What influences the price of furniture?
Is it worth saving on kitchen furniture?
Price or quality, or maybe quality and price?

Most of us – sooner or later – face the need to choose kitchen furniture. In search of inspiration, we browse thousands of photos on the Internet, order catalogs of kitchen furniture manufacturers, and become regular visitors to local stores offering kitchens. Finally, feeling confident and aware of our own needs, we start to become interested in concrete facts. Suddenly, it turns out that the prices of the kitchen range from several to even several hundred thousand zlotys. The question is why are some kitchens more expensive than others?

Personalization

Much depends on whether the furniture we want to buy is part of an existing furniture system (such as the Premium Line furniture (https://bit.ly/3SnHW2q) or is made to our individual order. As of the production of furniture, it depends on if it will be possible to use the currently operating production, or the production process will have to be re-created taking into account our individual needs, such as non-standard dimensions of cabinet bodies, so ready-made systems are cheaper and often available immediately. When it comes to furniture made to measure, we should take into account a higher cost, and we will have to wait a little longer for our order to be processed.

Kitchen furniture frames

Kitchen furniture bodies are like the backbone of a human being – they have to bear an often exorbitant burden. And although you should not look for savings here, it is worth remembering that the thickness and type of material from which the body is made affect the final price of our dream kitchen. Kitchen furniture bodies are most often made of laminated chipboard with a thickness of 16 mm or 18 mm. Some kitchen furniture manufacturers differentiate the individual colors of the available bodies with their price – white is usually a cheaper option. It is worth remembering about this when designing your new kitchen.

Furniture fronts

Furniture fronts are the undisputed showcase of the kitchen. In fact, it is the fronts of the cabinets that take the biggest part in the final price of kitchen furniture. In addition to aesthetic reasons, they must show many additional properties that will guarantee us many years of use of our new furniture. It should be remembered that the conditions in the kitchen are specific (just like in the bathroom) and impact the life span of the material that we choose for the fronts of the cabinets. Therefore, before making the final choice, it is worth considering how intensively the room will be used by us.
The cheapest solution is to select the fronts made of chipboard – the same one from which the cabinets are made. – Prices per m2 of fronts, with this solution, start from several dozen zlotys.
Another, slightly more expensive version are the fronts made of MDF, covered with a special foil in the color chosen by the customer. It is one of the options most often chosen and liked by customers for several reasons: at a relatively low price, we get a product with better resistance to moisture or mechanical damage. Of course, proper care must not be forgotten, so that the furniture fronts will enjoy our eye longer.
Another option are varnished fronts, which are also created on the basis of MDF boards. During production, a special varnish is applied to the board, the color of which can be selected by the customer from the palette available at the manufacturer. With this solution, you can also decide whether the fronts of our cabinets will look better in mat, semi-matt or gloss.
On the other hand, veneered fronts are nothing more than an MDF board covered with a special, thin layer of wood. Thanks to this, the durability of the front is much greater, as well as resistance to temperature changes, air humidity or mechanical damage. As you can easily guess, veneered fronts are one of the most expensive – their prices reach up to several thousand zlotys per m2.

Worktops

Kitchen worktops can be made of many different materials. The most popular are: laminate, stone, wood and conglomerate. Each of these materials has different properties and looks different. The cheapest option, i.e., a laminated top is sensitive to water, while stone or wooden tops are susceptible to mechanical damage. Trends appear, last, and then pass, so when choosing the right worktop for us, it is important that it not only matches the style of our new kitchen, but also meets the needs of our kitchen activity.

Equipment, Accessories, Extras

Often, what is not visible at first glance is of great importance. It is similar with kitchen furniture. Whether we smile at our new kitchen also depends on the equipment and accessories that we decide on at the design stage. We can choose from the basic options, or use more expensive solutions that are to further improve the functionality of the furniture. While navigating between the endless ocean of possibilities, also at this point, it is worth answering the question about your own needs.
Among the solutions most often chosen by customers, for which you have to pay a lot of extra money, we can find various types of mechanisms for drawers, thanks to which drawers will close silently, will be able to bear even more or guarantee trouble-free operation for the next years. Depending on the number of drawers, the final price of the furniture may increase by several hundred or even several thousand zlotys.
Another solution is dedicated to bottom and corner cabinets. Mechanisms such as carousels, retractable baskets, retractable shelves or cargo cabinets are an additional expense of several hundred to several thousand zlotys. This is the most popular category of solutions among customers, and although you have to pay a lot for them, after time many customers find that it was worth it.
Drawer inserts for plates or cutlery, built-in dish dryers, systems for efficient waste segregation, contacts hidden in the counter – furniture manufacturers compete with each other, offering more and more sophisticated accessories that are to make our life easier and work in the kitchen even more pleasant and enjoyable, more efficient. However, these are additions that significantly affect the final price of our kitchen. It may turn out that most of the options – although they are functional – will not be used, so it makes no sense to decide to buy them. As with any purchase, common sense is important here as well.

The price of a kitchen depends on many factors. In the case of a limited budget, we have to decide which elements are most significant to us and which we could give up. However, before we start deleting individual items from the project, remember that this is a choice for the coming years.