Kitchen Renovation Cost Calculator
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Estimate a total kitchen renovation cost range by square footage and project tier, with a category-by-category budget breakdown.
Quick answer: A typical kitchen renovation costs $75 to $250 per square foot for cosmetic-to-mid-range work, according to HomeAdvisor's 2026 cost data — a 200 sq ft mid-range remodel runs roughly $30,000-$50,000. Cabinets (about 30% of budget) and labor (about 25%) together account for more than half of most kitchen renovation costs, per Angi's 2026 published breakdown.
Total Estimated Cost Range
Category amounts are an illustrative split of the midpoint cost, not a precise sub-estimate — see "Where Your Kitchen Renovation Budget Actually Goes" below.
📐 Formula
Total cost range = square footage × tier's $/sq ft range (low to high). Midpoint = (low + high) ÷ 2. Each category's illustrative dollar amount = midpoint × that category's typical percentage of budget (Cabinets ~30%, Labor ~25%, Appliances ~14%, Countertops ~10%, Flooring ~8%, Plumbing & Electrical ~8%, Permits & Design ~5%).
How to Use the Kitchen Renovation Cost Calculator
Enter your kitchen's square footage
Enter the square footage of the kitchen you're renovating, from a small galley kitchen to a large open-plan space.
Choose your renovation tier
Pick Cosmetic/Minor, Mid-Range, or High-End/Major based on the scope of work you're planning — each tier uses its own published per-square-foot cost range.
Review your total estimated cost range
Review the low-to-high dollar range for your project, based on your square footage and chosen tier.
Review the illustrative category breakdown
Review roughly how that budget typically splits across cabinets, labor, countertops, appliances, flooring, plumbing and electrical, and permits and design fees.
Why Kitchen Renovation Cost Isn't a Precise Calculation
Most calculators on this site work out a material quantity — how many bricks, how many gallons of paint, how many bags of mortar — from a single manufacturer coverage rate. That kind of math is close to deterministic: trust the spec sheet, and the answer barely moves. Kitchen renovation cost is a genuinely different kind of question. There's no manufacturer publishing a "coverage rate" for a whole kitchen, because a kitchen renovation is really dozens of separate purchasing decisions — cabinets, countertops, appliances, flooring, labor, permits — bundled into one project, each with its own wide price range that depends on brand, material, and local market.
That's why the real estate and cost-data industry reports kitchen renovation prices as a range, not a fixed figure. HomeAdvisor puts the overall span at $75 to $250 per square foot; Angi's independently gathered data lands on a similar national average, with most homeowners spending between roughly $14,589 and $41,550 depending on scope. This calculator is built around that same honesty: it gives you a sourced range and shows you exactly what moves you toward the top or bottom of it, rather than pretending a single number could ever be right for every kitchen in the country.
What Actually Moves Your Project Within This Range
Square footage alone only gets you so far — two 200 sq ft kitchens can land at opposite ends of the mid-range tier depending on the choices below. These are the factors renovation-cost sources consistently point to as the biggest swing factors:
Cabinet quality. Stock cabinets (mass-produced, limited sizes and finishes) cost the least; semi-custom cabinets (stock boxes with more finish and sizing options) sit in the middle; fully custom cabinetry, built to exact specifications, costs the most by a wide margin. Since cabinets are typically the single largest line item in a kitchen budget, this one choice alone can shift a project by thousands of dollars.
Whether the layout, plumbing, or electrical is moving. This is the single biggest cost driver cited across renovation-cost sources. A kitchen that keeps its sink, range, dishwasher, and outlets exactly where they already are avoids licensed-trade labor for relocating gas lines, water lines, drain lines, and circuits — plus the wall and floor work needed to get to them. Moving any of those pushes a project meaningfully up the tier scale, often out of cosmetic/minor territory entirely.
Countertop material. Laminate is the budget option; granite and quartz sit in the mid-range; exotic stone, waterfall edges, and large-format slabs push into high-end pricing. Countertops are usually a smaller share of the budget than cabinets or labor, but the spread between the cheapest and priciest material is enormous.
