not the carpenter’s. Every built-in oven and microwave ships with an installation drawing specifying the aperture size and the ventilation clearances it needs around and behind the appliance, and those figures vary between models — so the housing is built to the actual appliance you have bought, which means buying the appliance before the cabinets are cut, or at minimum committing to a model and handing over its installation sheet. Building to a generic aperture and hoping is how a housing ends up being cut open on installation day.
Three further practicalities. The oven needs a dedicated power supply positioned so the connection is not trapped behind the appliance — agree that with your electrician while the run is open. Drawers directly above a built-in oven are usually shallow, since the cabinet above needs the specified clearance. And an oven is heavy: the shelf carrying it must be built for the load.
Every L-shaped or U-shaped kitchen has a corner where two runs meet, and that corner contains the least accessible cubic metre in the house. There are three standard answers. A blind corner cabinet is the cheapest: a normal cabinet with a dead zone behind the neighbouring run, accessible only by reaching in. A carousel or corner pull-out fits a rotating or swinging mechanism that brings the contents out. Or the corner is simply closed off and the space given to the adjacent run, which is often the right answer in a small kitchen where the mechanism costs more than the storage is worth.
Whatever you choose, check on the render that the corner doors and drawers can open past each other — two doors meeting at an internal corner foul unless a filler sets one run back, and that filler is a real cost item.
The finishing pieces are what separate a kitchen that looks built-in from one that looks assembled, and they are also the items most often left off a per-foot estimate. The plinth is the recessed skirt below the base run, typically 100–150mm high; in a wet kitchen it should be rigid PVC or aluminium rather than board, because a board plinth on a mopped floor wicks water up into the carcass. Fillers are the narrow panels that fill the gap between a cabinet and a wall or an appliance, and they are what allow a fridge or a corner door to open fully. End panels finish an exposed carcass side so you are not looking at a raw board edge. Cornices, light pelmets and scribes close the gaps at the ceiling and against an uneven wall.
None of these is optional in a finished kitchen, and all of them are chargeable. A quotation that lists a per-foot rate and nothing else has not priced them — that is the core of the quote hidden charges guide.
The underside of the wall cabinets is the single most valuable place to put light in a kitchen, because a ceiling light behind you puts your own shadow on the worktop. The two common approaches are a continuous LED strip in an aluminium profile recessed into the cabinet underside, which gives even light and hides the diodes, and individual puck lights, which are cheaper and easier to retrofit but throw visible pools rather than a wash. Strips in a diffused profile are the better result in almost every kitchen; pucks are the pragmatic retrofit.
The details that decide whether it looks built-in are the driver and the cable route. The driver needs a ventilated, reachable home — commonly inside a wall cabinet — and the route has to be agreed with the electrician while the cabinets are still open. Choose a warm-white tone consistent with the kitchen, set the strip towards the front edge so light falls on the worktop rather than the backsplash, and add a pelmet if the strip is visible from a seated position.
Common Klang Valley practice for a custom kitchen, 2026 — these are conventions rather than regulations, and a custom kitchen can be built outside them where there is a reason:
| Element | Typical dimension | Why it is that size |
|---|---|---|
| Base cabinet height (incl. countertop) | 850–900mm | Comfortable working height; tune to the main cook |
| Base cabinet depth | 600mm | Fits standard sinks, built-in hobs and dishwashers |
| Countertop overhang past the door face | About 20mm | Drips fall clear instead of down the door |
| Wall cabinet depth | 300–350mm | Holds crockery without hitting your head |
| Worktop to underside of wall cabinet | About 500–600mm | Room to work and to fit a kettle underneath |
| Plinth height | 100–150mm | Toe space; PVC or aluminium in wet kitchens |
| Single door width before splitting into a pair | Around 600mm | Wider doors overload their hinges |
| Tall / larder unit | Floor to ceiling or wall-cabinet line | Priced as a multiplier of a base foot, not the base rate |
| Built-in oven or microwave aperture | Per the appliance installation sheet | Varies by model; build to the actual appliance |
| Gas cylinder compartment | Sized to the cylinder, ventilated door or grille | Per gas-supplier and Suruhanjaya Tenaga guidance |
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💬 Get Your Instant QuoteCabinets are quoted per foot run, and the same foot costs different amounts depending on which box occupies it (market estimate 2026, indicative Klang Valley):
| Cabinet specification | Price (2026, Klang Valley) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Melamine board (particleboard / MDF carcass) | RM180 – RM300 per ft run | budget dry kitchen, wardrobes |
| Laminate / HPL door (MDF or plywood carcass) | RM280 – RM420 per ft run | mid-range, most common |
| Moisture-resistant (MR) plywood carcass, laminate door | RM350 – RM600 per ft run | wet-kitchen best value |
| Solid-surface or PVC-wrapped door | RM500 – RM900 per ft run | mid-premium wet kitchen |
| Full aluminium (3G / 4G frame, powder-coated) | RM400 – RM700 per ft run | waterproof, termite-proof; wood-grain coat at the top end |
On top of the material rate, three modifiers do most of the work on a quotation. A tall or larder unit is quoted at roughly 1.6 – 2.2x a base-cabinet foot. Upgrading the carcass to moisture-resistant plywood in the wet zone — which is where the sink cabinet and the run beside the hob live — adds RM30 – RM60 per ft run. And countertop cut-outs for the sink and hob are chargeable operations on the top rather than on the cabinet, priced with the countertop itself on the kitchen countertop guide, where tops are supplied and installed with your cabinets.
ClickBina builds custom kitchen cabinets across Kuala Lumpur and Selangor to your kitchen’s actual dimensions, with each cabinet type — base, wall, tall, sink, hob, oven housing and cylinder compartment — itemised on the quotation so you can see exactly what each foot is buying. Send us your kitchen dimensions and the appliance models on WhatsApp and we will come back with an itemised per-foot quote within the hour.
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