top tips for getting a budget kitchen to look like an expensive kitchen!

[ministryofsleep]

we have a galley kitchen that is getting replaced in January. Budget is around £5-6,000 for everything including appliances. Does anyone have any tips to make it look more expensive if that's possible or can recommend any particular suppliers

Ikea units are great quality and cheap (the sliding out drawers are fab as you can get stuff out that's right at the back really easily). Then spend a lot of money on appliances, worksurface, splashbacks, floor and lighting.

Also have a look on the websites of Living Etc and Elle Decoration for ideas.

I would spend money on really great appliances and not cover them up - nice stainless steel fronted dishwasher and fridge-freezer. Great lighting - good lighting is surprisingly inexpensive. Good doors. Metro tiling and formica worktops are cheap cheap cheap and can look great - how about a coloured metro tile? Red can look great with stainless steel appliances.

We got a cheap-ish kitchen but with solid surface worktops - nice and chunky and look fab. They're more expensive than laminate but have seamless joints, never peel and do look nicer. Try the top class carpentry website.

Good quality sinks can be cheap if you shop around. We got a bargain Franke sink and tap by comparing prices then haggling the price down from a local supplier.

Inegrate your appliances where possible and you can use cheapie ones! Again, online suppliers can be very cheap.

Homebase are normally expensive but can be surprisingly competitive for ceramic tiles. We got our floor tiles for £8sqm. They only do cheapies in beige or charcoal though so if you want something else, it's a bit limiting!

Hi Fleecy, did you source all your materials yourself and get a kitchen fitter to install it for you? Was wondering if this might be a cheaper option than going to 1 store?

Ooh yes, second that - good lighting can make or break a kitchen. Spend time thinking about how you will use it and nick ideas from magazines, then shop around.

Howdens are good so your white gloss should be pretty good for that. We have white gloss units, flint encore worktops and upstand (dark grey colour), charcoal ceramic tile floor, dove grey walls and this in the green on one wall (away from the hob so it doesn't get steamy!).

I know it's not to everyone's taste but it looks gorgeous and expensive and I love it. So basic white units and grey accessories with accents of a bright colour can look v. lovely.

MoS - I highly recommend Ikea but with a really good carpenter. That is the best place to spend money imho. Let me put it this way we have a kitchen that is relatively large (table can seat 8 and room around that..) and I had a budget of 5k. I sourced the cabinets at Ikea - they are very good quality and the people that make them do so for v expensive kitchens too. The key is to be clever with everything - you are obviously internet savvy so look at the appliances instore and then bargain hunt on the web (worked for us - american double fridge paid £600 for it when it was well over 1K in the shops.

We have 3 walls of cabinets from Ikea which were approx £1200 (all in I might add!!) I then spent the same on the worktops (granite) which was the most expensive part of the kitchen really. I chose door handles from ikea but only after searching around and going back to them. It looks far better than my friends 20k kitchen and she has said so too........

I also recommend for a galley kitchen a light colour to make the room bigger looking. But the key is a really good carpenter who can do the work, and they are worth spending the money on as it won't look cheap then. If it makes any difference I looked and looked and kept going back to ikea (took a long time but worth it) and decided that if those kitchens which are probably opened more in one weekend than mine are in a year are still in one piece then they couldn't be all bad. You also don't spend so much on the insides of it which can really add up.

Hope that helps!

Cross-post there!

We went to a local family-run firm then to Howdens and got the local firm to match Howdens!

For fitting, I got quotes from the local firm who were supplying and from some local kitchen fitters. Again, the suppliers agreed to match the price so I gave them the job as I thought it would be easier to manage if the firm supplying the units also fitted them.

I sourced all the appliances, worktops etc myself (took days of online and in person scouring though!) and asked the kitchen people to match. In some cases they did (and beat my prices on a couple). Where they didn't match, I bought online or elsewhere and they just installed them for me.

I don't know what my kitchen cost as we had building work done at the same time, plus new heating installed, plumbing moved all around etc.

But I do know I couldn't have done it for less. It took a lot of planning but it looks much more expensive than it was and the rest of the house now looks very shabby in comparison!

Also - if you have a builder to do it, Howdens usually give them a discount so well worth looking there, my only problem with them was that I couldn't actually go in and see a kitchen, it was only through catalogues which although I liked them I wanted to "feel" them too.

If you do use a local firm either to supply or to fit, ask them for recommendations for your appliances.

I made a list of the cheapest ones I could find online and they told me which ones were a bargain and which ones were a false economy. For example, I wanted an induction hob and found two very good value ones online. They told me one of them was a rubbish make and one of them (which I'd never heard of and which turned out to come with a free set of saucepans - bargain) was a brilliant buy.

