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 (0.82–1.03 m), and a full-height cabinet in an H2 van — not because of the door, but because you cannot stand it up inside (1.68–1.85 m maximum; 1.92–1.99 m in a Sprinter). 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 each maker’s own printed figures — price-list dimension pages, technical drawings and body-builder charts, every one re-opened and read in September 2026 (the document behind each van is named on its van page, and the planner draws its doors from the same table). Rounded to the centimetre here; where a maker prints different openings for front- and rear-wheel drive — the driven rear axle lifts the floor 70–100 mm — the notes say so. 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, which carry the makers’ printed load heights.

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: Toyota publishes no door opening for the H300, and we would rather leave a gap than guess (the planner draws a formula there and labels it an estimate). 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 0.91–1.02 m wide and 1.24–1.28 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 with rear- or all-wheel drive (1.70 m with front-wheel drive) against 1.76–1.82 m on a Ducato, Sprinter, Daily or front-wheel-drive Crafter or Master 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. 1.68–1.85 m is the ceiling for a one-piece 0.6 m deep cabinet (the Sprinter H2, at 1.92–1.99 m, is the exception); 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 1.93–2.16 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.

FAQ

Related: bed height calculator