Kitchen Cost · 2026
How much does a new kitchen cost?
A new kitchen runs from around £8,000 self-managed to £60,000 and beyond for a named bespoke maker — for the same room. Almost the entire difference sits in the fit-out you choose. The work behind it barely moves.
The short answer, and why it's a range not a number
There is no single price for a new kitchen because a kitchen is mostly a choice, not a fixed build. The same room takes flat-pack units you install yourself, or hand-built cabinetry from a named maker, and everything in between. The four tiers below are what a standard kitchen actually costs at each level.
Self-managed
Flat-pack units, homeowner or handyman install. You buy and coordinate everything.
e.g. IKEA £8,000 – £10,000Supplied & fitted
Trade-range units, fitted by your builder or a recommended fitter. The common baseline.
e.g. Howdens · Magnet · Benchmarx · Wickes £14,000 – £22,000Premium
Local bespoke joinery, or reseller-brand kitchens on mainstream carcasses. Bespoke starts here.
e.g. local cabinetmakers · Second Nature / Burbidge resellers £23,000 – £50,000Luxe & bespoke
Named bespoke houses — hand-built, and usually the larger kitchens they fit.
e.g. deVOL · Tom Howley · Plain English £60,000+Strip-out and disposal · first-fix plumbing and electrics · floor preparation and levelling · plaster and making-good · fitting labour · tiling and splashback. The bill for this changes far less than the units in front of it.
Bespoke isn't the top rung. A local cabinetmaker builds you a bespoke kitchen at Premium money. The jump to the top buys the brand name — deVOL, Tom Howley, Plain English — and usually a bigger room to put it in.
Figures are BuildLens tier bands for a standard kitchen. The luxe rung is effectively uncapped — the named makers run to £150,000 and beyond, and further again for the larger kitchens they typically fit. A kitchen that involves a structural knock-through carries the steelwork and opening on top of the figures above.
Where the fantasy budgets come from
Most kitchen budgets go wrong in the same way, and it has nothing to do with the units being unreasonable. It is a mismatch of reference. The picture in your head is specified at one tier; the number in your head is set at another; and the quote that lands is correct. The anchor was wrong, and the gap only shows up once the money is committed.
The showroom makes this worse, because a showroom sells the visible half — doors, worktops, handles, appliances. On a fitted kitchen, those finishes are a share of the total; the rest sits in strip-out, first-fix, levelling, fitting labour and tiling, none of which you walk past on the way to the display. A budget set against the doors alone runs out before the room is built.
Reading the tiers early is the whole defence. Set your real budget against the picture in your head before you fall for a door sample, and the £8,000-to-£60,000 spread stops being a shock and becomes an axis you can stand on.
Does where you live change the price?
Less than you would think, and not in the way most cost guides imply. A kitchen is mostly supply — units, worktops, appliances — and supply does not regionalise. A Howdens kitchen is the same price in Hull as in Hampstead. IKEA is IKEA. A named bespoke maker charges the same wherever the kitchen is going.
What does vary by area is the labour that installs it and the surrounding work — the fitter's day rate, lead times, and, where a wall comes down, the structural work behind it. On a supplied-and-fitted kitchen that labour is the minority of the total, so the headline price moves far less across the country than a flat regional multiplier would suggest. Push one through catalogue prices and you overstate the difference and misrepresent the number.
[City-specific block drops in here — local fitting rates, lead times, and whether the local market skews budget or premium.]
How BuildLens gets the number
A BuildLens figure is built from two layers, then calibrated to your specific kitchen — its size, its spec tier, and what the surrounding work demands.
Layer 01 — Method
Itemised the way a job is actually priced
Every kitchen is broken out by trade and by sequence — strip-out, first-fix, levelling, units, worktops, appliances, fitting, tiling, decoration — so nothing that gets built sits unpriced between the lines. This is where the cost of a kitchen really lives, and where budgets built from the doors alone come apart.
Layer 02 — Current prices
Live pricing, not a published average
The rates come from working trade networks and weekly merchant pricing, refreshed continuously rather than pulled from an annual index. Unit ranges, worktop types and appliance packages are priced at your chosen tier, so the figure reflects what the kitchen costs now, not what it cost when a guide was last updated.
Common questions about kitchen cost
How much does a new kitchen cost in 2026?
Why do kitchen quotes vary so much between suppliers?
How much of the cost is the units, and how much is fitting?
Is a bespoke kitchen worth the money?
How much does a kitchen-diner extension cost?
Where does your kitchen fit in?
Kitchen cost is the question people reach whether they are renovating, extending, selling or buying. The right BuildLens report depends on why you are asking.