A good working relationship with your supplier/fitter is a bonus! So even if you do go down the Ikea or similar route, your fitter might be able to help.

Oh - my friend is a builder and has a Howdens account. The way it works is that Howdens sell to them fairly cheap then the builder puts their own mark-up on it.

So if you use the same builder to buy you a Howdens kitchen and fit it, you should be able to knock them down a bit on price as they won't need to make lots of money on the kitchen mark-up if they're fitting it as well.

appliances mine are neff

There are loads of litle touches that make kitchens look more expensive than they are: biscuit joins, under cabinet lighting, quality handles, quality tap and sink, sunken pipework....the list goes on.

Good worktops
Floating shelves to replace some cupboards
Lighting fitted into shelving
Upstands instead of tiles - cheaper and allows you to spend money elswhere
Glass splashback behind hob
Clean lines - avoid nooks and crannies, wine racks etc
Chrome sockets
Squared-off edges on wooden worktops - more contemporary looking than rounded edges

That sink is brilliant. Couldn't find anything like that two years ago. Got one made in the end. Good design with how the front comes out a bit more. Ours has a front that is flusher to cupboards under and they have suffered a bit from water damage.

WORKTOPS are the key to any expensive looking kitchen!!!!!

What are upstands?

Flat 'splashback' things that run along the back of the worktop, can be glass, coloured, stainless steel, etc

Personally i think much of it is also in the fit as well. The quality of the fitter and the small details really much a heck of a difference.

I'd definately recommend Ikea BUT the walls have to be virtually flat and straight as there is only a tiny amount of room for manouevre. My DP fitted one and did his own adding onto the back where we needed stuff going on behind. It is possible but I think you'd need an independent fitter who was aware of what you wanted before hand.

thanks everyone - some really good ideas. think it sounds like good worktops and accessories are the way to go - off to do some more research now. If anyone else has any tip they will be gratefully received

Hi DoodleyDoo we really love ikea kitchens but have always thought the pipework running along one wall would be an issue - think we may need to get advice from a joiner or kitchen fitter to see if the units could be adapted. Thanks for your help

If you are you in the South West I can recommend someone who makes amazing hand built kitchens for around the same prices as B&Q

It's great to make it look expensive, but don't forget that you (probably) need a kitchen to work really well as well. If you spend too much on the look, you may be sacrificing some of the practicality, which will just mean it ends up somewhat messy and annoying.

Take a look at your current kitchen right now, and think about what is not working with it - e.g. is there a lot of stuff that hasn't been put away because there isn't a good place for it? When you open a cupboard, can you see and get out everything you need straight away, or do you have to pull things out to get at the things at the back, and then put the first things back in the cupboard as well?

We just bought a new kitchen, and spent a fortune on the cabinets, and skimped on the worktops, which is exactly what everyone tells you not to do - because you can fit far, far more stuff in in series of drawers (more expensive) than you can in a cupboard taking up the same amount of space, and, long term, we would rather have the space and ease of use in the kitchen than posh worktops.

This is the second galley kitchen we've had re-fitted, and having seen what an amazing effect better storage had on the previous kitchen, there was no way we were going back to having cupboards.

That said, I've heard very good things about Ikea kitchens, and if we hadn't known exactly what we wanted, might have gone for them this time.

We have solid oak floors from Wickes too. It was fab because they were on offer when we bought them and we had five packs to take back. By the time we took them back it wasn't on offer anymore so they gave usthe amount they cost now back, we made around an £80 profit!

We have Adel Ikea units and a solid oak ikea worktop. Solid oak is fine if you sand and oil it every so often and it's really satisfying afterwards as it looks like new.

I got neff and smeg appliances for £1600. - I got the best oven I could afford, a cheapish but still Smeg dishwasher and an unbranded extractor. Ikea hob was free with kitchen. I went to magnet for the chat about the appliances, then found cheapest prices online. Then I went to brilliant local retailer and got them to match the prices. The delivery was £10 instead of £50.

I got reclaimed teak laboratory worktops for £300 - price of cheapest bad laminate top.

Shame about the ikea issue. Could you buy an extra wide worktop and just put the Ikea cabinets in front of the heating pipes? Worth checking? They're fab - and with places like Magnet, Howdens etc you pay extra for all the innards and baskets that actually make the cupboards work. My kitchen was £1600. Not including assembly or installation, mind you.

Also get kitchen plans from lots of places so that when you actually buy you know you're getting the best possible layout for your money, if the current layout isn't ok.