This post is sponsored by American Express Personal Loans.
If I could tally up all the questions I’ve received from readers over the years, I would bet you that a big majority of them are asking about kitchen design. I get it! Renovating a kitchen can be stressful, complicated and, not to mention, so expensive! It can often take you endless hours of research, shopping, meeting with designers, vendors and contractors to even get a sense of how much your kitchen renovation will end up costing you!
American Express invited me to put together a simple-to-use guide for kitchen renovation budgeting and I LOVED the idea! If you’re considering tackling a big home project, and if you’re an existing eligible consumer American Express Card Member American Express Personal Loans may be a good place to start.
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Now read on to estimate how much it will cost to renovate your kitchen! All estimates are my own.
Since there are a million different ways to renovate a kitchen, it can be tricky to cover all the different options or directions you could go. In this post, my goal is simply to show you how I budget for my clients’ kitchens, who more often than not have average sized kitchens and budgets. I literally pulled these numbers from our kitchen budgeting spreadsheet template! I will share the costs and sources that I use and leave out the options I have decided against for value and style purposes. I hope this information is helpful for you! I am using these same reference tools for my own upcoming kitchen renovation and it has really helped me zero in on my costs!
The pie chart above breaks down the percentages of where our budgets usually end up after installation. This can be helpful for you to compare when you start getting bids from contractors and vendors. I’ve found that labor ends up costing about 20% of the total budget, which is a significant chunk of change! You can lower that number if you are a DIYer and willing to get your hands dirty by doing the demo yourself or building IKEA cabinets before an installer comes, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, tiling a backsplash is pretty easy work!
Cabinets are almost ALWAYS the most expensive part of a kitchen remodel. I usually allocate about 30% of the total budget to cabinetry. Cabinets are priced by the linear foot, so before you start shopping around, you’ll want to have a rough measurement of how many linear feet of cabinets you’ll be looking to order (don’t forget to measure the uppers separately!). As a reference point, an average size kitchen in my experience will need between 20 and 30 linear feet of cabinetry. This means nicer $200/ft stock cabinets from a hardware store in an average sized kitchen will cost about $5000 for materials and installation. The obvious downside to stock cabinetry is it is not highly customizable. The benefit of stock cabinetry is, well, it’s usually in stock and you can get your order in about a week. I went in to Lowes recently to check out their stock selection and was shocked at all the on-trend color options in the stocked lines! There was a green color I feel in love with and a driftwoody/cerused oak that were both about $200/ft and looked AMAZING!
Semi-custom cabinets, where you can buy IKEA boxes (or sometimes reuse your existing boxes) and have beautiful custom doors and drawer-fronts made by a local cabinet maker or ordered through Semihandmade, can be a really great option for detail oriented design-lovers on a budget. It’s sort of like wearing a really beautiful designer coat with a Target dress. It can feel like the best of both worlds, but my word of warning is this – the semi-custom cabinetry route usually ends up taking a lot of time (at IKEA especially! Ugh!) and a lot of coordination. At best, it will eat up a ton of your own time, but sort of the worst case scenario is it can really add up if you’re paying a designer by the hour. BUT the results are beautiful and often look more custom than stock cabinetry. I’ve found that going this route usually ends up costing about $10,000, plus or minus $2000, depending on the size of the kitchen and the upgrades you are looking for. It’s a great option if you’re not loving the stock cabinet options you’ve found, but can’t afford to go full custom!
Custom cabinets are not cheap and I’ve seen some VERY expensive jobs go south. If your budget allows for custom cabinetry, go with a very experienced local company that has a ton of great reviews. The best bet would be if you could see and touch one of their kitchens in person before committing (even better if it’s a kitchen that’s been in use for a couple years! That’s the real test!). You get what you pay for when it comes to custom cabinetry and if you’re in a position to do it, go with the best. I’d honestly rather have a client use IKEA + Semihandmade rather than spend $25,000 on custom inset cabinets that never quite line up right and with paint that starts to flake in the first year. (I’ve never had that happen btw – just stories from friends that went with a middle of the road cabinetry bid!)
