Drop zone and charging station dimensions

A drop zone is the 3 ft of wall where a household stops carrying things. It gets designed as a piece of furniture and it behaves as a piece of ergonomics, which is why the two most common versions both fail: the 30 in console that is too low to use standing, and the 20 in deep counter whose back half turns into an archive. The numbers below come from what is actually being put down.

Measure the objects first#

Every dimension on this page is downstream of a short inventory. These are catalogue sizes, and they are unusually consistent because the objects are all made to fit a pocket or a hand.

Add the first four, which is what one adult carries daily: 4 + 3 + 4 + 6 = 17 in, call it 18 in (46 cm). That single sum is the module the rest of the page is built on, and it agrees with the anthropometric figure from a different direction, because adult shoulder breadth runs 18 to 20 in (46 to 51 cm). One person's stuff and one person's width are the same number.

Note what is not in that sum. Nothing on the list is more than 12 in deep except the laptop and the bags, and nothing is stacked. The deepest daily object sets the ledge depth, and for most households that is the post at 9 in.

Where the ledge height comes from#

Standing elbow height for adults runs about 41 to 44 in (104 to 112 cm). A surface you place things onto without looking sits roughly 5 in below the elbow, because the forearm drops as the hand releases. That gives 36 to 39 in, and 36 in (91 cm) is the figure to build to because it is also the kitchen counter height that every carcass, worktop and appliance in the country is made to.

The comparison is worth writing out, because the wrong height is the commonest fault in a drop zone.

A 30 in console in a hall is not a drop zone, it is a display surface that people use as one. If the piece is already there, the fix is a tray at 2 in high, which recovers a little of the difference and, more usefully, bounds the sprawl. Console depths and heights in their own right are covered in console table dimensions.

Ledge depth by what it has to take#

Depth is also a circulation cost, and it is paid twice: once by the ledge and once by whatever is on it. A 12 in ledge in a 42 in hall leaves 30 in of passage, which is the secondary-route minimum in walkway and circulation widths at home. At 16 in you are down to 26 in, which is a squeeze past for one person and impossible for two carrying anything.

Power, and the 4 in nobody leaves#

A charging station is a socket problem before it is a joinery problem. Three dimensions govern it.

Height. Centre the plate 6 in (15 cm) above the ledge, so 42 in (107 cm) above the floor over a 36 in ledge. Any lower and the plug sits behind the objects; any higher and the cable hangs across the front. The general case for every room is in socket and outlet heights.

Depth behind. A UK 13 A plug projects about 50 mm (2 in) from the face of the socket before the cable turns, and a moulded lead needs another 40 to 50 mm to bend without stressing the strain relief. Allow 4 in (100 mm) of clear space behind a socket face inside joinery. A US plug is shorter, at about 1.25 in, but the cable bend is the same, so 3 in is the equivalent figure. A charging drawer built to a 2 in cavity does not close.

Cable exit. A 60 mm (2.4 in) grommet is the standard size and it is also about the smallest hole a phone cable will pass through without a fight, because flexible cable wants a bend radius of roughly four times its own diameter and a tighter hole forces a sharper turn than that.

Add a fourth if the station is enclosed: chargers make heat, and four devices on fast chargers in a sealed drawer will run warm. A 1 in (25 mm) gap along the back of the drawer box serves as both the cable route and the vent. Drawer internal heights and the runner allowances that go with them are in drawer sizes, depths and internal capacity.

Data and network points, if the drop zone doubles as the place a router or a patch panel lives, follow their own set of heights in data and network outlet placement.

Hooks, and why coats and bags are different problems#

A hook is defined by what hangs from it, not by its own size. A coat on a hook hangs about 40 in (102 cm) below the hook and projects 9 to 13 in (23 to 33 cm) from the wall depending on how bulky it is. A tote or a backpack hangs 14 to 18 in (36 to 46 cm) and projects 8 to 10 in.

Run the subtraction over a 36 in ledge. A coat hook would need to sit at 36 + 40 = 76 in (193 cm) for the hem to clear the surface, which is above the comfortable reach band for most adults and awkward for anyone under about 5 ft 6 in. A bag hook at 60 in leaves the bag's base at 44 in, comfortably clear. So bags can hang above a drop ledge and coats cannot, and a wall that is trying to do both needs the ledge to stop where the coats start. Hook heights for adults, children and the two-row arrangement are set out in entry bench, hook and cubby heights.

Key hooks are a smaller problem with a tighter band. Put them at 48 to 60 in (122 to 152 cm): high enough to be above the ledge clutter, low enough to be inside the comfortable reach zone that reach zones and useful storage heights defines. Below 48 in they are behind whatever is on the ledge; above 60 in they are out of a child's reach, which may be deliberate.

Post, and the item that ruins the surface#

Post arrives every day and leaves slowly, which makes it the object most likely to colonise a flat surface. Give it a container sized to the paper rather than to the wall: an interior of about 13 x 10 in (33 x 25 cm) takes A4 at 210 x 297 mm and a US number 10 envelope at 9.5 x 4.125 in, with enough slack to lift a handful out in one go.

Where post enters through the door, the aperture is specified rather than chosen. The Royal Mail specification, drawn from BS EN 13724, asks for a letter plate aperture of at least 250 x 38 mm (9.8 x 1.5 in), fitted between 700 and 1,400 mm (28 to 55 in) above the ground. That is a genuine planning constraint because it puts a mail landing zone directly behind the door, in exactly the strip of floor a doormat wants, and the collision is worked through in doormat and entry runner sizes.

Fitting it into the wall you have#

The whole assembly wants 72 in of wall for a family of four, but it can be split. Two 36 in runs on facing walls of a hall work as well as one 72 in run, provided each is a full bay module wide. What does not work is 48 in of ledge for four people, because the fifth object placed on a full ledge goes on top of the fourth, and a stacked object is not retrievable in the few seconds anyone spends on the way out.

The wall-hung version wins twice in a narrow hall: it frees the floor for a mat and for cleaning, and it lets the ledge be 10 in deep where a floor cabinet would need a 3 to 4 in toe recess and a carcass closer to 14 in. The trade-offs for tight halls are in mudroom sizes and layouts that actually work, and the general capacity figures for what has to be stored near a door are in storage dimensions: what fits where. Terms used here, from toe recess to reach band, are defined with their dimensions in the glossary, and the millimetre equivalents of every inch figure above are in the unit converter. This is the piece of entryway joinery that gets used most times per day, so it is worth the arithmetic.