Bathroom Vanity Sizes and Heights (Canada): Widths, Depths, Clearances

Kitchens & BathroomsPlanning Guide

Bathroom Vanity Sizes and Heights: What Fits, What Clears, and What the Guidelines Say

Widths, depths and heights in inches, the clearances that make a bathroom usable, and a thirty-second check on whether the one you want will go in.

Most vanity returns are not about the colour. They are about the three-quarters of an inch between the vanity and the wall, the drawer that hits the door, or the double sink that technically fits and leaves no room to stand. All of that is measurable before you buy, with a tape and this page.

Checked October 2026 by a Tarion-registered Ontario builder with 300-plus custom homes behind him. Inches throughout, because that is what the tape says.

Standard widths, and what each one is for

Width	Sinks	Where it goes	Counter space
18 – 24 in.	One, small	Powder rooms and tight ensuites. Often 16 to 18 in. deep.	Almost none. A soap dispenser.
30 in.	One	The common older-house main bathroom size.	A few inches each side of the sink.
36 in.	One	The most common size sold in Ontario. Fits most 5 by 8 bathrooms.	Enough for a toothbrush cup and a phone.
42 – 48 in.	One, offset	A single sink pushed to one side gives real counter. The sweet spot for one person.	Good. An 18 in. run on one side.
54 – 60 in.	One or two	60 is the smallest honest double. As a single it is the quiet luxury.	Double: a little between. Single: a lot.
66 – 72 in.	Two	The comfortable double. Two people, two drawers each, counter between.	Good on both sides and between.
84 – 96 in.	Two	Primary ensuites. Usually a tower or a makeup area in the middle.	As much as a kitchen.

Prefab vanities come in these sizes and nothing between. Semi-custom lines go in 3-inch steps. Custom goes to the inch, which is what you pay for when the opening is 38 and 3/4.

Depth

A standard vanity is 21 inches deep at the cabinet with a top that overhangs to about 22 or 22.5. That takes a standard undermount sink with room for a faucet behind it. Narrow vanities at 18 inches, and 16 for the very tight, fit powder rooms and hallway-width ensuites; they take a narrow sink and a wall-mount or small faucet, and the drawers are shallow. Twenty-four inch deep vanities are a kitchen base cabinet in a bathroom, and they give you kitchen counter space and a vanity that sticks out past the door casing if the room is small. Measure from the wall to the door swing before you go deep.

Height

Standard, 30 to 32 in.

To the top of the counter. What every bathroom had until about 2005. Right for children, for anyone under about five foot four, and for a vessel sink, which adds 4 to 6 inches on top.

Comfort height, 34 to 36 in.

Kitchen counter height. What most new vanities are. Right for most adults, wrong for a kids’ bathroom, and awkward with a vessel sink, which puts the rim at 40 inches.

Floating

Hung wherever you like, usually so the counter lands at 34 to 36. The cabinet itself is 20 to 30 inches tall with a gap below it of 6 to 12 inches. The gap shows the floor, which has to be finished, and the drain, which has to be in the wall.

Barrier-free

Ontario’s Building Code barrier-free rules put the rim no higher than 34 inches (865 mm) with open knee space under it. If someone in the house uses a wheelchair or will, this is the number, and a floating vanity is the easy way to get the knee space.

The NKBA bathroom planning guidelines put adult vanity height anywhere from 32 to 43 inches, with the rim about three inches below the user’s elbow. Stand at your kitchen counter. If it feels right for washing your face, that is comfort height. If you are reaching up, go lower.

Clearances: the numbers that make it usable

These are the NKBA planning guidelines, which are what designers work to, alongside the code minimums they quote. The guidelines are what you want. The minimums are what you can get away with and will notice every morning.

Clearance	NKBA guideline	Code minimum (as quoted by NKBA)	In plain words
In front of the vanity	30 in.	21 in.	Room to stand and bend to the sink with the door closed.
Sink centreline to a side wall	20 in.	15 in.	At 15 your elbow hits the wall. At 20 it does not.
Between two sink centrelines	36 in.	30 in.	Two people at once without touching. 36 means a 66 in. vanity or wider for comfort.
Sink edge to wall, wall-hung or pedestal	4 in.	4 in.	So the faucet handle clears and you can clean behind it.
Floor space for an assistive device	30 x 48 in.	–	In front of the vanity, clear of the door swing.

Source: NKBA Bathroom Planning Guidelines, as summarized by the trade press. Ontario’s Building Code has its own minimums for fixture spacing and barrier-free bathrooms; your local building department is the final word on a permit.

The one people get wrong: a 60-inch double puts the sink centrelines 30 inches apart, which is the code minimum and feels like it. Two adults side by side bump. If you want a double that two people use at the same time, 66 inches is the honest minimum and 72 is comfortable.

Will it fit? A thirty-second check

Quick check

Vanity fit checker

Opening width, wall to wall (in.)Smallest of six measurements: front and back, at floor, counter height and 6 in. above.

Is the vanity between two walls?