As a style note, I almost always select full overlay door and drawer cabinets, where you can’t see the face frame of the cabinet. It’s a clean, seamless look and maximizes interior storage space. If you have a giant kitchen (and a budget to match), custom inset cabinets are a beautiful, timeless look. You’ll spend about 30% more for the look and lose a couple of inches of interior storage, and you might have some problems with the wood expanding and contracting if you live in areas with extreme changes in humidity, but they are really, truly gorgeous!
It’s also worth mentioning, if you’re not planning to replace your cabinetry, you can expect to pay $2500+ (depending on where you live) to have an average-sized kitchen’s cabinets professionally painted.
Appliances are another big ticket item and the costs can vary greatly. If given the choice, I’d go with nicer appliances over custom cabinets. I think a beautiful range especially can really elevate the feel of a kitchen! French gas ranges (like Le Cornue or Lacanche are STUNNING, but can easily cost as much as a small car. I’ve had good luck finding very gently used Viking and La Cornue ranges on Craigslist and eBay (they usually from vacation homes, where the appliances were used only a few times a year). You’ll likely need to have a technician tune them up, but it can be a great way to save thousands of dollars. These ranges are meant to last decades, so it’s worth considering finding a second hand or scratch-and-dent sale version if a new range is not in the budget or the timeline. Ordering a new one can take MONTHS and the shipping charges are not fun.
Gas ranges are wonderful and beautiful, but many homes don’t have gas or propane lines. It costs several thousand dollars to install a propane tank and line and several hundred dollars a year for filling and leasing the tank. So if a gas or propane range is not in the cards for you, I’ve used and LOVED this beautiful electric range.
If your kitchen is on the smaller side and you need a 30″ range, there are many beautiful options available online at through hardware stores. I prefer a slide-in range (so the operating panel is in the front and you can see the backsplash). Stainless steel ranges are easy to find at lots of price points, but I’ve been really drawn to black appliances lately! This line looks a lot like Viking at a fraction of the cost and is better suited to smaller kitchens.
Fridges and dishwashers on the other hand should be as simple and inconspicuous as possible. If you can spring for a panel-ready version that blends in with the cabinetry, that’s really the best of all worlds! I prefer water and ice dispensers to be inside the fridge and freezer (just for looks) but I get that it’s less convenient. My preference, if it’s in-budget, is an under counter pebble ice maker and a filtered water faucet or in-fridge water dispenser.
I love the look and feel of stone countertops and these are the materials I come back to over and over again. The pricing here includes fabrication and installation costs. As a general rule of thumb fab and install should be about $35/sf, again depending on the material and the design details. You’ll want to ask about additional costs for cutouts for sinks, plumbing and outlets.
I wrote a long post about countertop materials here, but in short, if you’re up for a little bit of upkeep and down for inevitable “character” that will come as natural stone slightly stains and etches, marble might be your best option. Upkeep with regular cleaning and sealing is going to be a reality with all of these choices. This is my favorite cleaner for removing etching.
I prefer honed finishes to polished because the wear better and have a softer, more matte look. Honed or even leathered black granite is an amazing option for homeowners on a budget that want real stone and really low levels of upkeep. Make sure you have a lot of natural light in your kitchen if you go with any black or dark stone tops though! They are beautiful and dramatic, but really drop the light and bright factor of a kitchen, even with white cabinets.
Quartz is an amazing countertop material option and has come SO far in the last couple of years. I loved the honed quartz we installed at our Gentry Project flip. Take extra care when choosing quartz products – the lower priced ones stain easily and are porous (which is a nightmare anywhere near a range!) Quartzite is a miracle stone, with a price tag to match, that acts like a granite (basically indestructible) but looks more like a marble. Lower quality quartzites can crack and crumble, so make sure you’re getting a good quality slab series. Black soapstone has the most beautiful chalky finish and really pretty, subtle veining. It is not as durable as granite, but it’s prettier. It does require less upkeep than marble, but not much.