Appliance tier. A budget appliance package and a professional-grade, built-in appliance suite can differ by tens of thousands of dollars for the same four appliances (range, refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave or hood), independent of anything else in the kitchen.
Region and local labor rates. Every national figure on this page is a US average — actual contractor labor rates vary substantially by metro area and even by neighborhood, and that variation applies on top of every other factor above. A published national range is a starting point for budgeting, not a substitute for local quotes.
Worked Example: A 200 Sq Ft Kitchen at the Mid-Range Tier
Take a 200 sq ft kitchen at the Mid-Range tier ($150-$250 per sq ft):
Total cost range = 200 sq ft × $150-$250/sq ft = $30,000-$50,000 — matching the Quick Answer above.
Midpoint = ($30,000 + $50,000) ÷ 2 = $40,000.
Cabinets (~30%) ≈ $12,000. Labor (~25%) ≈ $10,000.
Appliances (~14%) ≈ $5,600. Countertops (~10%) ≈ $4,000.
Flooring (~8%) ≈ $3,200. Plumbing & electrical (~8%) ≈ $3,200. Permits & design (~5%) ≈ $2,000.
A smaller 100 sq ft galley kitchen at the same tier scales down to a $15,000-$25,000 total range; a larger 300 sq ft kitchen at High-End/Major ($250-$400/sq ft) scales up to $75,000-$120,000. The percentages apply the same way at every size — they're a share of your own midpoint, not a fixed dollar figure.
Kitchen Renovation Cost Tiers
These three tiers are consistent across HomeAdvisor's and Angi's published cost data, and they're the tier structure this calculator uses. Pick the one that matches the scope you're actually planning, not just the one you'd prefer to spend.
| Tier | $/Sq Ft Range | What's Typically Included |
|---|---|---|
| Cosmetic / Minor | $75-$150 | Cabinet refacing or repainting, new hardware, laminate or budget-tile countertops, refreshed backsplash, new flooring over the existing footprint, no layout or plumbing/electrical changes. |
| Mid-Range | $150-$250 | New stock or semi-custom cabinets, quartz or granite countertops, mid-range appliances, tile backsplash, updated lighting, and sometimes a few plumbing or electrical relocations. |
| High-End / Major | $250-$400 | Custom or high-end semi-custom cabinetry, premium countertop materials, professional-grade appliances, full layout reconfiguration including moved plumbing and electrical, and designer-level finishes. |
Where Your Kitchen Renovation Budget Actually Goes
Cabinets and labor are the two figures with the strongest, most consistent sourcing: HomeAdvisor and Angi both independently put cabinets at roughly 30% of total budget — more than any other single category — and labor at roughly 25%. Together those two categories alone typically account for more than half of what a kitchen renovation costs, before a single countertop or appliance is chosen.
No single published source breaks the remaining share into a clean, universally agreed set of categories the way cabinets and labor are sourced, so the split shown here for appliances (~14%), countertops (~10%), flooring (~8%), plumbing & electrical (~8%), and permits & design fees (~5%) is an illustrative typical split, built from published remodel-cost proportions rather than one single authoritative table. Treat the dollar amounts this calculator shows for those five categories as a reasonable planning reference, not a precise sub-estimate — your own project's actual split will vary by exactly the factors covered above.
Why Your Contractor's Quote Might Differ From This Estimate
A real contractor's quote and this calculator's output are answering slightly different questions. This tool applies a national published range to your square footage; a contractor's quote reflects your exact cabinet line, your specific countertop slab, your local labor market, your home's actual condition behind the walls, and that contractor's own overhead and margin. None of that is visible from square footage alone. Use this calculator to sanity-check whether a quote is in a reasonable ballpark for your tier and region — a quote wildly outside the range for your chosen tier is worth a second look, in either direction — but treat the actual signed quote as the number that governs your budget, not this estimate.
