The cabinet face — sometimes called the drawer face or drawer front — is the visible panel on the front of a kitchen drawer cabinet. It's the dimension kitchen showrooms quote ("a 60 cm drawer unit"), the dimension the cabinet manufacturer prints on the box, and the dimension that has nothing to do with what fits inside the drawer.
Why the cabinet face misleads
Three structural reasons:
- The face overhangs the box. A drawer's structural box sits 2–4 cm behind the visible face panel. The face is what closes the cabinet aesthetically; the box is what holds the contents.
- The face hides the runners. Runner clearance takes 25–35 mm from the face's apparent width — invisible from outside.
- Adjacent drawers share faces. Some cabinet designs use one wide face with two narrower drawer boxes inside. Reading the face dimension would suggest one wide drawer; the box reveals two narrow ones.
What to measure instead
The drawer interior — wall to wall inside the drawer box. Internal length, internal width, internal depth. All three taken from inside the drawer with the drawer fully open. Round down to the nearest centimetre.
The structural difference
A 60 cm cabinet face usually hides a 52–55 cm internal width drawer. A 50 cm face hides 42–45 cm internal. The drawer builder always asks for the internal dimension, never the face.