Modular kitchen cost: the carcass is the cheap half

People negotiate hard on kitchen cabinet cost and then accept the shutter and hardware lines without reading them. It is the wrong way round.

A modular kitchen price is usually quoted per running foot, which invites the same problem as the per-square-foot wardrobe quote: it summarises a specification nobody has shown you. Underneath, a kitchen is four separable purchases — carcass, shutters, hardware, counter — and they do not move together.

The four lines, and roughly how they split

• Carcass. The boxes. BWP plywood throughout for base units, without argument — this is the one place the top grade earns its money. Typically the smallest of the four lines.
• Shutters and finish. Laminate, acrylic, membrane, PU or glass. This line can be larger than the carcass by itself, and it is entirely a choice.
• Hardware. Hinges, channels, tandem boxes, lift-ups, corner units, a pull-out pantry. This is where a kitchen quote most often doubles, and where the brand actually matters.
• Counter. Granite, quartz or solid surface, plus the sink and the cut-outs. Quoted separately almost everywhere.

The practical consequence: if a quotation is over budget, taking a grade off the carcass saves little and costs durability, whereas changing an acrylic shutter to a high-pressure laminate can save a fifth of the whole kitchen and changes nothing structural.

Where the kitchen cabinet cost really goes

Base units cost more than wall units for the same running foot, because they carry the counter, take the drawers and the hardware, and need the better board. Tall units cost more again. A kitchen quoted as one running-foot rate across base, wall and tall is being averaged, and the average moves with the mix — which is why two kitchens of the same length can differ substantially.

The crockery unit

A crockery unit is usually specified as an afterthought and priced as a feature. It is a carcass with glass shutters, some lighting and, if it is doing its job, a proper back — and the glass is what costs. Toughened glass, a lipped profile and a soft-close lift-up mechanism are three separate decisions, each worth making explicitly. In this app it is its own object type with its own parts and its own line on the bill, rather than a decoration on a cupboard.

The kitchen shutter, and one trap worth knowing

A kitchen shutter is a flat panel, but it is not an arbitrary one. If the finish has a grain — a woodgrain laminate, a veneer, a brushed acrylic — every shutter has to be cut with the grain running the same way, which constrains how the parts can be nested onto a sheet. That constraint costs sheets. A shutter that cannot be laid out grain-correct is a shutter that either gets cut wrong or silently disappears from a cut list, and this app treats a grain-locked part that will not nest as a defect rather than as a rounding error.

Compare kitchens on the same basis

Build the kitchen in the configurator, set your own board, shutter and hardware rates, and read the four lines separately. Open the design tool. See also the plywood grade guide, which matters more in a kitchen than anywhere else in the house.