Ultimate IKEA Kitchen Review: Is the hassle worth it?
If you’ve found your way to this post today, you’re probably looking for an honest IKEA kitchen review.
Their budget-friendly price tag is incredibly tempting, but what are they like in reality? How do they hold up? Do they really cost as little as you think? And do the savings mean that, ultimately, you just get what you pay for?
The questions are endless, but after considering an IKEA kitchen three times and going for it twice, I’m here to answer them all for you in Fifi McGee’s first official IKEA kitchen review.
I’ll also give you an in-depth look at the latest IKEA kitchen I’ve had fitted in our AirBNB down in Cornwall.
To clarify, this post is not sponsored by IKEA. I paid for this kitchen, and all views are 100% my own.
IKEA Kitchen featuring askersund and stensund fronts
An honest IKEA kitchen review from someone who’s been there, done that and got the tea towels (twice).
Hello! I’m Anna, the serial renovator you’ll probably see pop up here from time to time, sharing my thoughts on all things budget-friendly interiors. First up is the down low on IKEA kitchens, which we know is one of the biggest topics you’ve been asking for to date.
As someone who’s fitted two of them over the course of eight years, I’m now ready to dish the dirt on the good, the bad and the ugly in this IKEA kitchen review.
If you’re in the process of planning or designing your dream kitchen, make sure to sign up to Fifi McGee’s Free Email series, How to Design a Kitchen.
IMAGE: IKEA Kitchen featuring askersund and stensund fronts
IKEA kitchen review: The Good
There are plenty of reasons you’d want to consider an IKEA kitchen, and I’ll go through a few of the positives here right now:
The price
The selection of styles
The speed of delivery
The additional options
The planning tool
365-day returns
Let’s start with the obvious: the price
I’m sure anyone considering an IKEA kitchen has this reason front and centre. They are very cheap. In fact, the cabinets, fronts and interiors in our latest renovation cost just £1,329. Clearly, that’s an absolute steal for a 4.5m wall of upper and lower cabinets compared to what you’d spend going bespoke or even somewhere like Magnet, who are more upfront with their rough prices.
Bespoke was never an option for us, but I did get a quote for beautiful plywood and custom-painted V-Groove doors that would fit onto the IKEA carcases. This option would have set us back an additional £3,940.80.
The custom ones looked stunning and would undoubtedly have added a premium look and feel, but ultimately, I had a budget to stick to.
If this were our family home, I would have bitten the bullet and whacked it on a credit card. But for somewhere that we would only visit a few times a year and let out the rest of the time, I think we made the right decision to compromise.
IMAGE: IKEA Kitchen featuring askersund and stensund fronts
Stylish options for every space
Like most budget kitchens, IKEA cabinet frames are made from MDF, with most of their doors finished with melamine-coated fibreboard.
LAXARBY, BJORKET, FILIPSTAD, EKESTAT and my personal favourite, FRÖJERED, all feature real wood, and there are glass and metal options too.
With 130 different styles and colours to choose from, this is huge compared to other budget brands, and they’re bringing out more all the time.
The trendy greens, blacks and neutrals we’ve seen all over Pinterest this year can be picked up alongside more traditional, timeless styles. So whatever property you’re working with or look you’re after, you can’t really go wrong.
It’s also great if you like the two-tone look we went for in Cornwall, as it’s super easy to mix and match.
Image: Courtesy of IKEA
Speedy delivery for when time is a factor
Let’s face it. We live in an age of Amazon Prime, where groceries can be delivered in minutes, and anything that takes more than a few days to arrive is old news already.
When it comes to kitchens, this might not sound like a priority, but speed really is a factor. With my latest project, it wasn’t just the budget I had to be strict on: time was of the essence. The custom doors I mentioned before were on a 6-8 week lead time, which is actually pretty quick compared to anything bespoke (around 12 weeks), but pushed our completion date back too far to start welcoming guests.
IKEA, on the other hand, could deliver everything we needed on a chosen date within about a week, provided it was in stock.
If you’re just desperate to get going or planning a quick fix as an interim solution while you save for the dream, time is probably a huge factor. I know a few people who’ve moved into a real ‘project’ and just want somewhere clean and practical STAT.
IKEA kitchens won’t let you down on this one.
They charge around £40 to deliver too, which really isn’t bad (despite the free alternatives we’ve come to expect). You can, of course, opt to click and collect or find each part in-store if you’re budget is even tighter.
