Fence height rules in the Netherlands, and who sets them

Fence height rules in the Netherlands come from two sources. A national decree makes a fence up to 1 metre permit-free. The 2 metres behind the front of your house is in your municipality's omgevingsplan, which the municipality may change. So are the shed rules: above 3 metres, ridge height depends on the distance to your boundary.

Since 1 January 2024, the Omgevingswet (Environment and Planning Act) has brought the rules for the physical living environment together in one act. For a garden that leaves two sources. One is the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving (Bbl), a national decree that is the same for everyone. The other is the omgevingsplan, the environment plan each municipality keeps, which can differ from place to place. Which source a figure comes from decides who may change it.

How high can a fence be without a permit?

A boundary fence up to 1 metre needs no permit anywhere, except at a monument. Up to 2 metres is allowed as well, but only behind the line along the front of your house. That second rule is not in the national decree. It sits in the bruidsschat (literally "dowry"), the temporary part of the omgevingsplan.

The 2-metre rule has three conditions. The fence is no higher than 2 metres. It stands on a plot that already has a main building it belongs to. And it stands behind the line along the front of that main building, a line that then runs parallel to the publicly accessible land beside it.

On a mid-terrace house, the front facade is that line. A corner plot works differently. A Vangnetregeling (a safety-net regulation) arrived in mid-2024. Since then the line runs along the front facade and then round the corner along the side wall. The side garden between that wall and the street therefore lies in front of the line, so the 2 metres does not apply there.

Permit-free does not mean every fence is allowed. A fence must also meet your municipality's building rules. A fence exactly on the property line belongs to you and your neighbour together. Talk to your neighbour before you build.

Do you need a permit for a garden shed?

Not if the shed stays within the standard rules, and height comes first. More than 4 metres from the original house, a shed may always be 3 metres high. Taller is possible up to 5 metres, but only with a sloping roof and a ridge that keeps its distance from your plot boundary.

Within 4 metres of the house the limit is lower. The shed then goes no higher than 5 metres, no higher than 0.3 metres above the floor of the second storey, and no higher than the house itself. These height rules are in article 22.36 of the bruidsschat. Article 22.27 adds where the shed may stand.

Article 22.27 sets these conditions on where the shed stands. The shed stands on the ground, in the rear yard area (achtererfgebied): the part of your plot from 1 metre behind the front of the house. From publicly accessible land it keeps more than 1 metre, and its height is 5 metres at most. There is no living space on the second storey, and no roof terrace or balcony.

Above 3 metres, three extra requirements apply. The roof has two or more sloping planes with a pitch of 55 degrees at most. The eaves sit no higher than 3 metres. Finally, the ridge stays under this formula:

maximum ridge height = (distance from the ridge to the plot boundary × 0.47) + 3 metres

A worked example: a ridge 3 metres from the boundary may be 4.41 metres high. Put the ridge 1 metre from the boundary, and the same formula gives 3.47 metres. The ceiling of 5 metres always applies.

Floor area is the other limit, and it counts all outbuildings and extensions together. The measure for it is the building area (bebouwingsgebied): the rear yard area plus the ground under any extensions to the house.

An extension you already have comes off that maximum. With a building area of 80 m², the allowance is 40 m² in total.

The ridge formula needs one measurement your building drawing does not show: the distance to your plot boundary. On a plan of your own plot in tuinontwerp.app, that boundary is ready as soon as you enter your address, and you place the shed on it to scale.

Can your municipality set different fence rules?

It can, but the national floor stays in place. The structures in article 2.29 of the Bbl remain permit-free, and that includes a boundary fence up to 1 metre. What a municipality can change are the bruidsschat rules in its omgevingsplan, and with them the 2 metres for fences and the rules for sheds.

No national table shows what your municipality has changed. The only place to read it is the omgevingsplan for your location. A table on another website that says 2 metres tells you nothing about your street.

Old zoning plans (bestemmingsplannen) still count too. They have legally become part of the temporary section of the omgevingsplan. Municipalities have until 1 January 2032 to work them into it. Until then, a rule for your street can sit in an old zoning plan rather than in a new document.

To look it up in the Omgevingsloket, the national online portal for these rules:

1. Open Regels op de kaart ("rules on the map") and pick the spot of your garden on the map.
2. Open your municipality's omgevingsplan and search for "erfafscheiding" (boundary fence) and "bijbehorend bouwwerk" (outbuilding).
3. Also check the zoning plans that still apply at that spot.
4. Then check in the Omgevingsloket whether your own plan needs a permit or a notification.

If the omgevingsplan contains nothing that differs, the standard rules of the bruidsschat apply. If a corner plot or a monument leaves you unsure, ask your municipality before you order anything.

Where is the plot boundary those rules measure from?

On the cadastral map, with a margin. The Kadaster, the Dutch land registry, states for each boundary how accurate the drawn line is. How that works, and how to fetch your own plot, is explained in finding your plot on the Dutch cadastral map. For the rules above, the map boundary is good enough to lay out your garden, but not to set a fence exactly on the boundary.

The margin matters most for the ridge formula. In that formula, every 10 centimetres less distance costs almost 5 centimetres of ridge height. At a boundary with label D, with a margin of 40 centimetres, that comes to almost 19 centimetres. So plan your ridge with room to spare. With a shed of 3 metres or lower, the distance to the boundary plays no part in the formula.

Neighbour law applies alongside the building rules, and it also measures from the boundary. Article 5:42 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek) puts a tree at least two metres from the boundary, measured from the middle of the trunk. For shrubs and hedges the distance is half a metre. A local by-law or local custom can allow a smaller distance, and with your neighbour's permission a planting may come closer too.

Under the same article, your neighbour cannot have a hedge removed that grows no higher than the dividing wall between the two properties. For a green boundary right up to the line, put your agreements with your neighbour on paper.

Drawing your fence and shed on your own plot

Tuinontwerp.app lays out your plot to scale, with the boundary as the Kadaster supplies it through PDOK, the Dutch government's platform for open geodata. Around it go the buildings from the BAG, the national register of addresses and buildings, with their heights from 3DBAG, the open dataset of measured building heights for the Netherlands. On that plan you draw your fence along the line, place the shed where you want it and fill in the rest with a terrace, borders and plants. A drawn fence counts as 1.8 metres high by default, and a structure such as a shed as 2.5 metres. The plot boundary itself always counts in the app as a wall of 1.8 metres.

Those heights are values for calculating shade. The app does not check permit rules and does not read your omgevingsplan. North-facing garden plants, matched to their sun hours shows how much sun a fence takes from a narrow garden. For laying out the rest of the garden, see the garden design section of the blog.

Loading your plot and drawing your fence on it costs nothing. Start at the address field at the bottom of this page. Take the measurements for your fence and shed from Regels op de kaart, then draw them on your own plot.