Version 1.0 · September 2026 · Published by RhinoFrame · CC BY 4.0
The Open Cleat Standard defines the dimensions of a French cleat wall cleat: 3" tall, 45 degrees, 3/4" thick, 8" on center. It is published openly so that accessories designed by any maker will mount to a wall built by any other.
Purpose
The French cleat is a centuries-old mounting method and remains one of the best available. Two beveled edges, gravity, no hardware. The heavier the load, the tighter the connection.
What it lacks is a common dimension. Cleat walls are built at 3" and at 4", at 30 degrees and at 45, in half-inch and three-quarter-inch stock. Each works well on its own and interchanges with nothing. The conventional guidance to cut both halves of a pair from the same board reinforces this: it produces a matched pair and a wall compatible with nothing else. The result is that an accessory cannot be designed once and sold to everyone, buyers cannot mix sources, and designers cannot build parts that depend on known geometry.
Standardized interfaces resolved this problem elsewhere long ago, in pipe threads, fastener drives, rack units, and pallet dimensions. This document proposes the same for the cleat wall.
Scope
This standard specifies the wall cleat only: the beveled strip fastened to the wall. It does not specify the accessory, the holder, or the means by which either engages the cleat. Those remain open to the designer.
Specification
1.1 Material thickness. 3/4" nominal plywood, cabinet-grade birch or equivalent, void-free core.
1.2 Cleat height. 3", as ripped from the sheet. The bevel removes a 3/4" triangle from one long edge, leaving a beveled face of 2.25". The cleat is mounted with the 3" face outward.
1.3 Bevel angle. 45 degrees, on one long edge only, mounted bevel up and undercut toward the wall.
1.4 Vertical pitch. 8" on center, measured cleat to cleat.
Figure 1. Wall cleat, profile view.
Rationale
45 degrees is the angle already available on every relevant tool: a table saw arbor stops there, chamfer bits are ground to it, a speed square references it directly. An angle of 30 or 60 would require tooling most shops do not have, which works against adoption. Forty-five also balances wedging force against the shear strength of the joint — steeper angles grip harder but chip out at the point, shallower ones let accessories lift under vibration.
3" height retains 2.25" of full-thickness material behind the bevel, enough to set a fastener line well back from the edge, which matters because plywood splits at edges. Reducing the height erodes that margin quickly, since the bevel consumes a fixed 3/4" regardless of how tall the strip is. Going taller consumes sheet goods without improving holding power and begins to constrain accessory design. The dimension also divides the sheet cleanly: a 48" width yields sixteen 3" strips with no offcut.
3/4" thickness is the minimum that holds the bevel under sustained load. Half-inch material flexes and, over time, splits along the beveled edge. This is the dimension most often reduced for cost, and the one most associated with field failures.
Sheet goods sold as 3/4" typically measure closer to 23/32". This is acceptable: a French cleat references its angle rather than its thickness, so parts cut from different batches still seat correctly, because the mating surfaces remain parallel planes at the same angle. That tolerance is what makes the standard practical in ordinary shop conditions.
What a fixed dimension enables
Beyond interchange, a fixed geometry makes two categories of accessory designable that have not been practical before.
Cleat locks. A positive lock preventing an accessory from lifting off the wall needs known geometry to engage: a pin seating behind a known thickness, a cam rotating under a known beveled face, a wedge bottoming at a known depth. Where cleat dimensions vary, that geometry cannot be relied upon, and designs have had to compensate with wide-range clamps, thumbscrews spanning an unknown gap, or friction fits validated only on the designer's own wall. With thickness and angle fixed, a lock becomes a small, rigid, single-purpose part.
Wall supports and spanning accessories. Shelf brackets, heavy tool cradles, cabinet hangers, and load-bearing support legs reach across two or more cleats and therefore depend on pitch. Without a standard pitch, such parts must be slotted, telescoping, or offered in several sizes. At 8" on center, a bracket engaging two cleats is a single part number.
In both cases, the adjustment built into existing designs exists only to absorb variation between walls. It adds material, introduces failure points, and increases cost without improving function. Removing the variation removes the need for it.
Recommended practice: support foot range
Informative rather than normative — a consequence of the specification above, offered as a starting point for designers.
A support foot bears against the wall below a toolholder and resists the holder rotating outward under load. With pitch and cleat height fixed, the space available to it is fixed too: the clear gap between cleats is 5.00". Not all of it is usable. Room must be left above the foot so the accessory can still be lifted off the cleat, and below it so the foot never meets a cleat installed slightly high.
What remains is located from a datum rather than from the stack, because a datum is what a designer can model against. The datum is the top edge of the wall cleat the accessory hangs on — the surface the hook seats against, and the one every accessory dimension is fixed relative to. Measured downward from it:
- 4.00" — top of the range. Above this, lift clearance falls below 1".
- 7.00" — bottom of the range. The next cleat begins at 8.00", so this reserves a full inch for installation error.
Recommended support foot range: 4.00" to 7.00" below the datum, a band 3.00" tall. A foot of any height up to 3" may be placed anywhere within it. Figure 2 shows a small foot centered in the range, formed as part of the accessory body.
Figure 2. Recommended support foot range, dimensioned from the top of the wall cleat.
Placement within the range. A foot placed low has a longer lever arm against the cleat and resists rotation better. A foot placed high leaves more clearance below and is more forgiving of a wall built out of pitch. Either is valid; heavy or deep accessories favor the lower position.
Tolerance. The 4.00" dimension references the cleat the accessory hangs on and is unaffected by installation error. The inch between 7.00" and the next cleat absorbs cumulative pitch error, out-of-level rows, and cleats installed slightly proud, so a foot designed to the 7.00" limit will still seat on a wall built with ordinary care.
Foot depth. The foot bears against the wall in the same plane as the cleats, so 3/4" of depth is sufficient. More adds material without adding function.
The accessory side
The standard is intentionally silent on how an accessory engages the cleat. The requirement is a 45-degree face that seats on the wall cleat. Whether that face is a plywood cleat fastened to a holder, a bevel modeled into a printed body, a formed steel bracket, or a method not yet developed is left to the designer.
The interface is standardized; the product is not.
Adoption
An accessory designed to seat on a 45-degree, 3/4", 3" wall cleat will mount to a wall built to this standard, to walls built from most existing French cleat guidance, and to many walls already installed.
Every RhinoFrame cleat product is built to these dimensions. A wall built from this document will accept the RhinoFrame catalog, now and as it grows.
Makers publishing files are encouraged to model the standard and state the geometry their parts expect; sellers to specify compliance on their listings; and anyone building a cleat wall to adopt these dimensions rather than arbitrary ones, so the wall remains compatible with products bought later.
The dimensions themselves belong to no one. They are measurements, and anyone may build to them without permission, payment, or registration. This document — its text and drawings — is published under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so it may be copied, adapted, and reused, including commercially, with credit. RhinoFrame maintains the specification and issues revisions to it.
The Open Cleat Standard — 3" tall, 45 degrees, 3/4" thick, 8" on center.
Figures
The drawings in this document are available for reuse under the license below. Attribute as: Open Cleat Standard by RhinoFrame.
- Figure 1 — wall cleat profile (PNG, 1600 px) · SVG
- Figure 2 — recommended support foot range (PNG, 1600 px)
- Summary card (PNG, 1200 × 630)
The Open Cleat Standard, Version 1.0, published by RhinoFrame and licensed under CC BY 4.0. Attribute as: Open Cleat Standard by RhinoFrame.