Additional options you can add now or later
When used well, IKEA storage solutions are every organiser’s dream. Modular inserts for drawers, dividers for cupboards, cleaning compartments and waste-sorting solutions will help you give Marie Kondo a run for her money and keep your sanity in check too.
What’s great about these is that you don’t even need to buy everything at once. Is the drawer getting a bit cluttered? Grab some UPPDATERRA dividers to divvy up the space. Are your pot lids rattling all over the place? VARIERA’s got you covered.
These are the bits you can pick up when you’re next in-store, and because IKEA kitchens all have the same internal dimensions, you know it’s going to fit.
Grab some meatballs (and frozen cinnamon buns 🤤) while you’re at it.
IMAGE: Courtesy of IKEA
The IKEA kitchen planner: I’m on the fence
I want to love the IKEA kitchen planner. I really do. Its heart’s in the right place, and when it works well, it’s great. I just found it quite glitchy and hard to save anything down properly without it malfunctioning in some way.
It’s had an update since, and to be fair, my laptop is pretty ancient, so it might well run better on a more robust operating system so it’s definitely worth playing around with.
Here’s what you need to get started:
A measuring tape
Your room’s dimensions, including the length of each wall (even small ones that form corners) and the height of the ceiling
The location of any obstacles, measured from the wall
Size and placement of any windows or doors
…And a lot of patience
The most useful result of my plan was to work out just how many cupboards would fit once I’d accounted for appliances, the sink, space to hide bins etc.
Thankfully, as IKEA sell most appliances (and I ended up buying a few of them), these can be factored in too. The sizes are universal, so whether you buy yours from IKEA or elsewhere, they will probably fit into the same space.
Once you’re happy with your design, you can choose to drop everything into a shopping list or directly into your basket, so you’re ready to go.
my original IKEA kitchen design with a few missing doors
365-day returns: a bonus if anything’s left over
I was about to mention that the IKEA Kitchen Planner automatically added a few things we didn’t need in the end, meaning we had bits left over (annoying).
However, IKEA’s 365-day returns policy works on kitchens too and once I’d realised that it was a little Brucey bonus to realise I could claim about £100 back. I had to do this in-store, which probably meant spending my rebate almost before I’d gotten it, but the process was very straightforward. Thank you, IKEA.
But now for the bad.
IKEA Kitchen Review: The Bad
Let’s face it: nothing’s perfect. And with something as simple and budget-friendly as an IKEA kitchen, you will face a few hurdles.
This wouldn’t be an IKEA kitchen review without a few red flags. But as you know, I’ve still gone ahead with them twice, so, personally, I think they’re workable.
Here are my main gripes with them so far:
Endless boxes to build yourself
Your fitter might hate you
Designed for Scandi homes, with different kinds of pipework
Not great quality (you get what you pay for)
Appliances can be complicated
Prepare for box city
As the IKEA truck pulled up our tiny path to unload, the sicky dread kicked in.
Our renovation project was around 30m2 downstairs, and the boxes just kept coming. Small ones, big ones, flat ones, appliances; the space was getting taken over…fast. Not to mention we were trying to live there throughout this part of the build.
Our kitchen fitter had quoted extra to build all the units. But, to be honest, I don’t think he knew what he’d let himself in for. He was in over his head.
Most kitchens come as ready-made units that you just put straight into place, saving a LOT of time and effort. If you’ve ever built a flatpack wardrobe, you can probably get the gist. Imagine what it’s like to build an entire kitchen when every box looks the same and different components are buried inside different boxes. It’s like playing a giant game of real-life Jenga blindfolded.
…which leads me to the next point.
Your fitter is going to hate you
Unless you plan to build it yourself, which isn’t a bad idea if you’re a dab hand with an Allen key, your contractor will curse the day he took on your job.
Both the guys we used in our first reno project, and the ones down in Cornwall, started moaning the moment we mentioned the ‘I’ word.
“They’re rubbish”, they said.
“The pipes never fit.”
“They’ll fall apart in a couple of years”.
But we persevered.
Now, I’m no kitchen fitter, but I can see why they hate them. Their points are valid.
IKEA also have this knack of adding handy little additions to their units, like glass panels in the drawers that slot into the side arms and stop things from falling out. The trouble is, if a kitchen fitter isn’t aware of these, they’ll undoubtedly miss them during the build and you’ll end up with loads of handy parts that aren’t handy at all because they haven’t been fitted in the first place.
