Design ideas · Kitchen · 5 min read
A warm shaker kitchen for under £22,000
Painted doors, one run of real oak and a handmade-look splashback. Where to spend on a medium kitchen, and where the Essential range is just as good.
Budget: Under £22,000
A medium kitchen on our Essential range is £19,800 fitted. That leaves about £2,000 of a £22,000 budget for the things that make a kitchen feel warm, and it goes further than you might think.
Spend it on the doors you look at
The cheapest way to change how a kitchen feels is the door. Our Essential range includes a slab door in twelve colours. Upgrading only the run you see from the table to a painted shaker costs around £900 in a medium kitchen, and nobody notices that the tall units in the corner are slab.
One run of real wood
A solid oak top on a breakfast bar or a short run away from the sink adds warmth that laminate does not. Keep quartz or compact laminate by the sink and the hob, where water and heat are.
A splashback that looks handmade
Zellige-style glazed tiles, set with a slightly irregular joint, look like a five-figure kitchen. On a three-metre splashback they cost about £350 more than plain metro tiles.
Where Essential is just as good
Carcasses, hinges and drawer runners are the same across all three of our ranges. So are the sink, the plumbing and the electrics. Spend on what you touch and see; save on what sits behind the door.
Try your own version on the cost estimator, then book a design visit and we will price it properly.
Quick answers
- Are painted doors hard to keep clean?
- Factory-sprayed doors are sealed and wipe clean. Hand-painted doors can be touched up, which makes them easier to live with than people expect.
- Is an oak worktop a bad idea next to a sink?
- Next to the sink, yes, unless you oil it every few months. We usually put quartz by the sink and oak on the island or a breakfast bar.
What would yours cost?
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