How Much to Charge for a Kitchen Fitting Job in 2026

What a kitchen fitting quote needs to include

"£3,500 for the kitchen" tells a customer almost nothing about what's covered, and nothing at all about who's connecting the gas. Cover these ten things and there's nothing left to argue about once the old kitchen's already in a skip:

1. 1Unit count, by base, wall and tall units, since that's what most labour pricing is actually built on.
2. 2Worktop material and whether it needs a specialist template-and-fit service (stone, quartz) or can be cut and fitted by the kitchen fitter directly (laminate, wood).
3. 3Which appliances are being fitted, and which of those need a gas or electrical connection rather than just sliding into a housing.
4. 4A named, separately priced line for any Gas Safe engineer needed to connect gas appliances — never folded into the fitter's own day rate.
5. 5A named, separately priced line for any Part P electrician needed for new circuits or a consumer unit change.
6. 6Whether plumbed appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, plumbed fridge) will have the correct backflow prevention valves fitted.
7. 7Splashback and any tiling, priced as its own item if it's part of the job.
8. 8Removal and disposal of the old kitchen.
9. 9A realistic programme in working days — flat-pack units take noticeably longer than rigid ones.
10. 10Guarantee period on workmanship and payment terms, including any staged deposit for units and worktop ordered in advance.

Not every kitchen job is the same job

The unit count sets the headline price. Whether the job needs a Gas Safe engineer, a Part P electrician, or neither, is what actually decides how many people are on site and who's liable if something's wrong.

Flat-pack vs rigid changes your programme, not just your price

Rigid, pre-built units from suppliers like Howdens arrive ready to fit and go in quickly. Flat-pack units — IKEA being the obvious example — need assembling on site before they can be fitted at all, which typically adds 30–50% to your fitting time for the same unit count. Quoting both at the same per-unit rate either underprices the flat-pack job or overprices the rigid one, and a customer who's had a kitchen fitted before will notice which.

The gas connection you're not legally allowed to do yourself

The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 restrict all gas work — fitting, servicing, and connecting appliances including a hob or cooker — to engineers on the Gas Safe Register. Regulation 3(3) makes it a criminal offence for anyone else to carry it out, and this isn't a rule that only gets enforced when something goes wrong: in August 2026 the HSE secured a suspended prison sentence, 180 hours of unpaid work and compensation payments against an installer who wasn't Gas Safe registered, on top of a permanent prohibition on him doing gas work again. Unregistered gas work can carry up to two years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine on conviction in the Crown Court. A kitchen fitter who "just connects the hob while they're there" — even with good intentions and a steady hand — is taking on that exposure personally, and leaving the homeowner uninsured against it too. Quote the gas connection as its own line, with a named Gas Safe engineer, and it stops being a grey area on the job.

Part P and the water regs — the other two trades hiding in every kitchen fit

Kitchens aren't a Part P "special location" the way bathrooms are, so a lot of kitchen electrical work is genuinely non-notifiable: moving sockets, adding sockets above the worktop or on an island (provided they're on an existing circuit), fitting under-cabinet lighting, or swapping a cooker control switch like-for-like. What is notifiable — meaning it has to go through Building Control or a Part P registered electrician — is running a brand new circuit, such as a dedicated cooker circuit or an extra radial for an island, and replacing or upgrading the consumer unit, which is always notifiable whatever else is involved. Separately, the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999 require backflow prevention on anything plumbed into the mains: a double check valve for a dishwasher or washing machine, at minimum a single check valve for a plumbed fridge-freezer. None of this needs to slow a quote down — it needs three short, honest lines naming which parts of the job are sub-contracted, to whom, and why.

How to price the work

UK kitchen fitting rates vary by region, unit type and worktop material, but these ranges are a fair starting point for 2026:

• Day rates typically run £220–£350 across most of the UK, rising to £300–£450 in London and the South East.
• Per-unit fitting labour usually runs £90–£150 per base or wall cabinet, so a full labour-only refit spans roughly £1,500 for a small 8-unit kitchen to £4,500+ for a large 16-unit one.
• Worktop templating and fitting adds £300–£1,000 — laminate and wood sit at the lower end, while stone and quartz need a specialist template-and-fit service on top.
• Old kitchen removal and disposal typically runs £200–£500 depending on size and access.
• Flat-pack units add 30–50% to fitting time versus rigid, pre-built units for the same unit count — price the labour difference, not just the unit cost difference.
• Sub-contracted trades are additional and separately priced: a straightforward gas hob connection commonly runs £100–£200, and a new cooker circuit or island sockets via a Part P electrician commonly runs £250–£450 including Building Control notification.
• A full kitchen refit — units, worktop, sub-trades and splashback — typically takes 1–2 weeks on site; bespoke, structural or heavily flat-pack jobs run longer.

A worked example

A full kitchen refit — 14 rigid units, a quartz worktop, a tiled splashback, and the gas, electrical and plumbing work each handled by the right registered trade:

£3,570 for a full 14-unit refit, covering removal and disposal of the old kitchen, all units fitted, a quartz worktop templated and fitted by a specialist, a tiled splashback, and three sub-contracted lines — a Gas Safe engineer to connect the hob, a Part P electrician to run the new cooker circuit and island sockets with Building Control notified, and both plumbed appliances fitted with the correct backflow prevention valves. Nothing on the invoice was a surprise, because every sub-contracted trade was named and priced on the quote before anyone picked up a screwdriver.

Five details that get kitchen fitting quotes accepted faster

• Name the sub-contracted trades on the quote, not just their cost. "Gas hob connection: J. Kaur Gas Safe Ltd, reg. 123456, £150" reads as a fitter who's thought about compliance, not one hoping the customer won't ask who's doing the gas work.
• Separate the worktop from the units. A customer who wants to upgrade from laminate to quartz partway through quoting shouldn't force a full re-quote — a clearly priced worktop line lets them swap it in or out on its own.
• Say plainly whether units are flat-pack or rigid. "Rigid, pre-built units" versus "flat-pack, assembled on site" isn't just a spec detail — it changes your programme by 30–50%, and stating it up front stops a customer assuming a two-week job will finish in one.
• Mention the backflow valve on plumbed appliances, briefly. One line — "dishwasher and washing machine fitted with WRAS-compliant double check valves" — is the kind of detail a customer won't know to ask for, and it's genuinely reassuring once they look it up.
• Price old kitchen removal and disposal as its own line. It's real skip or van time that has nothing to do with fitting the new kitchen, and hiding it in the day rate just makes your total look higher than a fitter who itemises it.

The fastest way to do all of this

Fourteen units and a worktop is one number. Fourteen units, a worktop, a sub-contracted Gas Safe engineer, a sub-contracted electrician and two plumbed appliances is five numbers that all need to add up correctly and stay attached to the right supplier's name — exactly the kind of quote that gets scrawled on the back of a delivery note and then argued about later.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "14-unit kitchen refit, quartz worktop, tiled splashback, sub-contracted gas hob connection and new cooker circuit, dishwasher and washer plumbed in" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute, with every sub-contracted line kept separate and priced on its own. Your customer accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click, so you're fitting kitchens, not chasing three different suppliers for what they charged you.

Whichever way you produce the quote, the principle holds: price the units and worktop as your own work, and name every gas, electrical and plumbing element that legally belongs to someone else — before the job starts, not after the invoice lands.

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