Advanced options
The showroom's "from" price is units only: fitting typically adds ~40% (more with tiling, flooring and plastering), and the January sales are real but anchored high: compare the unit-by-unit price, not the discount. The doors-and-worktops refresh (new fronts on existing carcasses) delivers most of the visual change at a quarter of the cost: worth pricing before committing to the full rip-out.
What The Kitchen Renovation Cost Calculator Works Out
- Installation: around 40% of the units-and-worktops figure, which is what the showroom's "from" price leaves out. Budget flat-pack ranges furnish a standard kitchen for GBP 4,000 to GBP 6,000, mid-range rigid carcasses GBP 8,000 to GBP 14,000, and bespoke in-frame joinery from GBP 18,000 upward.
- Estimated total: units plus fitting plus appliances plus layout changes. Appliances run their own GBP 1,500 to GBP 5,000 line, and moving the sink, gas run or a wall costs GBP 2,000 to GBP 3,000 a decision. A finished mid-range kitchen totals GBP 15,000 to GBP 20,000.
- Cheaper wins first: replacement doors and worktops on sound carcasses, respraying, new handles, taps and under-cabinet lighting deliver most of the photographed transformation for GBP 1,500 to GBP 4,000.
- Fitting percentage (advanced): override the 40% assumption. Trade fitters often come in lower for simple runs; kitchens with islands, integrated appliances and lots of wall units run higher.
- Worktop upgrade (advanced): laminate is included in most unit prices; solid wood adds roughly GBP 150 a metre and quartz or granite GBP 300 or more, with the template-and-fit lead time sequencing the whole job.
- Associated trades (advanced): flooring, tiling, plastering and decorating that join once the old units come out, commonly GBP 1,500 to GBP 4,000, plus strip-out and skip hire at GBP 200 to GBP 500.
- Grand total with contingency (advanced): everything added, with a percentage buffer for what the old units hide: uneven walls, dead sockets and the floor that stops short of the plinths.
- Saving if you facelift instead (advanced): the full job minus your facelift budget. The facelift suits the structurally fine but dated kitchen that dominates the housing stock; the full renovation justifies itself where the layout genuinely fails.
- Kitchen as % of home value (advanced): estate agents' rule of thumb is to spend 5% to 10% of the property's value. Above that, ceiling prices in mid-market streets stop the spend being recovered pound for pound.