Parking lots
What is a standard parking stall size?
There is no single standard: the zoning code where your property sits sets the stall and aisle minimums, and they differ between neighboring towns.
The numbers
- Your city or county zoning code sets the minimum stall width, stall depth and aisle width.
- It also sets how many stalls a given use provides, and how many of those are accessible.
- Accessible stalls, their access aisles and their signs are governed separately and reviewed first.
- Angled stalls need a narrower aisle and take more of the lot for each car parked.
- Restriping to the wrong layout gets paid for twice, so the layout is confirmed before the paint.
Why there is no one number
Parking is zoned. The town decides how wide a stall is, how deep, how much room the aisle behind it needs, and how many stalls a restaurant or a clinic or a warehouse provides for its floor area. Two towns a few miles apart routinely have different answers, and a lot built to one town's numbers can be short in the other.
Anything printed as a national standard is somebody's habit rather than your requirement. What governs your lot is in your municipality's code, and the person who settles an argument about it is the inspector for that jurisdiction.
What a layout has to fit besides the cars
A stall has to hold a full size vehicle with the doors opening and somebody walking between two of them. Tighter layouts work on paper and then lose stalls in practice, because people leave a gap rather than squeeze.
The aisle is the half people forget. Stalls square to a two-way aisle need room behind them for a car to back out and turn. Angle the stalls and the aisle narrows, but angled parking runs one way and each car takes more ground. Then the accessible stalls, their access aisles, and the route a garbage truck or a fire apparatus takes all come out of the same lot.
How to get it right before the paint goes down
Call the city or county zoning department with your address and your use, and ask for the parking requirements that apply to it. It is a short call and they take it every week. If the lot is being restriped after a sealcoat, that is the one moment the layout can change without paying for the paint twice.
Send us the lot and what the town told you, and we will lay it out to those numbers and walk the lot with you before anybody stripes. What we do not do is tell you what your code says, because that is not ours to decide.