Shaker Door Maker
Building Shaker or other frame-and-panel cabinet doors? Enter the cabinet opening — the rest is filled in with common shop sizes you can change — and get the length and width of every stile, rail and panel, a door diagram, and a cut sheet to print and take to the saw. Overlay or inset, single doors or pairs.
Stile, rail and panel sizes for a five-piece Shaker door, with a printable cut sheet.
Dashed: rail tongues and panel edges hidden in the grooves. Dotted: the cabinet opening.
Width × length. Rails include a tongue on each end; the panel includes the tongue depth on every side, less the panel gap allowance.
Doors sized. Now lay out the whole cabinet.
CUTLIST.io bundles all six shop calculators with the cut list optimizer — Rip First, Crosscut First, Max Yield, or Smart Stack — so you buy the right amount of material and waste less of it.
Get the whole suite of toolsHow a Shaker door is sized
A Shaker door is five pieces: two stiles that run the full height of the door, a top and bottom rail that fit between them, and a flat panel floating in a groove. The door size comes from the cabinet opening — an overlay door is bigger than the opening by the overlay on each side; an inset door is smaller by the gap on each side.
rail length = door width − 2 × stile width + 2 × tongue
panel = opening inside the frame + 2 × tongue − 2 × panel gap allowance
The tongue length is how far each rail's tongue (or stub tenon) runs into the stile's groove — it's also the groove depth the panel sits in. The panel gap allowance leaves room on every side for a solid-wood panel to move across the grain with the seasons, so it never cracks the frame or rattles loose.
Overlay or inset?
Overlay doors sit on the face of the cabinet and cover part of the face frame — 1/2" per side is a common overlay on a face-frame cabinet. Inset doors sit inside the opening, flush with the face frame, with a small even gap all around, usually about 1/16" per side.
Any frame-and-panel door, not just Shaker
A Shaker door is the simplest frame-and-panel door: a flat panel in a square-edged frame. The rail and stile math is the same for every five-piece door, so this works for raised-panel doors, beaded or ogee profiles, and glass-panel doors too. With a cope-and-stick router bit set, enter the cope depth as the tongue length.
Pairs of doors and wider bottom rails
For a wide opening, turn on Pair of doors: the width is split into two equal doors with your gap between them, and the cut list doubles. Turn on Different bottom rail for the classic look of a bottom rail a little wider than the top — the panel height adjusts to match.
More free tools
CUTLIST.io Cut List Optimizer
Lay out every part across your plywood and boards. Try it free, no account needed.
Board Foot Calculator
Board feet and lumber cost for a list of boards.
Tape Measure Calculator
Add, subtract, multiply and divide tape measurements, fractions included.
Circle Glue-Up Calculator
Board lengths for a glue-up you'll cut into a circle.
Woodworking Unit Converter
Inches, mm, cm, feet — with fractions in and out.
Quick Fill Calculator
How many of one part fit on a sheet, kerf included.
Questions
What stile and rail width should I use for Shaker doors?
2 1/4" is a common width for kitchen cabinet doors, with 2" to 3" all typical. Very small doors look better with narrower stiles; tall pantry doors often go wider. Many shops make the bottom rail a little wider than the top.
What panel gap allowance should I use?
For a solid-wood panel, about 1/16" per side is a common starting point — more for wide panels or wood milled in a dry season. A plywood or MDF panel doesn't move, so it can fit snug.
What tongue length should I use?
With a 1/4" slot cutter or a cope-and-stick router bit set, a 3/8" tongue and groove is typical. Enter whatever your groove depth is; the rails and panel are sized from it.
Does it work for raised-panel and other frame-and-panel doors?
Yes. Every five-piece frame-and-panel door is sized the same way: stiles run the full height, rails fit between them, and the panel sits in a groove on all four sides. The panel size here is the one to cut, whether it's a flat Shaker panel, a raised panel, or the glass for a glass door.
How do I figure rail length for cope and stick?
Rail length = door width − 2 × stile width + 2 × the cope depth (how far the rail's coped end reaches into the stile's profile). Enter that depth as the tongue length and the Shaker Door Maker does the rest, for every rail in the door.
Does it work for inset doors?
Yes. Pick Inset and enter the gap you want on each side; the door is sized smaller than the opening by that gap all around.
Can I size every door and drawer front in a kitchen?
The CUTLIST.io optimizer takes every part in a build and lays it out across your sheet goods and boards. The Shaker Door Maker gets each door's parts right first, and it's built into the app.