Canterbury Road starts at the intersection with Burke and Rathmines Roads in Camberwell and runs east as a dual-lane, single-carriageway road until its intersection with Stanhope Grove, where it widens to a four-lane, single-carriageway road and continues east, underneath the Lilydale and Belgrave railway lines at Canterbury, through Surrey Hills until it reaches the intersection with Middleborough Road at the south-eastern corner of Box Hill.

It continues east through Forest Hill and Heathmont, narrowing back to a four-lane, dual-carriageway road east of Dorset Road in Bayswater North and continuing east through Kilsyth, before eventually terminating at the intersection with Mount Dandenong Road in Montrose.

[2][5] Construction of a steel and reinforced concrete rail-over-road overpass bridge replacing the level crossing with the Lilydale and Belgrave railway lines in Canterbury, was completed by Victorian Railways, with the Board lowering the road surface under it and carrying out improvements to adjacent streets, in the 1969/70 financial year.

[6] Canterbury Road was signed as Metropolitan Route 32 between Camberwell and Montrose in 1965, originally heading further east along Swansea Road to Lilydale; with Victoria's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s, the section between Montrose and Lilydale was replaced by route C401 and the route was truncated back to Montrose.

[8] In 2016, the Australian Government committed $20 million to build a third lane outbound along Canterbury Road from Dorset Road to Montrose Road and to upgrade the Montrose roundabout to a signalised intersection.