Kitchen Remodel Cost Calculator
Estimate your full kitchen remodel budget — cabinets, countertops, appliances, flooring, labor and more — by kitchen size, scope, and finishes. Includes a complete cost breakdown, scope comparison, and a downloadable PDF report.
| Scenario | Scope | Materials | Labor | Total | $/sq ft | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calculate to see comparison | ||||||
Calculate to see comparison
How to Use the Kitchen Remodel Cost Calculator
Build a planning-level budget for the whole project — cabinets, counters, appliances, flooring, labor, permits and a contingency reserve — in four steps.
Set the size and the scope
Enter your kitchen’s floor area, then choose a cosmetic refresh, a midrange remodel or a major upscale job. Scope drives the labor and demolition rates, so it changes far more than the finishes list.
Say whether the layout is moving
Relocating the sink, the range or a wall means new plumbing and electrical routing and more labor across the whole job. Toggling it on shows you what keeping the existing layout is actually worth.
Choose your finishes
Cabinet tier, countertop material, appliance package and flooring, plus toggles for new lighting, a backsplash and design and permit fees. Every choice appears as its own line in the breakdown.
Set a contingency and save the PDF
Add a reserve for what’s behind the walls, then open the comparison to see all three scopes in value and premium packages. Download the two-page report to take into contractor conversations.
What’s Included
Kitchen budgets don’t usually fail on the cabinets — they fail on the lines nobody listed. This one puts all of them on the page.
Three scope levels
Minor refresh, midrange remodel or major upscale, each carrying its own labor and demolition assumptions. The chart prices all three on your kitchen so the step up is a number, not a feeling.
Every finish priced separately
Cabinets, countertops, appliances and flooring each have their own tiers, sized from your square footage — so you can see which upgrade is driving the total before you commit to it.
Layout changes modelled
Moving plumbing adds both a fixture relocation cost and a labor premium across the job. One toggle shows the difference between working with your existing layout and rearranging it.
Contingency built in
A reserve slider from 0 to 25% for the wiring, plumbing and water damage you find once the walls are open. Most professionals treat this as mandatory rather than optional.
Where the budget actually goes
A doughnut splitting the total across cabinets, counters, appliances, flooring, services, labor and contingency — plus six scenarios comparing scope against value and premium finish packages.
Branded PDF report
Two pages with the full cost breakdown, project snapshot, scope comparison and a component detail sheet showing the basis behind each figure — useful when you’re reading three bids side by side.
By the Numbers
What the calculator models and the assumptions behind it.
minor, midrange, major
typical US kitchen
materials through contingency
the pros’ recommendation
no sign-up needed
Built for the Question Every Remodel Starts With
“What’s this going to cost?” is hard to answer because the honest range is enormous — and it depends on decisions you haven’t made yet.
Homeowners at the daydream stage
You’ve been collecting photos and haven’t spoken to anyone yet. Get a realistic bracket for your own kitchen first, so the first contractor conversation isn’t the moment you find out the number.
Anyone reading contractor bids
Three bids that differ by tens of thousands usually differ in what they include. Rebuild them here line by line and the gaps — permits, demo, appliances, contingency — become obvious.
People deciding how far to go
Refresh the finishes or gut the room? Price both on your own square footage, with the same appliances and flooring, and the trade-off stops being abstract.
The Layout Costs More Than the Finishes
Seven things that decide whether a kitchen remodel lands near its estimate or well past it.
- 1Keep the layout if you possibly can. Moving the sink, the range or a wall means rerouting plumbing, gas and electrical, and it raises labor across the entire job rather than just at the point that moved. Beautiful finishes in the existing footprint are usually cheaper than plain finishes in a new one.
- 2Treat contingency as part of the budget, not a nice-to-have. Ten to twenty percent covers the things nobody can quote in advance: old wiring that isn’t to code, a leak found under the sink base, subfloor that has to come up. A remodel without a reserve isn’t a cheaper remodel, just a more stressful one.
- 3Cabinets are usually the largest single line. They typically take the biggest share of the materials budget, which makes the cabinet tier the most powerful lever you have. If the total is uncomfortable, look there before trimming anything else.
- 4Appliances have the widest range of anything you’ll buy. A competent budget package and a pro-style suite do the same job in the same holes, and the gap between them can be a meaningful fraction of the whole remodel. Decide early — cabinet sizing depends on it.
- 5Labor scales with what you buy. More expensive materials generally take more careful installation, so upgrading finishes raises the labor line as well as the materials line. That’s why the total climbs faster than the price difference on the tag suggests.
- 6Budget for permits and design, especially on major work. Structural, plumbing and electrical changes generally need permits and inspections, and a designer’s fee is a real cost too. Skipping the permit is a false economy that surfaces at resale.
- 7Get three licensed bids and compare them line by line. Ask each contractor to itemise materials, labor, demolition, permits and their own allowances. A low bid with a small appliance allowance isn’t a low bid — it’s the same job with a bill arriving later.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to the most common questions about remodel budgets, scope levels, layout changes and contingency.
How much does a kitchen remodel cost?
The honest answer is a range rather than a number, because a cosmetic refresh of a small kitchen and an upscale gut renovation of a large one can differ by a factor of ten. Kitchen size, scope, whether the layout moves and how far you go on cabinets and appliances all matter more than any single choice. Enter your own figures above and use the comparison table — it prices all three scope levels in both a value and a premium finish package, which gives you a bracket rather than a false precision.
What’s the difference between a minor, midrange and major remodel?
A minor refresh keeps the layout and often the cabinet boxes, changing doors, counters, hardware and paint — it’s mostly cosmetic and the demolition is light. A midrange remodel replaces the finishes throughout: new cabinets, counters, appliances and flooring, still in broadly the same footprint. A major or upscale job means high-end products and usually structural or layout changes, which brings permits, longer timelines and much higher labor. The scope you pick here sets the labor and demolition rates accordingly.
Does moving the sink or range really cost that much?
Yes, and it’s the change people underestimate most often. Relocating a sink means new supply and drain runs with the right fall, which can involve opening floors or walls; moving a range brings gas or heavy electrical with it. Both usually trigger permits and inspections, and they extend the timeline, which raises labor on everything else happening around them. Toggle the layout change on and off in the calculator and you’ll see the swing on your own numbers — for many kitchens it’s the single largest discretionary decision in the project.
How much contingency should I budget?
Ten to twenty percent of the project cost is the range most professionals recommend, and older houses sit at the top of it. The reserve is for genuine unknowns — wiring that fails inspection, rot or water damage behind a cabinet run, floors that aren’t level — rather than for changing your mind about the tile halfway through. Set it here and it’s added to the total, so the number you take away already includes the cushion instead of being the best case you’ll never quite hit.
Where does the money actually go in a kitchen remodel?
Cabinets are typically the biggest single materials line, with labor and installation close behind — together they usually account for a large share of the whole project. Appliances, countertops and flooring follow, and then the lines that are easy to forget: demolition and disposal, plumbing and electrical work, design and permits, and the contingency reserve. The doughnut chart above splits your own estimate across all of these, which is the fastest way to see whether your budget is going where you assumed.
Do kitchen remodels pay for themselves at resale?
Rarely in full, and modest remodels tend to recoup a larger share of their cost than upscale ones — the return generally falls as the spend rises. The other consideration is your neighbourhood: a kitchen finished far above the standard of comparable homes nearby is unlikely to be valued at what it cost. If resale is the main motive, a midrange refresh usually makes more financial sense than a gut renovation; if you’re staying put for years, the calculation is about how much the kitchen is worth to you rather than to a future buyer. A local agent can tell you what buyers in your area actually expect.