Unless you’re going to watch over their shoulder the whole time – which I really wouldn’t suggest – you’re going to lose out on some of IKEA’s most unique and nifty designs.
We also had problems trying to fit the front panel onto our integrated dishwasher, as it kept knocking against the kickboard and wouldn’t fully open. We needed the BEHJÄLPLIG sliding hinge in the end but it took a couple of weeks to resolve.
IMAGE: courtesy of IKEA
And then there’s the pipework
There is no space behind an IKEA cupboard to box in any kind of plumbing.
This is a problem if you need to run pipes to a dishwasher or washing machine or just want space under the sink that isn’t full of pipes that could be knocked about or damaged while you’re reaching for your bleach.
Both kitchen fitters I’ve used for IKEA kitchens have complained about this, and as far as I know, it’s because in Sweden, the houses and pipes are different.
I don’t really know if that’s true, but it’s probably the only reason it really makes sense.
To work around it here in the UK, you could either build a false back to a cupboard (drawers won’t work in this case, as they need the full depth), bring out the cabinets by 10cm and buy a wider worktop, or ask your fitter to reroute the pipes to as low a level as possible.
Not the best quality
I guess this is the question on everyone’s lips. How do they hold up?
While most off-the-shelf kitchens are all made with the same thin MDF, there’s something to be said for a factory build vs DIY.
Personally, I think the issue with IKEA cupboards is that they just look a bit flimsy. The coated fronts are easily knocked and damaged, and we had a couple of minor scuffs before the build was even finished.
As I mentioned before, I think upgrading to custom fronts would be a worthwhile investment if you don’t have the budget to go fully bespoke but want something to elevate the space.
Saying that, I’m sure the solid wood options would hold up a lot better, and I’m even considering replacing the shaker-style drawer fronts we had custom-fitted in 2015 with IKEA’s FRÖJERED fronts for an easy kitchen glow-up.
Internally, the fittings leave much to be desired. The HÅLLBAR waste sorting system is really flimsy, coming apart every time you open the drawer in both of our kitchens. The Benchmarx one we had fitted into a door in a previous property was perfect, even ten years on. Fi & Neil’s Howdens kitchen is virtually the same as when they bought it too (See their Howden’s Kitchen Review)
Likewise, if you want seamless additions that work as they should, I’d look to the above (which your fitter will love you for) or Magnet, who have some lovely on-trend kitchens these days too.
Image: courtesy of IKEA
Appliances can be complicated to operate
We went for an IKEA fridge/freezer, oven, hob and microwave in this project mainly because they were reasonably priced, looked good together and could be delivered alongside everything else, making logistics slightly easier.
I can’t fault the fridge/freezer in itself (there’s nothing fancy to make it stand out), but the way it fits into the unit is less than ideal. There’s a gap of a couple of inches at the top of the cupboard, which looks messy when the door’s open. But you don’t see that day-to-day.
The induction hob is actually pretty great. No complaints there. At £179, it’s definitely cheaper than others out there and cooks just as well as anything else I’ve used. It’s intuitive and has a child lock, which is handy with little ones around (although I’m sure this is a standard feature on most electric hobs these days).
The oven and microwave are where it falls down.
I’m sure with a bit of swotting up, operating these would become second nature, but the symbols and instructions just feel laboured.
As this property is a holiday home and guests won’t want to be reaching for the manual every time they start cooking, I wish I’d gone for something a bit simpler with more of a household brand name.
But they do look good.
IKEA Kitchen Review: the verdict’s in
Would I fit another IKEA kitchen? It depends.
If I were on another strict budget for a renovation that I wasn’t going to live in full time, then yes, I’d opt for IKEA.
If I moved into my ‘forever home’ and needed to spend the next 20 years renovating it to perfection, then yes, I’d choose IKEA as a quick solution while we saved for something more permanent.
If I were recommending it to someone with a very limited budget who was happy to compromise in a few areas to get a shiny new kitchen? Of course.
In an ideal world, we would not be restrained by budgets, and we’d all opt for solid wood, made-to-measure units with interior-designed layouts and luxury appliances.
But as the average homeowner changes their kitchen every 10-15 years, and trends seem to change every five minutes, I’d be inclined to save the cash and change it up more often (or at least give it a mini overhaul from time to time).
Nothing feels better than putting your own stamp on a place and I think an IKEA kitchen can do that cheaply, (relatively) easily and quickly too.
Just don’t complain when yet another arm pops off the inside of that drawer.
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