Get a Designer. It Is Worth Every Penny.

By Parham Shariat · October 25, 2026

People ask us whether they really need a designer. They have a Pinterest board, a contractor who says he can handle it, and a budget that already feels tight. Adding another fee is hard to swallow.

Our answer is always the same. Get a designer.

Do the math over ten years

You will live with your new kitchen for the next ten years, probably longer. So spread the design fee across that time.

Say the fee is $3,000. That is an example, and yours will vary. Over ten years it comes to $300 a year, or about 82 cents a day. For that, you get a kitchen planned around how you actually live, and the mistakes caught before they were built.

Now compare that to the cost of one wrong decision. A cabinet run that is two inches too long. A dishwasher door that hits the oven. An island with too little room to walk around it. Any one of those costs more to fix than the designer would have charged.

What a designer actually does

• Plans the layout so that cooking, cleaning and storage work together
• Checks clearances for doors, drawers, appliances and walkways
• Coordinates the details that nobody thinks about until they go wrong, like where outlets go and how the lighting is layered
• Helps you choose materials that match your budget and your daily routine
• Speaks the contractor's language, so what you imagine is what gets built
• Keeps the project honest, because the drawings show everyone what was agreed

Without a designer

Without one, those decisions still get made. They just get made by whoever is standing in your kitchen at the time, often in a hurry, and often by someone who will not be living there.

What a good designer asks you

A good designer asks about your life before they draw a line. How many people cook at once? How often do you entertain? Do you bake? What annoys you about the kitchen you have now? If someone starts picking finishes in the first meeting, keep looking.