Galaxy Pistachio Green Double Door Wall Cabinets

Start with the numbers. Uppers conventionally begin 54 inches off the floor — a 36-inch counter plus an 18-inch backsplash gap. On an eight-foot ceiling that leaves 42 inches of wall, which is exactly the tallest box on the grid. On a nine-foot ceiling it leaves 54 inches. On ten feet, 66. No single wall cabinet is 54 or 66 inches tall, so on a taller ceiling something else has to happen in the space above the run.

There are four things it can be. It can be left open, which gives you a ledge on top of the cabinets that collects dust and sits in full view. It can be closed with a soffit or a bulkhead, which is building work rather than cabinetry. It can be dressed with a deep crown, which handles a few inches but not a foot and a half. Or it can be filled with more cabinet, which is what this page is about. On a tall ceiling that is usually the best-looking of the four and the only one that adds storage.

Stacking only works where there is a short box the same width as the tall one beneath it, and that is not every width. The short two-door heights are 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24 inches, and they exist at some widths and not others.

• 24, 30, 33 and 36 inches wide: all five short heights are stocked, so any of these can take a top tier of whatever depth the ceiling leaves.
• 27 inches wide: only the 15- and 18-inch short heights exist, so a 27 can be stacked but with less choice about the tier height.
• 39 inches wide: no short box at all. A 39-inch upper cannot take a matching top tier, which is worth knowing before you build a run around one.
• The one-door widths — 12, 15, 18 and 21 — have 15- and 18-inch short boxes, so they can stack too. The 9-inch box has nothing shorter than 30 inches.
• The corner can stack, because the diagonal and pie-cut corner boxes both come in 15- and 18-inch heights. A blind corner cannot: the blind boxes start at 30 inches.

So a stacked wall has to be planned as a stacked wall from the beginning. Draw the lower tier using widths that have a partner, keep the 39s and the 9s out of it, and turn the corner with a diagonal or a pie-cut rather than a blind box. The short boxes are listed alongside the tall ones on this page, and the corner options are on the corner wall cabinets page.

Here are the stacks that fill a 36-inch-wide bay on each ceiling height, against the single tallest box as the baseline. The figures allow about three inches at the top for crown and scribe, so the cabinet tops out a little below the ceiling and the molding closes the rest. Displayed prices on the review date.

The two nine-foot rows are the interesting pair. They make exactly the same 51 inches of cabinet, and the version with the taller top tier — a 36 under a 15 — is $26.00 cheaper than a 39 under a 12. It also gives you a top tier deep enough to hold something useful rather than a 12-inch strip. As a rule on this grid, when two stacks make the same height, the one with the shorter lower box is usually the better buy.

Against the single 42-inch box the premium for going up is real but not large: $165.75 for a nine-foot bay, $256.75 to $305.50 for ten feet. Across a typical run of four or five bays that is the cost of a mid-range appliance, and it buys a wall with no ledge on top and a row of storage that did not exist before. At 30 inches wide the same nine-foot stack is GPG W3036 plus GPG W3015 at $695.50; the ten-foot version, GPG W3042 plus GPG W3021, is $799.50.

Be honest about what goes up there. The bottom of the upper tier on a nine-foot stack is at 90 inches off the floor, and nobody reaches that without standing on something. That is fine, as long as it is planned: the top tier is for the things you use a few times a year — the second set of glasses, the roasting tin, the cake stands, the spare serving platters, the seasonal tableware. It is not for anything you want on a Tuesday.

Which suggests two practical moves. Keep a folding step in the kitchen, somewhere you can reach it without thinking, or the top tier becomes a place things go to be forgotten. And fill the lower tier with the daily things first, then promote only what genuinely belongs in the loft. People who stack their uppers and then complain about them have usually done this the other way round.

One option people ask about is putting glass in the top tier so it reads as a lit display band. The glass door wall list in this finish runs in 30-, 36- and 42-inch heights only — there are no short glass sizes — so a stock glass top tier is not available here. If that is the look you want, ask us what can be done before you draw it; the glass door page lists what is stocked, and the glass cabinet doors guide covers the options in general.

Two boxes stacked face frame on face frame give you a doubled horizontal rail where they meet — the bottom rail of the upper tier sitting directly on the top rail of the lower. Some people like that line; it reads as a deliberate division between everyday storage and the loft above. Others want it less obvious, and installers handle that in different ways. There is no dedicated stacking molding on the parts list for this finish, so ask us, or your installer, how the joint will be dressed before the order goes in rather than on the day.

Two structural points, both of them general. The top tier has to be fixed to the wall, not just set on the box below; it carries its own weight and its own contents. And the lower tier has to be dead level along its top edge, because the upper tier will exaggerate any slope — a quarter-inch fall across a run becomes obvious when there is a second row of doors on top of it. Measure the ceiling at every bay, too; the crown has to hide whatever the ceiling does, and the molding guide covers which profiles have the depth for it.

List the bays as pairs — lower code, upper code — so nobody orders the tiers separately and ends up with a 39 that has no partner. Add the crown for the top, GPG CM-1 at $117.00 and up on the crown molding page; the light rail for the bottom if you are lighting the counter, GPG LRM at $149.50; and a finished skin for any exposed end, which for a stacked end means one skin per tier. Shelves for the lower boxes can be added by the piece: an extra for a 36-inch box, AS-W36, is $60.45.

Everything arrives pre-assembled in 7 days to 3 weeks. Send the ceiling height with your sketch for a free 3D design — a designer replies within one business day and the full drawing and quote follow in 24 to 48 hours — and the elevation will show every tier and every crown return. The full grid of two-door boxes is on the wall cabinets page, and trade pricing is through Captivating Pro.