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If you’ve ever remodeled a kitchen (or even considered it), you know what the phrase “sticker shock” means on a visceral level. Traditional, fitted kitchens are expensive, with an average cost of nearly $27,000 and highs that near $140,000. There’s another option that’s been growing in popularity, though: the freestanding unfitted kitchen.
A freestanding kitchen isn’t attached and built-in—(almost) every bit of it is freestanding and modular. These kinds of kitchens were once the norm, but fitted kitchens that were attached and tied into the walls and floor in a permanent way became standard in the 20th century. That’s what you’ll get if you just call up a designer or contractor and say you want a kitchen—but you should seriously consider a freestanding kitchen instead. There are a lot of advantages.
Lower cost
There are a lot of ways to keep costs down when doing a kitchen remodel or renovation, from buying stock cabinetry to finding some scratch-and-dent appliances that can be made presentable. But if you need a new kitchen and you’re on a tight budget, a freestanding kitchen is a win because you can start off with a bare-bones kitchen with a plan to add to it later. You can then add storage, appliances, or other features at any time—when things are on sale, when you find something for free, or when you’ve saved up enough to implement the next step of the plan.
You can also mix-and-match sources. Some aspects of your freestanding kitchen might come from Ikea, for example, while others might be sourced from a more upscale spot, like Vipp. You can play with the stores you buy from until you’ve got the kitchen you need for a price you can live with much more easily when (nearly) everything is freestanding than you can with a traditional fitted kitchen.
Easier DIY
Freestanding kitchens are usually much easier to install in general, and thus, they’re a lot more DIY-friendly. This can potentially make your kitchen much more affordable, because you won’t need to pay professional installers for a lot of things, like carpenters to install your cabinets. Even your appliances can probably be installed DIY, because they’re not built-in.
You might not be able to avoid all contractor expenses in a freestanding kitchen—plumbing and electrical work might require professional help. But if you’re moderately handy, you can probably handle the bulk of the installation yourself.
Modular upgrades
Building your freestanding kitchen bit by bit can be a way to control costs—but it also offers the opportunity to upgrade your kitchen on a rolling basis. Since you won’t have to rip anything out of the wall or tear anything up off the floor, you can swap in better cabinets or appliances any time you want. Renovating in stages is always a great way to keep stress levels low and bank account balances high, and a freestanding kitchen makes this approach super easy and straightforward. An unfitted kitchen also makes it easy to upgrade in a very targeted, surgical way, since you can literally upgrade one cabinet if there’s a single feature you want to get into your kitchen.
Reconfigurable
A freestanding kitchen can be reconfigured to a large extent at any time. If the traffic patterns and workflow in the kitchen aren’t working, you can move cabinets, appliances, and islands around at will (with the probable exception of the sink, since it is attached to the wall via the plumbing, and possibly the oven if it’s hooked up to a gas line). Find yourself constantly bumping into that oversized island you loved in the store? Move it to a new spot and see how it works. Want to have the pantry closer to your prep area? You can easily swap some cabinets around to try different layouts.
More flexible
If you’re living in a smaller home and you find yourself needing more space, whether it’s due to a growing family, a sudden roommate situation, or a switch to remote work, a freestanding kitchen is also a space you can easily repurpose. Since everything in there can be moved around or even removed, your kitchen can be transformed into a hybrid space for an office, a craft space, a dining room, or literally anything else you might need some room for.
Easier maintenance
A freestanding kitchen can also be a lot easier to maintain and clean. You can move everything away from the walls, so you can actually clean behind cabinets and appliances instead of discovering a horror show when you have to replace an oven or dishwasher ten years from now. If a pipe springs a leak, you can quickly move cabinets out of the way to avoid water damage. And if you need to repair an appliance or a cabinet, you have full access, and you can move them to a spot where you have all the light and space you need to get to work. This makes DIY repairs a lot easier, which in turn saves you more money, too.