Clear floor in front of the vanity (in.)Vanity front to the nearest thing across from it: tub, toilet, wall, or the door when open.

Vanity width you want (in.)

Sinks

Vanity depth (in.)

Fill in the measurements and press Check.

How to measure an opening between two walls

Six measurements, not one. Wall to wall at the floor, at 34 inches, and at 40 inches; each of those at the front edge of where the vanity will sit and at the back wall. Write all six down. The smallest is your opening.
Subtract for fillers. Between two walls, order the vanity 1 to 1.5 inches narrower than the smallest measurement and finish each side with a scribed filler strip. A vanity ordered to the exact opening will not go in, because walls are not plumb and corners have drywall mud in them.
Check the baseboard and the casing. A baseboard on the side wall pushes a floor-standing vanity out from the wall unless it is notched. Door casing can land inside the opening at counter height and not at the floor.
Find the drain and the supplies. Measure from the left wall to the centre of the drain stub, and its height off the floor. Photograph it with the tape in the shot. This decides whether drawers will work.
Check the door swing. Open the bathroom door fully and measure from it to where the vanity front will be. If the door hits the vanity, the vanity is too deep or the door needs to swing out.
Look up. Window sills, the mirror, a light bar, a medicine cabinet. A comfort-height vanity with a 4-inch backsplash lands at 40 inches, which is where a lot of old window sills are.

Mirrors, lights and faucets: the heights that go with it

The mirror bottom sits 4 to 8 inches above the counter, or just above the backsplash if there is one. The mirror top should be above the tallest user’s eye line, which for most households means 70 to 72 inches off the floor. Wall sconces beside the mirror go at eye level, about 60 to 66 inches; a light bar above the mirror at 75 to 80. A medicine cabinet, recessed, needs the wall cavity to be empty of plumbing and wiring where it goes, which on the sink wall it often is not.

A faucet needs to reach the middle of the sink basin, or the water hits the back wall of the bowl and splashes. Single-hole faucets have a reach of 4 to 6 inches; a sink set well back from the front edge of the counter wants the longer one. Vessel sinks need a tall faucet, 10 to 12 inches, or a wall-mount coming out of the wall above the bowl, which has to be roughed in before the tile.

Where homeowners go wrong

Buying to the old vanity’s size. The old one fit because somebody scribed it. Measure the opening.
A 60-inch double for two people who both get ready at seven. See the callout above. Go to 66 or 72, or go single and give yourselves counter.
Comfort height in the children’s bathroom. A step stool solves it for a while. A 32-inch vanity solves it for ten years.
A 24-inch-deep vanity in a 5-foot-wide bathroom. It eats three inches of the walkway you were short on already.
Forgetting the toilet. The vanity end to the toilet centreline wants 18 inches by guideline, 15 by minimum. A wider vanity can push the toilet into violation, and the inspector measures that one.
Ordering before the photograph. The drain photo decides the drawers. The vanity cost guide has the plumbing problem in detail and what each version costs.

Once the size is settled, the vanity cost calculator prices it by the inch, supplied and installed. The guideline figures above are from the NKBA Bathroom Planning Guidelines; a readable summary with the code minimums is at Supply House Times, and the barrier-free rim height is from Ontario’s Building Code, Part 3.8.

Questions people ask

What is the standard bathroom vanity height in Canada?

Thirty to thirty-two inches to the counter was standard for decades. New vanities are mostly 34 to 36, called comfort height. The NKBA guideline range for adults is 32 to 43 depending on who uses it. Ontario’s barrier-free rules cap the rim at 34 inches with knee space below.

What size vanity fits a 5 by 8 bathroom?

Usually 36 inches, sometimes 42 or 48 if the toilet is on the other wall and the tub is across the end. The limit is the 18 inches from the vanity end to the toilet centreline and the 30 inches you want in front. Measure both before you decide 48 looks nicer.

How much space do you need between a vanity and a toilet?

Eighteen inches from the vanity side to the toilet centreline by guideline, 15 by code minimum. In front of the toilet, 30 inches by guideline, 21 by minimum, and the vanity cannot stick into that.

Can a double vanity be 48 inches?

They are sold. The sinks end up 24 inches apart on centre, under the 30-inch minimum, with no counter between and two faucets you cannot both use at once. If 48 is the opening, buy a single with an offset sink and real counter.

How deep is a standard vanity?

Twenty-one inches at the cabinet, about 22 to 22.5 at the top. Eighteen for narrow, 16 for the very tight, 24 for kitchen-depth. Deeper is not better in a small room.

How high should a floating vanity be mounted?

So the counter lands where you want it, usually 34 to 36 inches, which for a 24-inch-tall cabinet means the bottom is at 10 to 12. Under 6 inches of gap is hard to clean; over 14 looks like it is trying to fly.

Before you buy anything

Six measurements, a drain photo, the door swing, and the toilet centreline. If all four are written down before you look at a single vanity, you will buy the right one the first time, which in bathrooms counts as a miracle.

Price the one that fits Read the vanity cost guide