To provide Dutch normal values for rehabilitation outpatients with chronic pain or musculoskeletal diseases utilizing the World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire abbreviated version (WHOQOL-BREF) and analyse influence of diagnosis and patient characteristics on normal values and increase understanding in those values. Five hundred and forty-two outpatients were referred to a rehabilitation psychologist. Referral diagnoses were "musculoskeletal", "chronic pain", "neurological" and "miscellaneous". Comparisons between groups were made for each of the four domains of the WHOQOL-BREF (scoring range 4-20). Domain scores of rehabilitation outpatients were physical domain 11.0 (+/- 2.7), psychological domain 13.6 (+/- 2.4), social domain 14.8 (+/- 3.4) and environmental domain 14.2 (+/- 2.2). Outpatients with chronic pain reported the lowest scores on the WHOQOL-BREF when compared to the "musculoskeletal", "neurological" and "miscellaneous" groups. Increased age, lower education, living alone and unemployment had a negative impact on WHOQOL-BREF scores. Compared to the general Dutch population, rehabilitation outpatients scored, unadjusted for age, significantly lower difference for the physical domain 4.5 [95 % confidence interval (CI) 4.2; 4.8], the environment domain 1.7 (95 % CI 1.5; 2.0), the psychological domain 1.1 (95 % CI 0.4; 1.2) and the social domain 0.4 (95 % CI 0.0; 0.8). WHOQOL-BREF scores of rehabilitation outpatients are lower and differed significantly from normal values of a Dutch population in all four domains. Therefore, the WHOQOL-BREF can be used to measure the subjective impact of their disease or injury. The subjective impact of chronic pain was found to be particularly high.