How many sheets of plywood for kitchen cabinets?

The short answer: a typical run of ten standard base units needs around 7 to 8 sheets of 18mm plywood for the structural carcass, plus roughly 2 sheets of 6mm or 9mm material for the backs. That number can swing by two sheets either way depending on how efficiently your parts nest onto the boards.

The longer answer is the maths behind that figure, which matters because your kitchen probably isn't ten units of the same width. Here's how to work it out for your own run.

What a plywood kitchen carcass is made of

Each base unit is a five-sided box. The sixth side, the front, is either a face frame or a door, and that's a separate question. The structural parts in 18mm ply are:

• Two sides. These set the height and depth of the unit.
• One bottom panel. Sits between the two sides at the base.
• One shelf (in most base units, one fixed shelf above the bottom).
• A back panel. Usually cut from 6mm or 9mm ply or MDF rather than 18mm, because it carries no load and a full-thickness back adds a lot of sheet area and cost.

Top rails, plinths and drawer runners vary by design and are not counted here. If you're adding those, add them to your parts list before calculating.

Standard UK kitchen base unit sizes

Standard UK kitchen base units are built to a common set of dimensions that lets worktops, appliances and doors be bought off the shelf:

Wall units are shallower, typically 300 mm deep and 600 to 720 mm tall depending on ceiling height. They use the same construction method but need fewer parts because they are smaller. The scaling section below covers both.

Worked example: ten 600 mm base units

Ten units, each 600 mm wide x 720 mm tall x 560 mm deep, built from 18mm plywood. This is a realistic run for a medium-sized kitchen with standard-width units.

Parts per unit in 18mm ply:

• 2 sides: 720 x 560 mm
• 1 bottom panel: 564 x 560 mm (internal width is 600 minus two 18mm side panels)
• 1 shelf: 564 x 560 mm

That is 4 pieces per unit, 40 pieces total, before any tops, rails or extras.

How those parts fit onto a standard 2440 x 1220 mm sheet:

• Sides (720 x 560 mm): three columns of 720 mm fill 2160 mm of the 2440 mm length; two rows of 560 mm fill 1120 mm of the 1220 mm width. That gives 6 sides per sheet, with offcuts of around 280 x 1220 mm along one edge.
• Bottom panels and shelves (564 x 560 mm): four columns of 564 mm fill 2256 mm of the length; two rows of 560 mm fill 1120 mm of the width. That gives 8 pieces per sheet, with a small offcut.

Putting it together for 40 pieces:

• 20 sides: 4 sheets (6 per sheet, with offcuts from the last sheet)
• 20 bottoms and shelves: 3 sheets (8 per sheet, 20 fits across 3 with 4 left over)

That is 7 sheets of 18mm plywood in a clean layout. In practice, saw kerfs consume a few millimetres per cut, offcuts from the side sheets don't always yield useful bottom panels, and part sizes from different-width units rarely nest perfectly. Allow 8 sheets as a buying figure, and if the offcuts from your layout turn out to be usable, you'll have one sheet in hand for doors, drawer fronts or shelves.

For the backs in 6mm ply, each unit needs one panel roughly 564 x 720 mm. Ten panels have a combined area of about 4 m², and a full sheet covers around 2.97 m². Buy 2 sheets of 6mm ply.

Total for ten 600 mm base units: 8 sheets of 18mm ply, 2 sheets of 6mm ply.

Scaling up or down

The relationship is roughly linear once you account for a fixed minimum waste level. As a rule of thumb from the example above:

Mix of unit widths? Work out the total number of parts rather than total units. Every unit still needs two sides, a bottom and a shelf regardless of its width, but the panel sizes change, which changes how efficiently they nest. Narrower units (300 or 400 mm) tend to waste more sheet area per unit because the panels don't fill a sheet as neatly.

Adding wall units: a standard 600 x 600 mm wall unit (typically 600 mm wide x 600 mm tall x 300 mm deep) uses the same four parts but in smaller sizes. Two rows of wall unit sides (600 x 300 mm) sit comfortably across a 1220 mm sheet width, four across the length, so you can get 8 sides per sheet. Budget roughly 1 sheet of 18mm ply per 3 to 4 wall units.

Fitted alcove cabinets

An alcove cabinet is built to a specific width, which almost never matches a standard unit size. That means custom panel dimensions throughout, and the off-the-shelf nesting estimates above don't apply.

The method is the same: list every panel, note its finished size, and work out how many fit on a sheet. What changes is that you're solving a layout puzzle specific to your alcove width rather than using standard figures. A 900 mm-wide alcove might yield 2 panels per sheet row where 600 mm panels give 3, so you need more sheets for the same number of parts.

Alcove builds also often include full-height sides that run floor to ceiling, which can be 2100 mm or taller. A 2440 mm sheet accommodates that in one piece, but it limits what else can share the sheet. The layout step is where you find out whether you need one extra sheet or two.

Buying plywood for a kitchen in the UK

Standard 18mm birch or hardwood-faced plywood is widely stocked in the 2440 x 1220 mm sheet size (the metric near-equivalent of the imperial 8 x 4 sheet). That is the size to assume when planning your layout.

Where to buy:

• Travis Perkins and Wickes stock trade-grade plywood in multiple thicknesses and will often cut it to size in-branch. Travis Perkins tends to carry a wider range of grades and sheet sizes than the consumer sheds.
• B&Q stocks 18mm plywood in the standard 2440 x 1220 mm sheet and offers an in-store cutting service. Selection varies by branch; check stock online before making the trip.
• Specialist timber merchants and panel suppliers often stock birch ply(cleaner faces, more consistent voids) at a premium. Worth it for visible carcass interiors; unnecessary for anything that will be covered or painted.

MDF as an alternative: many fitted kitchens use 18mm MDF for the carcass rather than plywood. It machines cleanly, paints flat and costs less per sheet. The tradeoff is weight, which matters if you're building a lot of units, and MDF doesn't hold fixings as well near edges. Either material works; the sheet count calculation is the same.

Why the real number is always slightly different

Every estimate above assumes parts nest cleanly. They rarely do. Your units probably aren't all 600 mm wide, you likely have some drawers that need different internal dimensions, and a cut list that wastes 40 mm per row across seven sheets adds up to a missing panel late in the build.

The only way to get a reliable sheet count is to lay out every panel you need onto sheets and see what the offcuts are. That's a cutting layout, and doing it by hand is slow and easy to get wrong.

SawReady does the layout step for you. Enter each panel size and quantity, tell it the sheet size and thickness, and it works out how many sheets to buy and how to cut them with the least waste. It also gives you a list you can hand to the yard if you'd rather have them cut it, or a checklist to work through at your own saw.

Plan your kitchen cut list