What is a reasonable length of time to spend pondering kitchen design?

[Rain2122]

Hi everyone,

After three 2-hour appointments with Wren and another with Magnet, we paid a deposit to Wren yesterday, though can still change the design or even cancel entirely and get the entire deposit back. We wanted to lock in Wren's 40% off quartz offer before the current sale period ends this week.

In the appointment I quite liked the design we ended up with but looking at the screenshots of the 3D visuals sent, I'm having doubts. We wanted to spend about £15k all in and still need quotes for fitting and flooring but I think it's now looking closer to £18k. We can technically afford this but I feel sick at the thought of spending £18k on a kitchen and then wishing we'd chosen something else.

The current design is shaker style with navy blue units on the bottom and white on the top, with light grey quartz worktops. I'm second guessing the style, the colours, the worktop, the layout and even the kitchen company. Our experience so far with Wren has been very good; Magnet less so - more expensive and they've made some quite basic design errors.

I think maybe we should speak to Howdens too but we've already spent quite a lot of time with the Wren man, so I'd feel bad going elsewhere now and my husband thinks I am over-thinking it all. But £18k is a huge amount of money, I've spent more time choosing a £1,500 holiday!

Any advice???

I spent 9 months pondering and don't regret a single second of it. Kitchens are complicated and getting them bang on isn't easy.

I spent months planning my kitchen, trawling different suppliers and trying different designs until I was happy it was perfect. I ended up going with a local kitchen place that was no more expensive than wren but much better quality units.
I sourced my handles from the internet as the shop didn't have what I wanted (used ironmongerydirect thanks to top tip from @pigletjohn!)

I've never heard a good thing about wren. Always send wrong stuff, stuff missing from delivery etc.

Have a look on the property topic threads, loads of helpful kitchen threads over there.

When I spoke to Wren about my kitchen the designer had a message to call someone back and she mentioned that customer was in there every week tweaking his design for months and months!

I wouldn’t feel bad about doing exactly what you want to do - that’s what the designers are there for and you’re spending a lot of money so you need to be totally comfortable.

I haven’t gone ahead with mine yet, just wasn’t sure enough about my choices!

I spent nearly a year trying to decide, I did have a couple of months break from thinking about it because it got a bit overwhelming. I changed my mind at the last minute and changed from laminate work tops to quartz .
Fitting starts tomorrow 😬

I wouldn't bother with Howdens or any of the big names. I did and they didn't seem to care very much, just wanted to hurry me up.
I went with an independent chap who sources the units ( he brought samples round to me) and is no more expensive than any of the others.

I spent about 6 months pondering mine, but I had designed it myself. Absolutely delighted with it though. It's from diy kitchens who were £5k cheaper than wren.

altogether from starting to look till actually ordering our kitchen was about 18 months because just as we had finally decided which way we were going lockdown happened and put us back 7 months, we walked into DIY kitchens showroom with pale grey matt units in mind and walked out having ordered pale blue gloss units

I knew what I wanted before we went to see the kitchen people. I'd played with a free 3d design tool online, and after living for a year (temporarily whilst our house is renovated) in a house with moulded units, knew I wanted plain ones with no handles. All we really needed to do was decide on colour (pale matte grey frontage, black marble-effect worktops) and get the kitchen people to adapt my design to their software.

That was in November - they're due to come and do a final measurement in the next week or so, and it should be fitted within a month after that. I can't wait!

I'm day 1 of having my new kitchen fitted and am regretting it (not really) ,omg the mess!

We are about 2 years into our kitchen planning, hopefully all finished in the summer.

It took me a few months and designs from 5 different places.

It may be worth going direct to the companies that supply and for the quartz rather than via the kitchen company- I did that, it gave me more choice and was cheaper.

Parents did their kitchen. Went to wickes cos they do reasonably priced solid wood doors. They quoted 18k all in with quartz top. But some of the labour was estimated like electrics until they visited. Found a fitter from a friend who basically fitted wickes kitchen and had good reviews his labour turned out £2k cheaper. He recommended independent stone places to get worktop from who happen to supply wickes and that quote is £1k cheaper.

So irs possible to bring costs down. Qhy not explore that option. Buy units from wren if you like them, and outsource rest e.g. own fitter, worktop

I get a discount at wickes so saved them 10% on their unit so their total cost ended up being £14k.

Took months for us to decide. Best advice I got was from friends who have nice kitchens who discussed what would look good. Spend on floors and worktops to make it look great. Agree with PP about going direct to a specialist stone merchant. You’ll know you’re ready when you’re no longer overthinking it; you only do this once so make sure you love all of it.

Months and months in my case.

God, it's boring.

I left all major decisions to my now late DH as he did all the cooking and we were working within the original footprint of the kitchen. Where we did confer was bench top material, tiles and materials for cupboards, handles, etc.

Thanks everyone! This is extremely helpful.

I've shown my husband all of these replies and he still thinks I'm overthinking it!

Our first kitchen appointment (with minimal thought beforehand as we had no idea) was 12 days ago...

The more I research the more I think we've been a been naive so far and need to slow down and think about this a bit more!

I’d also think carefully about the colour scheme. Navy is very 2018 (although this doesn’t of course mean you shouldn’t use it if you love it). The trend now is towards greens and wood tones.

I spent about 6 months planning mine.

My builder’s one bit of advice on kitchens was ‘avoid Wren’ because of delivery issues. Honestly please do DIY-Kitchens fitted by a local carpenter, you’ll save a fortune. Magnet quoted me 3x what I spent using DIY-K.

Your call tho but when you use a name like Wren or Magnet you are not just paying for the kitchen you are also paying the designer to talk to all those 100s of customers who never actually order.

I used a local company for my kitchen and have massive regrets they didn’t finish the kitchen and then tried to get more money off me. Don’t rush into it and make sure you pay via credit card it acts as an insurance. £100 pound spends cover you for upto £30,000 do your homework.Wren don’t have a good reputation if you look them up on Facebook there is a massive group dedicated to issues with them.

You're right - and part of me worries we've only gone blue because Wren (Infinity range) only do one type of green I wasn't bothered about! Which is obviously completely ridiculous when we can look elsewhere.

I'll have a play on DIY Kitchens. I had an initial go last week and it was disastrous! I'll get my husband to have a go too. It's also probably easier now we have Wren's measurements.

I'd read about issues with Wren online but have a relative (experienced builder) probably doing the fitting and he says Wren are fine, and we've had a good experience so far in the showroom.

You read things like Wren's warranties aren't good, but then you ask in Wren exactly what is/isn't covered by the warranty and it all sounds fine. I guess it's easy to be swayed by a good salesman.

We’ve just Wren as has my parents and both had a brilliant experience. Kitchen delivered when we wanted it, spent a year deciding on final design. Also used our own fitters and sourced quartz from an independent stone place as much cheaper.
Also went for blue and love it.

There's a DIY kitchen Facebook group.

We didn't go with diy kitchens in the end but they have an excellent reputation. We did a day trip to visit the show room and were very impressed with the range and quality. If you can get to the show room then do so. The staff are very helpful.

You can play them off against each other - take design onto next company and ask them to beat the price, then onto the next one. We did this with our first new kitchen a few years back (previous house). We circled round Wickes, Howdens, Magnet, Benchmarx and ended up several £1000s lower with a Wickes kitchen. That kitchen took a few months in the planning.

Most recent kitchen purchase (new house) took about ten days to plan (one session with designer followed by adjustments by email) as we had a much better idea of what we wanted as had the experience from last time. This kitchen is a Howdens one.