I didn’t include poured concrete countertops here, because they usually end up costing as much or more than stone at around $75/sf installed. I also left off butcher block and wood counters, because I haven’t used these in my own kitchen designs, just in laundry rooms. They also seem expensive to me compared to the longevity of stone at around $55/sf installed. That said, I love the warmth of wood materials in kitchens and prefer to add that through floors, cabinets, shelving material or accessories like large bread boards.
In my experience, hardware for a full kitchen will usually cost a few hundred dollars and it’s money well spent! Even super old and dated cabinets look good with a paint job and new hardware! I love the warmth of brass tones and usually start there for kitchen design, but if we are looking for a modern spin, I like using matte black hardware. I like to use polished nickel for more traditional or formal kitchens. Lately I’ve been drawn to painted or stained round wood knobs too.
Mixing metals is ALWAYS a good idea to make a space feel layered and balanced. Just remember you should try to stick with just two finishes in the installed fixtures, but you can add one more finish in the accessories if you feel like it!
I usually select pulls for drawers and only use knobs for top drawers and upper cabinet doors. You can install longer pulls for a more modern look, or double up the knobs on the top drawers for more function.
Flooring in a kitchen space is a lot like countertop selection. Hardwood is GORGEOUS in a kitchen, but just like marble, it is a little more risky and has the potential to end in disaster if your fridge, sink or ice maker starts to leak. If you can accept the fact that you might have some minor or major repairs to make in the future, buy a couple extra boxes of your hardwood and cross your fingers and toes.
If you’re a little less adventurous (or if it’s impossible to match the rest of the flooring in your house), you might want to go for a patterned tile floor. I’ve heard concerns about it being trendy, but people have been installing colorful patterned tiles for hundreds of years (cement tile specifically has been around since the 1850s!), so I think you’ll be safe for the next 10-20 years. :) Just go for something in a traditional pattern and maybe even more neutral tones and I think you’ll be happy for years to come. Cement tile options are not cheap at usually $18-25/sq ft, but if you are will to look around a little you can find better deals at the under $10/ft range. Also there are new ceramic patterned tile options every day it feels like and they usually cost between $3 and $8/sf and require less maintenance than real cement tiles, which need to be sealed every year.
Slate or other stone tile options are pricier and can feel a little cold underfoot, but they are beautiful and a completely classic choice. They’ll look as good as new for decades to come and I think you’ll love them for as long.
Prices for decorative light fixtures can vary wildly, from $35 for a sconce to several thousands of dollars for a single chandelier or pendant. I usually budget about $2500 total for all decorative lighting purchases, which usually ends up being three or four sconces over open shelving and two or three pendants over the island. Under-cabinet lighting is an option that I don’t always go with, but if my client loves it, we usually spend about $1500 in lights and installation.
Faucets are one of my favorite places to splurge in a kitchen design. A great French range and a beautiful brass faucet can make IKEA cabinets look downright luxe! I love all types of faucet designs, and usually focus on the style of the space when we make our selection. Though I love installing both, single hole faucets are easier to use and to clean around than bridge faucets. I usually stick with deck-mounted faucets for my primary sink and use wall-mounted for my prep sinks or pot fillers.
I included only tile options here, but one of my favorite and more modern backsplash treatments is to run the countertop stone up the wall. Even if it’s just 12 or 18″ of stone, the look will be custom and seamless and you’ll love how easy it is to wipe down!
Shiplap can be a great option for a backsplash. Your contractor can help you choose a material (I recommend Hardiplank) that is safe for behind a range. Just make sure you use a semi-gloss paint so it can be wiped! Consider doing a vertical installation for an updated look too!
Handmade subway tile is one of my go-to backsplash selections! It has a traditional, organic texture that reminds me of painted brick (which is also one of my favorite backsplash materials if the budget allows!). You can find options at under $10/ft that make it usually a pretty small investment for something you’ll look at and enjoy every single day! If you’re budget doesn’t allow for that splurge, stick with standard subway tile, which ends up being only about $1.20/sf.
Hand-painted tiles are INSANELY expensive. Most of the really good ones are $50-100+/sf. They are little works of art though and if you can scrape together an extra $800-1500, that would be my choice every time for a range surround backsplash! I like the tiles in a smaller application anyway!
