How to measure your kitchen for a worktop quote

First, the important caveat

What you measure is for quoting. It is never what we cut from. The cutting drawing comes from a digital template taken on site once your units are fitted and level, because walls are not square, floors are not flat and units are rarely where the plan said they would be. Any company that offers to cut from your measurements is transferring their risk onto you. So measure roughly, confidently and quickly. Precision here is not the point.

What you need

Step by step

1. 1

   Draw the room from above

   A rough plan view, not to scale. Mark the door, the window, and where each run of units goes. Label the runs A, B, C. This drawing is worth more to us than a list of numbers, because it tells us how the runs meet and where corners fall.

2. 2

   Measure each run wall to wall

   Measure the length of each run along the wall, in millimetres, at worktop height rather than at the floor. Where a run ends at a wall on both sides, say so. Those are the runs that need the tightest scribing. Where it ends in open air, note whether you want the stone to overhang the end unit.

3. 3

   Measure the depth

   Standard base units are 600mm deep and a worktop typically finishes somewhere between 600mm and 650mm to allow for an overhang at the front and services at the back. Measure the depth of your units and tell us if anything is non-standard: a deeper island, a shallow run beside a doorway, or a wall with a service duct behind it.

4. 4

   Do the island or peninsula separately

   Give us its length and width as a separate item, plus how much overhang you want for seating. If people will sit at it, we need to know from which side and how many, because an unsupported overhang beyond a certain span needs steel let into the cabinetry rather than brackets under it.

5. 5

   Count the cut-outs

   Sink, hob, taps, boiling-water tap, soap dispenser, pop-up sockets, drainer grooves. Each one is a separate priced item and they are the most common reason two quotes for the same kitchen differ. Note whether the sink is undermounted, inset or a Belfast, and whether the hob sits in the top or is a downdraught unit that cuts through it.

6. 6

   Measure upstands and splashbacks

   Upstands are usually 100mm high and are priced by the linear metre, so measure the total run they will cover. For a full-height splashback, measure the width and the height from worktop to the underside of the wall units, and tell us if there are sockets in it.

7. 7

   Note the awkward bits

   Chimney breasts, boxed-in pipework, radiators under a run, a window sill that comes down to worktop level, a boiler in a base unit, a doorway that limits how long a single piece can be brought in. These change the drawing and sometimes the number of joins, so they are worth a line each.

8. 8

   Photograph everything

   Stand in the doorway and photograph each run. Then a photo of each corner, each end, and anything you flagged in the previous step. If you can, hold the tape measure in shot on one photo per run. It gives us a scale reference and it catches errors in your numbers.

Working out roughly how much stone you need

Multiply each run’s length by its depth in metres, and add the runs together. A run 3.2m long and 0.62m deep is about 2.0m². Add the island the same way. That total is your rough area, and it is the number that drives the material side of the price.

Do not try to add a waste allowance. Leave that to us. Slabs come in fixed sizes, typically around 3.2m by 1.6m depending on the brand and the batch, and how your kitchen falls onto a slab decides how much of it you actually use. A kitchen with a 3.4m run may need either a join or a second slab, which is a much bigger swing in cost than a few square metres of area. That yield calculation is part of the quote, and it is one of the reasons two companies can price the same kitchen differently.

What to send us

If you have architect’s plans or a kitchen designer’s drawing, send those instead. A CAD plan or a supplier’s elevation carries everything above and saves you the ten minutes. We can work from a PDF, a photo of a printout, or the designer’s quote if it lists the runs.

What happens next

We come back with an indicative range the same day, so you know the ballpark before anyone visits. Once the design is settled we turn that into a fixed written quote with every cut-out, edge profile, upstand and join itemised. The number you approve is the number you pay. Then, when your units are fitted and level, we template properly and the fabrication drawings come off that.

From that template to a fitted worktop is 3–7 working days from template. Everything before it (choosing a colour, approving a quote, getting your units in) runs at your pace, which is why it is worth doing the ten minutes with the tape measure early rather than late.