Get a realistic low, mid, and high price range for your kitchen project. Set your size, scope, cabinets, and finish level, and see where the money actually goes. Ballpark for planning, not a quote.
Ballpark only, not a quote. Real kitchen pricing is design dependent and varies by market and contractor. Always get three local bids before you budget.
The honest answer to "how much does a kitchen remodel cost" is that size barely matters compared to scope and finish level. Two homeowners with identical 150 square foot kitchens can spend wildly different amounts: one keeps the layout and swaps counters and hardware, the other moves the sink, opens a wall, and orders custom cabinets with a pro appliance package. This tool turns your choices into a low, mid, and high planning range and shows you where the money actually goes, so you can budget before you ever call a contractor.
A kitchen remodel is really a stack of decisions, and a handful of them control most of the price. In rough order of impact:
Across most kitchen projects, cabinets, countertops, and appliances together account for roughly 50 to 60 percent of the total budget, and cabinets alone are usually the largest single chunk. Labor and installation are typically the next biggest slice, followed by everything else: flooring, lighting, backsplash, plumbing fixtures, paint, permits, and the demolition and disposal nobody pictures when they daydream about a new kitchen. Knowing this split is powerful. If a quote comes in high, the levers that actually move it are cabinet tier and whether you are relocating anything, not the faucet you pick. The calculator above reflects this weighting so the range responds most to the decisions that matter most.
Because cabinets dominate the budget, the reface-versus-replace call is the most leveraged decision you will make. Reface or repaint when the existing boxes are solid and square, the layout already works for how you cook, and you mainly want a fresh look. You keep the cabinet boxes and swap doors, drawer fronts, and hardware (or just paint), which is dramatically cheaper and faster than new cabinetry. Replace when the boxes are water-damaged, sagging, or the wrong sizes, when you are changing the layout, or when you want features like deep drawers, pull-outs, or a different configuration that refacing simply cannot deliver. The trap to avoid: spending real money refacing cabinets that sit in a layout you already dislike. Refacing makes a good kitchen look new; it cannot fix a kitchen that does not function.
There is a sharp price jump the moment your project crosses from "replace what is there" to "change where things are." Keep the sink, range, and walls where they are and your crew reuses the existing plumbing, gas, and electrical, which keeps labor predictable. Relocate the sink and you are now moving water supply and drain lines (and a vent), which is real plumbing work. Move the range or cooktop and you may need a relocated gas line or a new dedicated electrical circuit. Open or move a wall for that coveted open-concept look and you can trigger framing, drywall, electrical reroutes, and, if the wall is load-bearing, a beam and an engineer. That is why the calculator treats "move the sink, range, or walls" as its own driver: a layout change is frequently the difference between a midrange budget and a full-gut budget.
Most cosmetic refreshes do not need a permit, but the moment you touch plumbing, gas, electrical, or structure, a permit is usually required, and that means inspections and a little more time. In Florida specifically, two things come up often: many homes sit on a concrete slab, so relocating a sink or island drain can mean cutting and re-pouring concrete rather than simply rerouting pipes under a crawlspace, which adds cost. Coastal and newer builds may also have requirements around electrical and ventilation that vary by jurisdiction. None of this should scare you off, but treat permit triggers and slab work as real line items and verify the current rules with your local building department, because codes and fees differ by city and county.
The Pro version runs on your domain with your logo, your real local price bands, a printable PDF estimate, and lead capture that emails you the homeowner's selections the moment they finish. Turn "just browsing" traffic into booked in-home consultations.
Get early access, book a free call →Nothing here is measured off your actual kitchen. The calculator holds a table of published cost bands, a low and a high for each component, and assembles a range from your seven answers. Cabinets, countertops, appliances, and the layout change each carry their own band. A fifth band covers everything else in the job, demolition, disposal, flooring, lighting, backsplash, paint, fixtures, and general labor, and it steps up with the scope tier you choose. Kitchen size multiplies the cabinet, countertop, and everything-else bands, since those track linear feet and square footage. Appliances and the layout adder are not size-scaled: relocating a sink costs about the same in a small kitchen as a large one.
The lows are summed, the highs are summed, and the finish level nudges the whole range up or down at the end. The midpoint is the average of the two, rounded to the nearest hundred dollars, because a ballpark should not pretend to be precise. One rule is enforced on purpose: choose the cosmetic refresh scope and the cabinet line is held at the refacing band even if you picked custom cabinets, because those are not the same project. The bands come from public homeowner cost guides, the Remodeling magazine Cost vs. Value report, and NKBA planning guidance, and the date they were last reviewed prints under every result.
Those are national planning ranges, which is the main caveat. There is no zip code field and no regional cost index, so a high-cost metro and a small rural market get the same starting frame. The tool also cannot see your house: hidden water damage, aging wiring, a drain buried in a concrete slab, permit fees, and design fees all sit outside it. It is not a quote and it is not tied to any contractor's price list. Use it to work out roughly which budget bracket you are planning for, then let three itemized local bids set the real number. Remodelers who want a branded version on their own site can start with a free mockup or audit.
No. There is no location input and no regional multiplier, so what you get is a national planning range. Installed material and labor pricing swings widely between markets, and the same kitchen genuinely costs different amounts in different places. Treat the output as a frame and let local bids replace it.
Check your scope selection. On a cosmetic refresh the cabinet line is deliberately held at the refacing band, because that tier assumes you keep the existing boxes and change doors, fronts, hardware, or paint. Switch the scope to a pull-and-replace or a full gut and the calculator prices new cabinetry properly.