Should flooring or cabinets be installed first?

The trade order, in short

When both are new, in a remodel or a build, flooring generally goes in before cabinets. The cabinets then sit on top of a finished floor, and the toe-kick, the recessed strip at the base, hides the edge where the two meet. When cabinets are staying and only the floor is changing, the order flips out of necessity: the new material has to be cut and worked around the cabinets already bolted in place, meeting them rather than running underneath.

Why it runs that direction

Continuous flooring under a cabinet run avoids a visible seam at every base, and it gives the installer a flat, known surface to set cabinets level on rather than working around a floor that has not been finished yet. Whether a kitchen floor runs under the cabinets or stops at them depends on whether the cabinets themselves are being changed at the same time, which is a decision that belongs to that room's page and gets settled at the measure rather than argued here.

The field test: check your own toe-kick

You can see which way your own kitchen, bathroom vanity or laundry cabinetry actually went without calling anyone. Open the dishwasher or pull back the toe-kick panel at the base of a cabinet run, the narrow recessed strip your toes fit under while standing at the counter, and look at what is underneath it. If the same flooring material continues under the cabinet base, the floor went in first. If the cabinet sits on bare subfloor, plywood, or a different material than the room around it, the cabinets went in first or the floor was only run up to their edge.

What the test tells you

It tells you how your existing room was actually built, which matters most if you are keeping the cabinets and only replacing the floor. A floor that already runs under the cabinets means the new material likely needs to do the same to avoid a visible line at the base. A floor that stops at the cabinet edge means the new material only needs to meet that edge cleanly, which is a smaller and usually simpler job.

What it does not tell you

It does not tell you whether the new material will clear the way the old one did. Finished height against cabinets, appliances and doorways is <a href="/rooms/kitchen/">the kitchen page's argument and the one to read on it</a>. What the test genuinely cannot show you is which kind of appliance you have. A unit that rolls out the front is in a different situation than one that has to lift out from under a counter, and the panel at the base of a cabinet run says nothing about either. Nor does the test say anything about condition: a floor that runs under the cabinets tells you the sequence somebody used, not whether the subfloor beneath it is sound, flat and dry, which is a separate check and a more important one.

Laundry rooms and mudroom cabinetry follow the same test

This is not a kitchen-only question. A laundry room with built-in cabinetry over the washer and dryer, or a mudroom bench with cubbies built into the wall, gets the same toe-kick or base check. Laundry cabinetry in particular is worth checking carefully, because a floor that runs under a built-in bank of cabinets in that room also has to account for the appliances sitting in front of it, and a washer or dryer is heavier and less forgiving to work around than most kitchen appliances. The same logic that applies at a kitchen toe-kick applies here: look at what is underneath before assuming which sequence your room already followed.

Where the actual height math gets settled

Bring what the toe-kick test shows you to the free in-home measure, along with which appliances are staying and which cabinets, if any, are being replaced. That is where the finished height of your new floor gets checked against every doorway, cabinet base and appliance clearance in the room, rather than assumed from what the old floor happened to do. Call 636-332-0654 with the rooms involved and we will walk through it in person.