How Much Does a Kitchen Remodel Really Cost?

This is one of the first questions I usually get asked when clients are thinking about updating their kitchen. It seems simple enough, right? “How much does it cost?”, but I’ve been designing kitchens for long enough to know the real answer is not as simple or as straight-forward.

There was this couple I met early in my career. They lived in an old cape cod with a kitchen so tight you could stand in one spot and touch the sink, the fridge, and the stove all at once. They didn’t complain, not exactly. They just said they wanted to "update" it. But after a few conversations, it became clear. What they wanted was space to exhale. A kitchen where they didn’t have to say “excuse me” every two minutes. A kitchen where they could dance while waiting for the kettle.

That’s when I started to understand. Remodeling a kitchen is never just about cabinets. It’s about solving a problem. A problem that’s been pressing against the walls for years. The cost depends on what you're trying to release, rearrange, or rediscover.

Some people are chasing sunlight. Others are looking for order. I've worked with parents who wanted a space that could survive cereal spills and science projects. I’ve seen kitchens that held onto the same layout for decades, not because it worked, but because no one had the time or courage to change it. The moment you ask why, really why, the conversation starts to unfold in unexpected ways.

There's no single answer to how much it costs because every kitchen holds a different kind of silence. Some need light. Some need movement. Some need to stop hiding behind closed cabinet doors and just breathe. And those needs? They come with different price tags.

I once helped redesign a kitchen where the floor sloped so dramatically that marbles could gather momentum. Fixing that meant gutting the subfloor and reinforcing the joists. Nobody had planned for it. The client just wanted better lighting. But when we started paying attention, the ground told a deeper story.

People love to talk about materials. Stone or laminate. Matte black or stainless steel. But materials are only part of the equation. Labor is the quiet giant. Sometimes, a cheap tile takes days to install because it chips at the corners. Sometimes, old wiring turns a simple fixture change into a multi-day repair. Costs hide in the seams.

What stays and what goes isn’t always about money. I’ve seen someone cling to a crooked cabinet because it held their grandmother’s tea tins. I’ve seen someone rip out an entire wall just to see the garden while making toast. Value gets tangled with memory, and money becomes a stand-in for possibility.

Sometimes a remodel begins with the hope of control. Let’s fix this one thing. But once the walls come down, so do assumptions. You find yourself asking questions that have nothing to do with design. Why did we live with this for so long? What kind of mornings do we want? Where do we want the kids to sit while we cook?

There’s no perfect formula. The kitchen doesn’t care about perfection. It cares about presence. It holds the smell of burned toast and the sound of rain against the window. It remembers your moods. It becomes a map of your daily rituals, your late-night cravings, your half-finished conversations.

I used to think budgets were fixed numbers. Now I see them more like breathing room. They expand and contract depending on what people discover about themselves along the way. I’ve seen tight budgets lead to the most soulful kitchens. I’ve seen generous budgets stretch thin because someone fell in love with a wrong-sized table. There is no moral hierarchy. There is only what matters.

So, when people ask what it costs, I still flinch a little. Because I know they’re really asking: Can I make something better without breaking the parts of my life that already work? Can I step into this space and feel more at home than I did before?

There’s no average kitchen. Only personal ones. And each one starts with a question that has less to do with money and more to do with longing for solutions.

Cost is what you calculate. Meaning is what you live with. I design kitchens, but what I’m really doing is listening for the story behind the broken drawer, the dim light, the too-narrow walkway. That’s where the problem needing a solution lies and where real remodel begins.

If you were looking for numbers, sorry. The article on the HGTV website has numbers, just remember that every remodel is solving a problem which may not be the one you are trying to solve. So take those numbers with a grain of salt.