I love a good casement window for quickly sending the perfect fresh breeze through a kitchen! Double hung windows work fine too, though even sliders are slightly easier to move while leaning over a countertop. The cost of windows has a lot to do with the material of the frame. Vinyl is a good budget open, though I prefer wood or wood-clad (which is wood on the interior and fiberglass on the exterior), though the cost jumps up a bit for this elevated look. The most expensive version of all, but the most beautiful by far, is custom steel windows. A wall of these thin framed beauties can easily cost more than $10,000, but what a feature!
For doors, I love to source antique doors for pantries at salvage yards or on Craigslist for less than $300. Good exterior doors (if you have one in your kitchen -or two like I weirdly do??) run about $900 for a single door or $1200 for a more basic fiberglass French door set. A gorgeous custom iron or steel door will easily cost $5000+ for even the most simple designs in a standard 8′ size.
I know runners aren’t exactly a necessary item in a kitchen renovation, but we always plan for one or two in any kitchen reno budget, because they add SO much warmth and character to space that can easily feel harsh and cold otherwise! Vintage or vintage looking is my rule of thumb when shopping for kitchen rugs and these are a few of my favorites here. I try to keep the price under $350, but sometime you find a runner worth splurging on!
Bread boards also fit into that category of “not necessary, but necessary.” Not only are they actually functional, but they can be gorgeous works of sculptural art – my favorite type of home accessory! The warm tones of the wood can really help soften a kitchen.
That’s it for my EPIC KITCHEN BUDGETING POST!! Five stars for you if you managed to make it this far! Like I mentioned before, this is absolutely not meant to be a universal guide for every person on the planet. This is just me, sharing what I do and what I spend for my kitchen projects – it is highly subjective material! Please feel free to ask questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to keep on top of the answers.
And of course, a HUGE thank you to American Express for sponsoring this novel of a post! Don’t forget to head on over to their site to learn more about their Personal Loans, available to existing eligible consumer American Express Card Members. It could be a great place to start for Card Members who are looking to tackle a kitchen remodel.
1 American Express Card Members must be pre-approved for a loan offer in order to apply. Pre-approved APRs and loan amounts are based on the Card Member’s creditworthiness and other factors. Pre-approved APRs will be between 6.90% and 18.97%, as of 3/2/2018. Not all Card Members will be pre-approved or receive the lowest APR or the highest loan amount.
Are there links in this post that aren’t live? I’d love to know which line looks like Viking without the $$$$$ Thanks!
I Second this, I would love to know which range you are referencing.
Oh man! Looks like I was missing a few links in the post. Sorry about that – they’re in there now! I was talking about Verona and KitchenAid specifically!
Thanks for this post! I offer one caution to those who live in expensive areas: I was quoted $8,500 (as opposed to Jenny’s estimate of $2,500) to PAINT my kitchen cabinets, and it’s by no means a large kitchen. Labor costs vary from place to place, so keep that in mind as you’re budgeting. Thanks again!!
Thanks Emily! Great point! Prices can vary here greatly based on size of your kitchen and complexity of the job as well as local labor costs! Thanks for chiming in!
I agree, estimates like this (even when giving substantial price ranges) are always a “guess” and may not apply at all to your specific reno. We renovated our kitchen/living/dining/family rooms (most of that being the kitchen, flooring, and removing a major structural wall that separated the four rooms – about 1500 SF total), and we spent $150k. Our wood flooring material was $5/SF, but with labor our flooring was closer to $15/SF. (Overall, we spent $30k on the flooring alone – this included “raising” two sunken rooms.) When all was said and done, we spent 60% on materials and 40% on labor. Our contractor is incredible (he then went on to do our $53k master bath, this was closer to 50/50 for materials/labor……I am still shocked by construction costs! and we have more to go…..), so paying for an amazing, trustworthy contractor should also be part of your equation.
This post is perfect timing! I’m finding it so helpful. Can you recommend a source for the handmade subway tile you prefer?
Thank you!
There are great options at The Tile Shop and Floor and Decor!
This is such helpful information! I’m saving it for future reference. I’d love to see a post like this for bathrooms. Thanks for doing this!
