Van door opening sizes by model: what fits through the slider and the rear doors

Every large European van has a sliding door 1.25–1.31 m wide and 1.60–1.82 m tall and rear doors 1.53–1.58 m wide and 1.60–2.03 m tall, so any fridge, toilet, tank or cabinet up to 0.6 m deep passes; what does not is a pre-built unit longer than about 1.7 m through the slider, anything over 0.9 m wide through a mid-size slider (0.91–1.03 m), and a full-height cabinet in an H2 van — not because of the door, but because you cannot stand it up inside (1.78–1.87 m maximum). That is the answer. The tables below give the aperture per van model, the cross-sections of the things people carry in, and the turning limit per roof height, which is the number nobody checks until the unit is jammed at 30°.

Where these numbers come from

The door apertures are manufacturer body-builder figures, not our database: the van DB that drives the planner holds the cargo box (length, width between the walls, height, arches, axles) and draws the doors at a proportion of it, because no consumer source publishes clear openings per variant. So the table below is the current-generation figure from each maker’s brochure or body-builder sheet, rounded to the centimetre and checked September 2026 — and door openings differ by year, trim, step and whether the sliding-door track has been panelled over. Tape-measure your own van at the narrowest point of the seal before you order anything that comes within 3 cm of a figure here. The turning limits in the last table are ours: they follow from the interior heights and widths in the database, and those are calibrated per platform.

Table 1: door openings by platform

Width × height, clear. Rear figures are for the H2 roof unless stated; a high-roof (H3) body has a taller rear opening, a low-roof (H1) a shorter one, and the sliding door on most platforms does not change with the roof — the cut-out is in the body side. Vans in brackets share the body.

The Toyota HiAce is not listed: we have no body-builder sheet for the H300 to hand and would rather leave a gap than guess. The platform-twins guide lists which badge shares which body by year, which is what makes the brackets safe.

Table 2: what people carry in, and the rule

The rule is simple and it is the one people forget on the day: a box passes a door if its two smallest dimensions fit inside the opening; the longest dimension points through it. So the question is never “is the kitchen 1.8 m long” but “is its 0.6 × 0.9 m end smaller than the door” — and then, separately, whether it can turn once inside.

Table 3: the number the door does not tell you — standing it up inside

A tall unit comes in lying down and then has to rotate to vertical. While it turns, its diagonal sweeps the roof: a unit of height h and depth d needs an interior height of at least √(h² + d²). These figures are computed from the interior heights in the van database for a 0.6 m deep unit; they are the tallest one-piece cabinet, wardrobe or cubicle you can stand up in that van without cutting the ceiling panel out.

Interior heights are floor to headliner before your floor and ceiling build-up; take your build-up off the interior height first. The same geometry applies to a long block turning flat on the floor: a 1.8 m kitchen block 0.6 m deep needs √(1.8² + 0.6²) = 1.9 m of clear width to spin, and no van is that wide between the walls (Ducato 1.87 m, Sprinter 1.79 m — the dimensions comparison has them all). It goes in through the rear, pointing forward, or in two halves.

How to read it

• Appliances are never the problem in a large van. Nothing in Table 2 with a cross-section under 0.6 × 0.9 m comes close to a 1.25 m door. The build-day panic is always a piece of furniture, and it is always length or turning, not width.
• Mid-size vans lose the slider for furniture. At 0.91–1.03 m wide and 1.24–1.32 m tall, a Trafic, Transporter or Expert slider takes a fridge and a toilet but not a bed platform on edge or a ply sheet. Everything flat goes through the rear doors, which are 1.28–1.47 m wide — and on the Expert only 1.22 m tall, so a 1.3 m wide platform goes in flat, not on edge.
• The Transit’s short slider matters for one thing. 1.60 m tall against 1.76–1.82 m on the others means a 1.7 m pre-built unit that walks in upright through a Sprinter or Crafter door lies down for the Transit — and then meets Table 3.
• H2 vans build the tall units in place. 1.78–1.87 m is the ceiling for a one-piece 0.6 m deep cabinet; a shower cubicle at 1.95 m does not stand up. Build the carcass inside, or make it 1.80 m and hide the gap in the ceiling trim. In an H3 the limit is 2.0–2.1 m and the problem disappears.
• Kitchen blocks over 1.7 m go in through the rear, forwards. Which means they go in before the bed if the bed is at the back — sequence in the build-order post. Or split the run at the sink: two 0.9 m blocks turn anywhere and the joint hides under the worktop.
• Measure the seal, not the sheet metal. The rubber, the step lip and the door’s own panel take 2–4 cm off the brochure figure at the narrowest point, and a panelled-over slider track more. Anything within 3 cm of a Table 1 number is a tape-measure job, not a table job.

Before you build it outside

Build the carcass at full size in the planner first — the kitchen dimensions post has the block sizes that work — then decide whether it comes in through a door or gets assembled inside from cut parts. The cut list is the same either way; the only thing that changes is where you drive the last screws.

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