Dollhouse Size Guide: Tabletop, Standard and Large Houses

Why size is the first cut, not the last

A catalogue of 130 dollhouses is unusable until it is cut, and the fastest cut is assembled height, because height decides three commercial things at once: the shelf or floor space the house needs, the carton the importer pays for, and the doll the house will take. In this catalogue the bands are under 40 cm, 40-80 cm and 80 cm and above, and the split across the 130 published models is 47, 26 and eight, with 49 models that have no assembled height on record and are therefore not banded at all.

That last number matters as much as the other three. A supplier who bands a model without a measured height is guessing, and a buyer who plans a container on a guessed band finds out at the loading bay. On this site an unmeasured model says confirmed per model and is not placed in a band.

The three bands side by side

	Under 40 cm	40-80 cm	80 cm and above
Models in the catalogue	47	26	8
Typical doll fit	6-10 cm	8-12 cm	12-15 cm
Floor height	about 10-11 cm	12-16 cm	13-16 cm
Carton cube	0.01-0.05 m3, median 0.026	0.03-0.12 m3, median 0.076	0.10-0.25 m3
Gross weight	usually under 9 kg	5-15 kg	10-25 kg
Units per 40HQ at 88 per cent fill	about 2,300	about 790	240-400
Storeys	single, or a lift-off roof	one to three	two to three, with working parts
Channel it suits	gift, nursery, tabletop play, marketplace	toy retail, mixed distribution	shop display, gift premium, freight channel

The bands are a planning tool rather than a specification: two houses in the same band can differ by 3 cm of floor height, which is the difference between a doll standing up and not. Always take the model-level figures from the product page, and confirm the floor height on quotation.

Reading the bands as a buyer

Under 40 cm. This is the largest band and the cheapest to ship, and it is where the gift, nursery and marketplace orders sit. A carton of about 0.026 m3 and under 9 kg is a two-person parcel and a shop-shelf item, and 52 of the 130 published models quote at 10 pcs or fewer, so a first order can test three or four designs. The limit is interior space: at this size the floor height is 10-11 cm on many models, so a 12 cm doll will not stand up in every room even though the house is otherwise the right size.

40-80 cm. This is the standard floor-standing house and the band that carries most of the two and three storey structures. It is where a doll family and one room set start to make commercial sense, because the house has rooms to arrange rather than a single space. Cartons of 0.05-0.12 m3 and weights of 5-15 kg are still handlable, but the flat-pack decision starts to matter: a 70 cm house ships in about 0.08 m3 flat-packed and two to three times that assembled.

80 cm and above. Six models, up to a 133 cm three-storey villa with a working lift and a garage. The band is a display product: it anchors a shop window or a playroom, it takes dolls up to about 15 cm, and it is the strongest demonstration of the range a retailer has. It is also the weakest parcel item at 10-25 kg and 0.10-0.25 m3, and a 40HQ carries 240-400 units, so the freight, not the unit cost, decides whether it works for the channel.

How the measurement is taken

Assembled height is the height of the finished house in centimetres, taken from the supplier's size data. It is not the carton height and not the height of the tallest panel: a flat-pack 70 cm house travels in a carton that may be 75 cm long and 12 cm deep, which is a very different number from 70 cm on a shelf.

Floor height is measured inside, from floor to ceiling of a storey, and it is the number that answers the doll question. Where a supplier lists only the carton, the model is not banded, because a carton dimension cannot be converted into an assembled height reliably.

Three figures are worth asking for on every shortlist, and all three appear on the model pages where the data exists: assembled height, floor height and carton cube. If one is missing, ask for it before the quotation rather than after the sample.

The band is not the channel, but it correlates

A useful check when building a range is whether the band mix matches the channel mix:

A gift or nursery buyer taking one or two designs should stay in the tabletop band, where the carton is small and the minimum is low, and add a doll family rather than a bigger house.
A toy retailer wants a spread: tabletop for the impulse shelf, standard for the main display, and one large house as the anchor if the shop floor can carry it.
An importer filling a container should plan by cube, not by count: 2,300 tabletop houses and 240 large houses occupy the same container, so the band mix is really a decision about the average carton size.
A marketplace seller should stay in the tabletop and lower-standard bands, where the carton fee and the storage cost do not eat the listing.

The consumer brands sell play-scale houses in the same range of heights, and the difference for a trade buyer is not the size but the data: none of them publishes the carton, MOQ and container figures a wholesale order needs, which is why this site leads with them.

What to do next

Send the size band, the doll height you intend to pair and the channel, and we will return the models that fit with their floor heights, carton cubes and MOQs. The by-size index lists every band, the packing page turns the carton cube into units per container, and the quotation form gets the confirmed figures back within two business days. If the choice is between two bands, ask for one sample from each: the doll fit is easier to judge in the hand than in a table.