Face Frame Cut List Calculator — Stile Widths Into a Stick Count
Face frame stiles and rails are usually cut from 3/4" hardwood, often 1½" wide, paired with a ½" overlay hinge. That's a common default, not a standard: 2" stiles and other overlays are common design choices too. This calculator takes your stile width and cabinet run and turns it into an exact hardwood stick count and cut plan in linear mode, alongside (not instead of) the plywood box cut list. Free to try, in your browser, no signup.
Stile and rail widths, and what they do to a rail length
Face frame construction is a design choice, not a fixed spec — but the trade converges on a few common patterns:
- 1½" stiles/rails: a common default, paired with a ½" overlay hinge (leaves roughly a 1" reveal at outer stiles, ½" between doors)
- 2" stiles/rails: the next most common width, giving a wider reveal band around each door
- 1¼"–1¾": less common, usually paired with a matching overlay hinge to control the reveal
Whatever width you pick, it comes off both ends of every rail: a rail's length is the cabinet's outside width minus two stile widths — not one, since a stile runs up each side. That subtraction is easy to get wrong by hand across a run of different-width cabinets, which is exactly the kind of arithmetic a cut list calculator exists to remove.
Worked example: face frames for a 6-cabinet base run
Take the same 12-ft base run as the kitchen cabinet cut list example — six cabinets at 15, 18, 21, 24, 30, and 36" — built face-frame instead of frameless, with 1½" stiles and rails:
- Stiles: 2 per cabinet × 30" (the 34½" box height less a 4½" toe kick) = 12 pieces
- Rails: 2 per cabinet (top + bottom), length = cabinet width − 3" (two 1½" stiles) = 12 pieces at 12, 15, 18, 21, 27, and 33"
That's 24 pieces of hardwood (add mid rails if your cabinets have drawer openings). Run through the optimizer in linear mode on 8-ft (96") stock, ⅛" kerf: 7 sticks, about 91% of the stock ends up in parts, all 24 pieces placed. Six of the seven sticks are 91–97% used; the seventh carries what's left at 76%, with a 23½" offcut long enough to become a rail on the next job.
Each cabinet here gets its own frame. Shops that build one continuous frame across a run, or share stiles between cabinets, will have a different list.
This example has 7 distinct part lengths. The free plan handles up to 5 part sizes and 3 stock sizes per job, so a job this size either runs in two passes or on Pro ($7.99/month or $79.99/year).
This is the lumber half of the same job the plywood cut list covers — one project, two materials, two stick/sheet counts, from one cabinet run.
Matching stile width to hinge and overlay
The stile width and overlay amount aren't independent choices — they set the reveal together:
- A 1½" stile with a ½" overlay hinge leaves about 1" of face frame showing at the outer edge and ½" between adjacent doors
- A 2" stile with a ½" overlay leaves closer to 1½" of frame showing — a heavier, more traditional look
- A 1¼" stile with a ½" overlay leaves only ¼" between two doors sharing a stile, so narrow stiles usually get a smaller-overlay hinge
Pick the combination before cutting a single stick — changing it after the boxes are built means re-cutting every rail in the run.
How to use it
- Pick a stile/rail width and overlay hinge combination before cutting anything
- Open the optimizer in linear mode — no account needed
- Enter stiles as one row (length × quantity) and rails as one row per distinct length
- Enter your hardwood stock length (8-ft shown here; enter what your supplier actually stocks)
- Set kerf (⅛" for a table saw crosscut sled)
- Run it — sticks to buy, a cut plan per stick, every offcut listed
Run the plywood box parts separately in sheet mode (see the kitchen cabinet cut list) to get the sheet count for the same job.