How much does a kitchen renovation cost in the UK?

A kitchen renovation in the UK typically costs £30,000 to £40,000 including VAT, with most projects landing near £34,400. In London it's closer to £36,600. Materials make up more than half of that and construction the rest, which is why a builder's quote and a kitchen price never add up to the same number.

That gap is the reason kitchen costs confuse people. Almost every figure you'll find online is measuring one part of the job and presenting it as the whole.

What does a kitchen renovation cost in 2026?

Here's what Beams estimated for kitchen projects between January and July 2026, across 1,461 kitchen-only projects. Our work is London-weighted, so both columns are shown: what we see, and the UK-average equivalent once the regional labour difference is taken out.

All figures include VAT at 20% and cover a finished kitchen: units, worktops, appliances, flooring, tiling, lighting, the plumbing and electrical work, and the labour to install all of it.

If you'd rather see the numbers the way a builder quotes them, divide by 1.2. A typical London kitchen is £30,516 before VAT.

Half of all projects land in that middle band. A quarter come in below it, and one in ten passes £52,000 in London.

Notice how little London adds. That runs against most of what's written about London pricing, and the reason is in the next section.

What are you actually paying for?

Most of a kitchen isn't building work. It's the kitchen.

Those are separate medians, so they don't add precisely to the typical project figure above. The balance also shifts at the extremes, with construction taking a larger share on the biggest projects.

The split explains most of the confusion in published costs. A builder's quote covers the construction line. A kitchen retailer's price covers part of the materials line. Adding them together is the only route to a real number.

It also shows where the money moves. Cabinetry is the single biggest item in most projects and carries the widest range, from flat-pack through rigid trade units to hand-built joinery. Broadly, IKEA and Wickes sit at the entry point, Howdens and Magnet in the middle, Wren above them, and makers like deVOL and Plain English at the top, where the kitchen can cost more than everything else in the project combined.

Worktops are the second lever, and laminate through quartz to Dekton swings several thousand pounds across an identical run of units. Appliances are the easiest place to overspend late: a Bosch or Neff package sits at a very different level from a Miele or Gaggenau one, and the model in the showroom is rarely the base model.

If you're supplying the kitchen yourself and paying only for installation, the labour line is the one to interrogate. Our guide to what kitchen fitting costs on a labour-only basis breaks down fitter day rates, per-unit pricing and what an installation quote leaves out.

Is a kitchen cheaper outside London?

Yes, but by far less than you'd expect. Around 6%.

That sits oddly against the 25% and 35% premiums quoted elsewhere, and both can be true at once. Labour genuinely does cost more here. BCIS publishes regional location factors indexed to a UK average of 100, which is the right tool and sits behind a subscription. The best free equivalent, from cost consultancy Costmodelling, puts Inner London at 117 and Outer London at 111 on tender prices as at Q2 2024, describing its own table as indicative.

Apply that uplift and it only touches the 43% of your project that is construction. The 57% that is cabinetry, worktops and appliances costs the same in Leeds as in Lambeth.

Run it through 1,461 real projects and a typical London kitchen at £36,619 becomes £34,432 at the UK average. The premium on a finished kitchen is single digits, even though the premium on the labour inside it is double. Genuinely low-cost regions sit below the UK average, so the gap there is wider than 6%, though still nothing like a third.

Anyone quoting a precise 35% London uplift on a finished kitchen is guessing.

Why do published kitchen costs disagree so wildly?

Search this question and you'll find figures from £5,000 to £80,000, sometimes on the same page of results. Four different things are being measured and almost nobody says which.

Scope. Some figures price cabinets supply-only. Some price cabinets plus fitting. Some price the finished room including appliances, flooring and electrics. A supply-only cabinet figure can be a third of a whole-project figure for the identical kitchen.

VAT. At 20%, this moves a £30,000 kitchen by £6,000. Most published figures don't say whether it's in or out. Ours are in, and we say so.

Geography. Labour in London runs higher than the national average. Materials cost much the same everywhere.

Units. Worktops get quoted per linear metre on some pages and per square metre on others. Those aren't interchangeable, and mixing them up produces a two-fold error.

Then there's the thing nobody mentions at all.

There is no official UK statistic for what a kitchen renovation costs. None exists. The Office for National Statistics publishes a construction output price index, which tracks what contractors charge across the industry and explicitly excludes VAT, and separately publishes the volume of repair and maintenance work done. Neither is a homeowner's cost. Its household spending survey excludes capital improvements by design. The English Housing Survey records how old your kitchen is, not what replacing it costs. BCIS, the cost data arm of RICS, holds the right figures and sells them by subscription.

Every "average UK kitchen costs £X" in circulation is therefore a commercial estimate. Some are careful. Many are generated. Almost none disclose how many projects they're based on, which is why every cost figure on this page carries the number behind it.

How much does a kitchen cost by layout?

Layout predicts cost better than floor area does, because it determines how many metres of units you're buying and how much worktop has to be templated and fitted. A cramped galley and a generous galley cost far more alike than a galley and a U-shape of the same floor area. We don't hold floor areas on our projects, so layout is what the figures below are grouped by.