Great idea, Carrie! Thank you!! xo
I’d also love the exact same post for bathrooms. This is really, really useful!! Thank you.
Thanks for pulling this post together! As a first time homeowner that is looking to tackle a kitchen renovation (among other projects) down the road, this is BEYOND helpful!! You are the best!
Am I the only messy cook? How do you keep one of those gorgeous runners clean? I’ve always settled for machine washable throw rugs, but they just can’t compare to these runners!
I have hosed mine off before! :) Just make sure to let them dry in the sun before bringing back in. Vintage runners can be surprisingly stain resistant!
My vintage kilim has had hot pink nail polish spilled on it (surprisingly remover took 90% off), and a whole bottle of soy sauce! They clean SOOO well, and the weathered look + busy patterns hide a ton.
Could not make a decision at all and then poof you solved it!!! Thank you!!!
There was nothing in the budget breakdown for design fees. Does your studio work by the hour or a set fee? And if by fee, is it a percentage of the total budget?
Hi Christina! This post was mostly meant to be a resource for readers taking on the designs themselves – something I think is doable with help from a good cabinet sales person/maker! That said, if you have the resources to hire a designer, it is absolutely worth every penny! Designer fees vary from firm to firm, though I’ve found that generally the total amount billed with our design projects ends up being 10-20% of the total project budget. I hope that helps give you a reference point!
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I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on sinks Jenny! I love your blog! Thanks for continuing to provide relevant, inspiring content for your readers.
What an amazingly helpful and informative post!! I truly appreciate the free design expertise offered. I can’t wait until you start sharing your kitchen Reno!!
I’ve been following your blog for a long time and I just wanted to tell you: this post is golden! Everything you would want to know. We just built a house and not only are you spot on, but I wish I’d seen this sooner. I love that you include options in every price range. Many design blogs are written only for those with unlimited pocket books. Thank you for this amazing and informative post. I’d bet it will be one of your most visited!
What a sweet note!! Thank you SO much, Sue. This means the world. :)
This is pure gold!!!! We have surface mount hinges (not ideal) would you keep the hinges and the knobs the same color or paint the hinges to match the cabinet color?
Thanks Maddy! I would probably match the hinges and knobs! I’ve painted hinges before and it never ends up holding up well over time!
Wow! This is the most helpful post ever. Thank you!
This post has been crazy helpful! I have a question: have you ever done a post on how these choices would change if you were slowly renovating a rental property? We are interested in working on ours, so we need to make choices that balance durability for rentals with value over time. Any experience with this?
Hi Cindy! I’ve never slowly renovated a rental before – most of my projects are all about speed! :) The tricky thing about renovations is what we like to call around here, “project creep.” Where one project requires another and another…and yet another. And then suddenly you’re doing everything and the schedule and budget are completely blown! Unless the update is just painting or changing out hardware, I’ve found it’s best to just be realistic about that and plan for a bigger renovation time when you’re between tenants and you’ve saved enough to do several projects all together. I hope that helps! xo
Jenny, informative and super helpful as always! Thank you so much, I know your plate is full, but we(your readers) appreciate everything you put back into your blog and instastories! Yours is still my favorite blog, and the original one that led me down the blog rabbit hole so many years ago also I am dying over the new Scandinavian prints added to your print shop! Trying to narrow my favorites list down before ordering is SO hard!
This is SUCH a sweet compliment to me, Ashley! Thank you!! I am looking forward to a season of more blogging as we tackle this reno! xo
Thank You so much for writing this , Extremely helpful
Thank you so much for this thorough and helpful post! You always provide great content.
Very nice
Thank you for this post. Its very inspiring.
I would love the source for the globe pendants in the picture above your ‘faucets’ sub category! Thanks in advance!
Hi Renee! Those pendants are from a trade source, Regina Andrews. If you do some poking around, I bet you could find them online!
This is such a great post for folks considering a kitchen renovation. Costs can definitely fluctuate greatly depending on the area and specific selections but there are so many facets people don’t think of when they decide to renovate that you have covered here. It’s really helpful to have some sort of guide going into it. Thanks for sharing!