Once you've got a rough total budget in mind, it's worth pricing the individual pieces too. If your renovation includes a new tile backsplash or floor, our tile calculator works out tile count, thin-set mortar, and grout by area. If cabinets or walls are getting a fresh coat instead of full replacement, our paint coverage calculator works out gallons needed the same square-footage way this tool works out cost. If you're weighing how to pay for the project, our budget calculator can help fit it into your overall monthly budget, and our home equity calculator works out how much borrowing capacity you actually have against your home if you're considering a home equity loan or HELOC. Browse every tool in this category on our renovation calculators hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most kitchen renovations cost $75 to $250 per square foot, according to HomeAdvisor's 2026 cost data, with a national average project cost of about $27,013. Angi's independent 2026 data puts the average slightly higher at $26,943, with most homeowners spending between $14,589 and $41,550. A 200 sq ft kitchen at the common mid-range tier ($150-$250/sq ft) typically runs $30,000 to $50,000, before accounting for region, contractor, and exact scope.
A mid-range kitchen renovation, roughly $150-$250 per sq ft, typically includes new stock or semi-custom cabinets, quartz or granite countertops, mid-range appliances, a tile backsplash, updated lighting, and sometimes a few plumbing or electrical relocations. That's a step up from a cosmetic refresh (refacing existing cabinets, laminate counters, keeping the same layout) but stops short of the full layout reconfiguration, custom cabinetry, and structural changes that define a high-end remodel.
Unlike a material-quantity calculation with one fixed coverage rate, kitchen renovation cost is driven by dozens of independent choices — cabinet quality, countertop material, appliance tier, whether plumbing and electrical are being moved, and local labor rates — each of which can swing total cost by thousands of dollars on its own. HomeAdvisor and Angi's published ranges reflect real projects across the whole country, so a single square-footage figure can only ever narrow the range, not replace a contractor's quote for your specific kitchen.
Cabinets typically account for about 30% of a kitchen renovation budget, per both HomeAdvisor and Angi's 2026 published cost breakdowns — more than any other single category, since cabinetry drives both material and installation cost. Labor is usually the next-largest share at around 25% of the total. Together, cabinets and labor make up more than half of most kitchen renovation budgets before countertops, appliances, flooring, or anything else is factored in.
This calculator applies national published per-square-foot ranges to your square footage — it has no way to know your local labor rates, your exact cabinet and countertop selections, whether your layout is changing, or your contractor's own overhead and margin, all of which shift real quotes up or down. Treat this tool's output as a planning-stage starting range to budget against, and treat a written contractor quote for your specific kitchen as the number that actually matters once you're ready to sign a contract.
Yes, significantly — relocating plumbing or electrical to change a kitchen's layout is one of the single biggest cost drivers renovation-cost sources identify, since it adds licensed-trade labor, permitting, and often wall or floor work beyond the visible finishes. A kitchen that keeps its sink, range, and outlets in their existing locations stays firmly in the cosmetic-to-mid-range tier; moving any of them tends to push a project toward the higher end of the mid-range tier or into high-end territory.
Sources & Methodology
The $75-$250 per sq ft overall range, the $27,013 national average, and the size-based benchmarks come from HomeAdvisor's 2026 published kitchen remodel cost data. The $26,943 national average, the $14,589-$41,550 typical spending range, and the ~30% cabinets / ~25% labor budget shares are independently confirmed by Angi's 2026 published kitchen remodel cost data — the two sources' figures corroborate each other closely. The three-tier structure (Cosmetic/Minor, Mid-Range, High-End/Major) and their $/sq ft bands reflect the overlapping ranges both sources describe for cosmetic, mid-scope, and major kitchen work. The illustrative split for appliances, countertops, flooring, plumbing & electrical, and permits & design is built from typical proportions reported across published kitchen remodel cost breakdowns, since no single source provides one universally agreed table for every category. Unlike a manufacturer coverage-rate spec, renovation cost figures are inherently regional and scope-dependent — treat every dollar figure on this page as a planning range, not a fixed price, and verify against local contractor quotes before budgeting.