Same source as above: 1,461 Beams kitchen projects, January to July 2026.

An island adds roughly £20,000 over a galley. The island unit itself is a fraction of that. The rest is what an island drags in behind it: more cabinetry, a second worktop to template, and usually services routed into the middle of the floor for a sink, a hob or both. Once water and power leave the walls, the floor comes up.

Before committing to one, check the room can take it. An island needs about a metre of clearance on every side to function. Below roughly twelve square metres of floor, a peninsula gives you the same worktop without making the room unusable.

Does that price include VAT?

Every figure on this page does. Kitchen work in an occupied home is standard-rated at 20%, on labour and on the materials your builder supplies, so a quote that looks suspiciously low is worth checking for a missing VAT line.

Two exceptions genuinely exist, and they're worth real money.

If the property has been empty for two years or more, renovation work qualifies for the reduced 5% rate. HMRC is specific about evidence: a letter from your local authority's Empty Property Officer confirming two years empty is sufficient on its own, with nothing else needed. Occasional use kills it, so a second home that's been visited doesn't qualify. There's also a lesser-known second route. If a property stood empty for two years before you bought it, no renovation happened in that window, and the work is done within a year of you acquiring it, the 5% rate can still apply, but only where the builder contracts directly with you rather than working as a subcontractor.

If the work changes the number of dwellings, converting a house into flats or two flats back into one, the 5% rate applies to the qualifying work. Converting a single home into a single home doesn't qualify, and most granny annexes are excluded.

Now the detail that catches people out, and it's specific to kitchens.

On a job qualifying for 5%, fitted kitchen furniture counts as a building material, so the units are reduced-rated along with the labour to install them. Appliances are not. Your oven, hob, fridge and dishwasher stay at 20% however the rest of the job is rated. Extractor hoods are the odd exception, because HMRC treats ventilation equipment as a building material. Carpets are excluded too.

One more trap, and it costs people money without their noticing. On a qualifying 5% job that rate applies to materials your builder supplies. Buy the same units yourself from a retailer and you pay 20%, with no mechanism to claim the difference back: the DIY reclaim scheme covers new builds and conversions, not the renovation of an empty home. Supplying your own kitchen on a 5%-rated job hands back most of the relief.

For an ordinary occupied home it's 20%, and the only question is whether your quote shows it.

The hidden extras nobody warns you about

The brochure price rarely tells the whole story, and kitchens are worse than most rooms because so much of the house runs through them. Here's what these items actually cost across Beams projects, on the same basis as everything else on this page.

Electrics are the usual culprit. Kitchen circuits are notifiable work under Part P of the Building Regulations, so they need a registered electrician and a certificate at the end, and anything still running a consumer unit that predates 2008 tends to need replacing rather than extending. Gas work must be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and moving a hob is rarely just moving a hob. Asbestos is a genuine risk in anything built before 2000. Floors are rarely as level as they look, and a run of units needs them to be.

If a wall is coming down, add the structural engineer above and a building control application, along with the weeks they take.

Which is why we hold 10% to 15% back as contingency on every project. Hiscox surveyed 2,003 UK adults who had renovated and found two in five overspent, by an average of 20%. Houzz's UK study, now a few years old but the best available, put 12% of homeowners over budget by a quarter to a half, and a further 5% over by more than half. Our guide to the renovation costs that catch homeowners off guard covers the ones that come up most often.

A buffer turns a crisis into a decision.

Why do two quotes for the same kitchen differ by thousands?

Most of the time, builders quoting wildly different numbers are pricing genuinely different jobs. Scope isn't defined, materials aren't specified, and each of them fills the gaps with their own assumptions. One has allowed for rewiring and one hasn't. One priced the worktop you described and one priced the worktop they usually fit.

So the cheapest quote isn't automatically the keen one. Across Beams projects, 60% of customers don't choose the lowest quote. Price alone tells you very little.

The fix is making everyone price the same job, from the same drawings, with the same materials named. Our guide on how to compare quotes from renovation contractors sets out how to get three numbers you can put side by side.

Check one thing before comparing anything: whether the trader is VAT-registered. Registration is compulsory above £90,000 of taxable turnover. A trader below that threshold charges you no VAT at all, which looks like a 20% saving, but they can't reclaim the VAT on their own materials either, so that cost already sits inside their price. Their quote isn't a fifth cheaper.

How long does a kitchen renovation take?

A standard kitchen takes two to four weeks on site: rip-out, first fix, plastering, flooring, units, worktops, second fix, decoration. Bespoke cabinetry or a layout change stretches that to six or eight weeks.

Start to finish is a different question, and the one people wish they'd asked. Design, ordering and lead times all sit in front of the build, so six to twelve weeks from decision to working kitchen is realistic even where the site work is short.

Then there's the quiet week in the middle, while a templated stone worktop is cut. That gap is the programme rather than a delay, and nothing else can happen until the worktop is back.

Order long-lead items before anyone arrives with a crowbar. A late worktop or appliance holds up every trade behind it.