This was exactly my intention, Laura! Just a rough guide to give a general ballpark! Thanks for your comment and for reading! xo
Amazing post. Thank you!!!
What an amazing post! I’m in the last few weeks of a house (kitchen and master suite) remodel in the Bay Area and your breakdown is spot on! You menitoned picking the right stone/quartz. Any tips on how to do that?
Thanks!
It’s all about buying from a trusted source, I think! We have four or five large slab yards here in Phoenix that have really educated salespeople. I love buying from them because I can get a long list of pros and cons of each stone type as I’m shopping.
We did semi-custom inset cabinets in our kitchen remodel from the Cabinet Joint. We assembled them ourselves but they ended up costing less than Ikea boxes with custom fronts and we were able to order them in the exact sizes we needed so no need for fillers! The assembly process wasn’t super-easy but was do-able and they turned out great.
Laura! I LOVE hearing this! I’ve been looking into Conestoga/Cabinet Joint! Thanks for chiming in. xo
I also used cabinet joint and purchase inset cabinets! LOVE! THEY are gorgeous and the owner is quite possibly the most helpful sales person I have ever worked with. They also give you the exact matching Sherwin Williams color to your cabinets so we were able to match additional custom trim on a doorway exactly! The total cost of materials for cabnets / crown, etc. was $8,900. The quote we received with exact Same layout from local shop was $27,000.
Amazing, Gina! More points for Cabinet Joint! xo
Absolutely terrific post! So very helpful, even for someone like me who is just painting 40-year-old cabinets and needs advice on the smaller, cheaper things. Thank you!
Thanks for stopping by Caroline! Glad to hear this post was helpful for you! xo
Love this post! Question, do people still match their appliance finishes when doing a full kitchen remodel? Or, maybe let the range stand out and match the dishwasher and fridge finishes? Love the look of the black Kitchen Aide range, but I think a black dishwasher and fridge would overwhelm my smallish galley style kitchen.
Hi Kim! Stand alone ranges are definitely a thing right now! Best case scenario is your other appliances have cabinet panel fronts, but if your range were black and your other appliances were stainless, that for sure works! That’s what we have in my kitchen right now and I like it.
This post is epic!! Thank you soo much for all the time and effort you put into this- it is so extremely helpful. We are just embarking on our kitchen reno and I know I’ll come back often to reference this post. Can you please please keep us updated on your own kitchen reno?! Cannot wait to see what you do!
This post is AMAZING. Just what i needed – a break down in materials choices – some real talk about budgets (with caveats on how they can be location specific) and recommendations on not cheaper in the long run choices like butcher block counters. Posts like this & Emily Henderson’s breaking down the inside of her kitchen cabinet designs just show WHY you guys have the following you do. You share this incredibly useful and complex info in a very informative & approachable way that is free for us readers. I immensely appreciate it :-).
Thank you so much for posting this. The pie chart was especially helpful! Is it possible for you to do a post like this for bathroom renos??
This is so helpful!! Bookmarking it for when I renovate my kitchen in the future :)
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It’s nice that you describe such things.
Super helpful! Thank you Jenny!!
So helpful! Thank you for taking the time to spell each part out.
I would love it if you could also do a post about designer costs. So many times people will skip the designer and just hire the contractor because they’re afraid a designer will be way too expensive. Can you give us an idea on what designers cost for different types of projects?
Hi Whitney! In my experience, a designer will add 10-20% on to the total amount of the budget. So if you’re spending $100k on a kitchen remodel, a designer would likely bill out something between $10,000 and $20,000, depending on the total hours spent designing, sourcing, meetings on site with the client on contractor/trades and installation as well. Most designers charge $125-200/hour (though not every hour is accounted for usually) and we also mark up purchases. If I buy something with my trade discount (which can range between 20 and up to 50% off retail), I will mark up the cost billed to my client to 10% under retail usually. This way I can make a mark up but my client is still getting a discount off what they would pay in a home store that sells trade lines.
