What a kitchen actually costs in Harrogate

You visit three showrooms. Each has a room set built in a warehouse, a coffee machine on the counter, and someone who would very much like to come to your house. You walk round, you ask what a kitchen like the one on display would cost you. The first says it depends on the room and offers to book a home visit. The second takes your number and promises a call back with a figure. The third shows you a door sample, talks about the finish, and changes the subject. You leave each one with a brochure and no price from any of them. Three appointments, three journeys, and you are no closer to a number than when you started.

This is not an accident, and it is not because nobody knows the answer. The trade treats the number as something to be revealed only after trust has been built. The reasoning is straightforward enough: a price given too early will send you out the door before the salesperson has had time to show you why their kitchen is worth it. So the figure stays in a drawer until the second visit, or the third, by which point you are meant to be committed to the idea of working with them and less inclined to compare. It is a perfectly reasonable way to sell kitchens. It is a poor way to let you plan your own money.

'It depends' is, in fact, the honest answer to the question 'how much is a kitchen.' It does depend. But that is not a reason for silence, and it is not a reason to make you wait three weeks for a number. It depends on three things, and none of them is a secret. The first is the length of the run — how many metres of cabinetry the room actually takes up. The second is the worktop material, which moves the price more than most people are told. The third is how much of the labour is the company's own, because a firm that makes and fits its own cabinets is carrying workshop costs that a retailer fitting someone else's boxes is not. Name those three and you have named most of the variable.

What follows are real ranges from real projects, complete — design, cabinetry, hand-painting, worktops, fitting and VAT. A galley or single-run kitchen, properly made, lands between £18,000 and £24,000 fitted. A kitchen with an island sits between £24,000 and £32,000. A kitchen, utility and boot room done as one job runs from £30,000 to £45,000. These are not starting prices with everything extra loaded on top. They are what the finished room costs.

Underneath those ranges, the cabinetry itself is priced per linear metre. A longer kitchen costs more in a straight line, which is the least surprising thing in the trade and the easiest part to budget for. The worktop is where people are caught out. Laminate to quartz to natural stone can be a £4,000 swing on the same kitchen, with the same cabinets sitting underneath it, and it is the one line people forget to ask about. Ironmongery is a smaller figure but a real one: solid brass rather than plated, across a typical kitchen, is roughly £600, and it is the difference between a handle that wears through in a few years and one that does not. None of these is hidden. They are the moving parts, and you are entitled to see them move before you commit to anything.

The single biggest thing separating a £16,000 kitchen from a £26,000 one is not the door colour or the shape of the handle. It is whether the kitchen was made or merely assembled. An assembled kitchen arrives flat-packed or pre-built from a factory, and the company whose name is on the showroom fits it. A made kitchen is built in-frame, in solid timber, in a workshop, by the people who will later fit it in your house. The first is a product, bought in and put in. The second is a piece of furniture, made for the room it goes in. You can pay for either, and there is nothing wrong with either. But you should know which one you are paying for, because the price reflects it and so does the life of the kitchen.

If you are visiting studios, there are five questions worth asking, and the answers will tell you more than any brochure or rendered image. Who makes the cabinets, and where? Is the price fixed once the drawings are signed, or does it move between then and fitting? Are the fitters the company's own people, or subcontracted in for the week? What is in the price, and just as important, what is not? What happens at six weeks, when the timber has moved and the doors need adjusting — is that visit included, or is it another invoice? A studio that answers those five plainly is one you can work with. A studio that cannot, or will not, is one you cannot.

We publish our full price list — the ranges, what is included, what is not, and what moves the number — and you can read it before you speak to anyone at all. You do not need to give us your phone number to see it, and you do not need to sit through a visit to find out where your room might sit.