Smart ways to save without compromising

The cleverest savings come from not moving what doesn't need to move. Keep the sink and cooker roughly where they are and you avoid the plumbing and electrical work that quietly eats four figures.

After that: mix your materials, because nobody inspects your carcasses as long as the doors and handles look right. Buy appliances direct rather than bundled into a kitchen package. And where cupboards are structurally sound but tired, a respray costs a fraction of a rip-out.

Spend where it shows and where it wears. Nobody has ever complimented a socket backplate.

How to budget for your kitchen renovation

Four steps, in this order.

Set a realistic range. Find your layout in the table above, then adjust for specification. Work out what's achievable before falling in love with anything.

Define the scope early. Lock layout, materials and appliances before speaking to a builder. Undefined scope is the single largest cause of quotes that can't be compared.

Allow contingency. 10% to 15%, held separately, and not quietly spent on a better hob.

Compare properly. Same drawings, same specification, same assumptions, or the comparison means nothing.

Does a new kitchen add value?

You'll find confident figures for this, usually a percentage of property value or a flat sum. Treat them carefully. There's no reliable UK dataset behind most of them, and the studies that do exist measure buyer preference rather than realised sale prices.

What holds up better is the direction of travel. A kitchen is one of two rooms buyers judge a house on, and a dated one gives them a visible reason to offer less. Layout, storage and natural light do more work than the appliances people fixate on. Over-specifying for your street rarely returns the money: a £60,000 kitchen in a £400,000 house is a lifestyle choice rather than an investment.

What if the kitchen is part of an extension?

If you're extending to create the kitchen rather than replacing the one you have, you've moved from a kitchen budget into a building project, and the kitchen becomes a line inside it. Structural work brings in a structural engineer, building control and sometimes planning permission, which affects the programme as much as the cost. Our guide to what a kitchen extension costs in the UK covers those figures properly.

How Beams helps

Kitchen decisions are connected. Change the layout and you change the services, the cabinetry run, the worktop template and the programme with it. That's why budgets creep even when nobody is being extravagant, and why doing this alone is genuinely hard.

So we define the scope first: layout, materials, appliances, level of finish. Then we set a realistic cost expectation, match you with builders suited to the job, and line up as many as three site visits. Every builder quotes from the same information, so the numbers are comparable and the fixed price holds.

That's what a fully managed kitchen renovation with Beams looks like: one agreed price, payments released against milestones, and a 12-month workmanship warranty behind it.

Common questions about kitchen renovation costs

Can I buy the kitchen myself and only pay for fitting?
Yes, and plenty of people do. You take on the risk of ordering correctly, and you lose the trade discount your builder would have applied, which on cabinetry alone can be 20% or more. Retailers also deal with the buyer rather than the fitter on faults and shortages, so a missing door becomes your phone call. Worth doing if you have a strong view on the kitchen and time to manage it.

What deposit should I pay, and when are the other payments due?
A deposit should be proportionate and tied to something real, usually the materials order rather than a percentage plucked from the air. After that, payments released against completed milestones protect both sides: you're never far ahead of the work, and your builder is never far behind on cash. Anyone asking for a large sum up front with nothing to show for it is worth questioning.

Can I renovate the kitchen in stages to spread the cost?
Rarely worth it. The trades come in a fixed order, so splitting the job means paying twice for mobilisation and for the making-good between phases. Where staging does work is separating design from build: get the design and specification finished, then start the build when the budget is ready.

Is it cheaper to renovate the kitchen or move house?
Renovating almost always wins on cost. Stamp duty, agent fees and moving costs on an average home comfortably exceed a mid-range kitchen, and you keep the location. Moving makes sense where the problem is the house.

Where these figures come from

The Beams project figures come from 1,461 kitchen-only estimates produced between January and July 2026. They cover the whole project: cabinetry, worktops, appliances and finishes at retail price, plus construction work at the price a customer pays for it. VAT at 20% is included throughout, and the net equivalents are given where it helps. Layout figures come from the same set. The hidden-extras table is drawn from priced work items across all Beams projects rather than kitchens alone, with sample sizes shown. Median and quartile values are used rather than averages, because a handful of very large projects would otherwise distort the picture.

Our projects are in London and the surrounding area. The UK-average column is derived rather than observed: it applies the Costmodelling Inner London factor of 117 against a UK average of 100 to the construction portion only, leaving materials unchanged. It represents what an equivalent project on our specification would cost at the UK average, so lower-cost regions would sit below it.

Independent sources used elsewhere on this page:

Office for National Statistics, Construction Output Price Indices, January to March 2026

HM Revenue and Customs, VAT Notice 708: Buildings and construction, sections 7 and 8

HMRC internal manuals VCONST13680 and VCONST13710, on kitchen furniture and appliances as building materials

Costmodelling Ltd, regional variation table, Q2 2024

Hiscox Renovations and Extensions Report, survey of 2,003 UK adults

Houzz & Home UK study, 2022

Every project prices differently once the layout, specification and property are known. These figures are a starting point for a conversation rather than a quote.