This is the real high level info. I hope it helps a little! Working with a designer is something that really only makes sense if you have a bigger budget – for both you as the client and the designer. Low budget projects are hard for both parties and honestly usually don’t end up well in most cases.
Great and informative post and your timing could not have been more perfect as I’m starting my own kitchen remodel. I would love to know what you think the trend is in hardwood floors right now. I live in Southern California and there have been lots of light and middle color oak floors going in, but I was noticing that darker floors might be making a comeback. You had mentioned that you are restaining your hardwoods and would love to know the directions your are going. I’d so appreciate your thoughts as I’m doing 3500 feet of hardwood and would hope to have floors that I’m going to love for a longggggg time. Looking for timeless, like what you’d find in an old Paris apartment, I’ve been looking for 2 years and just haven’t found anything. Maybe you could do a post on hardwoods?! Thanks for all the great info, as always you are so kind to share all your expertise!
Oh, Joy, girl, you are reading my mind! I have a big post in the works on this. But in short, I went through about a month where I planned to do a mid-tone brown stain on our floors because I was suddenly worried that lighter oak was trendy. Even though the images I’m most drawn to almost ALWAYS have light floors, and when we’ve used lighter floors in client projects or the gentry project flip, the spaces feel so light and warm and welcoming!?
Then we went to Europe this summer and there were no dark floors ANYWHERE. Everything was natural, gray-washed or at the darkest a light midtone beigey brown stain. And not surprisingly, I loved it. I feel like it gave me emotional permission to do a lighter stain even though it feels trendy right now, you know? Because it’s not trendy, it’s classic. It just happens to also be on-trend right now too.
Secondly, I would do what’s right for your house. If you get lots and lots of natural light, you might want to tone it down a little with a slightly darker stain. If you’re like me and you’re wanting as much light-bouncing as possible, light/natural floors and lighter paint colors (or straight up white) is a good move.
I hope that helps a little! I promise to post more with specifics soon! xo
Thank you so much for the response. I too, spent time in Europe this summer and saw the same and can’t get it out of my mind. Thanks for the advice it’s just what I needed to trust my own instincts. Can’t wait to see your post on this and thanks so much being so open about all your ideas and info. I truly adore you and have followed you for years. Will tag you in pics I post so you can see the end results. XO
Hi Jenny! I am having a hard time figuring out where to end the backsplash in our kitchen. We have a run of cabinets on one main wall with the dishwasher at one end and the range at the other. The range end shouldn’t be too bad – there is a doorway with no trim a few inches beyond the edge of the range, so we will likely go right to the doorway or more likely stop a few inches short and run parallel to where the cabinets and range hood end. But on the dishwasher end there is a corner. Would you typically also install tile on the end wall and where is it typical to stop — in line with the front of the upper cabinets, in line with the front edge of the counter, etc.?! It is a weird space – that wall only extends about 6 inches in front of the dishwasher so it would also be possible to tile right to the end of that wall including the small strip and run it up to the height of the base of the upper cabinets. Ummm… did that make sense? Should I just keep tiling until all wall surface and the ceiling is covered? Lol. Oh – and we haven’t picked a tile but will likely be white and simple – subway or otherwise.
Do you have any examples of a kitchen backsplash where you mixed a hand painted tile with another more inexpensive tile? my husband wants to use a hand painted muted white & blue geometric tile for the entire backsplash and its $$$$. Help!
This is so helpful! Getting price breakdowns for average costs is just really useful and so time consuming. Thanks for creating such great content (and gorgeous spaces)!
Getting price breakdowns is always the best.. ^^
I love this post so much! Do you have links to the images that you used in this post? I’d love to see a blog post about the kitchen with the square tiles and the gold square sconces!
These are all my projects! If you search for Gentry Kitchen, you’ll find all the resources! xo
This is SO HELPFUL. Thanks for taking the time to write and produce such an informative and useful post. XO
I think you can find more information here.
How Much Does it Cost to Renovate a Kitchen? – Juniper Home
Just came back to this post as my husband and I are thinking about putting in an offer on a house that needs a new kitchen. Jenny, I would love to see an updated version for 2022 based on what you have seen with increased costs across the board. TYIA!