Kitchen Specification Checklist for Architects and Interior Designers

A kitchen is one of the few elements in a residential job where the drawing and the order are almost entirely different documents. The plan shows arrangement; the order needs quantities, widths, finishes and model numbers. Somewhere between the two, decisions get made — and if the specification has not made them, somebody else will.

This is a working checklist for closing that gap. It is written from the receiving end: these are the things a supplier has to know before a kitchen can be priced accurately, and the things that most often come back as queries.

State explicitly, or leave open

Not everything needs pinning down. Over-specifying is its own problem — it creates queries about details nobody cares about and makes the document harder to value-engineer sensibly later. The test is simple: does this change the price, or does it change whether the thing physically fits? If yes, state it. If no, it can wait.

The checklist

1. Carcass

• Every cabinet by type and width in millimetres — a “600 base” and a “500 base” are different products, and “eight base units” cannot be priced.
• Cabinet family named against a real range: highline base, drawerline base, wall, corner, larder, appliance housing, bridging and boiler units.
• Rigid or flat-packed, stated once and clearly. Rigid cabinets arrive built and glued, which removes assembly from the programme but takes more space on delivery and in storage.
• Cabinet height and depth where they deviate from standard, particularly under a low window or against a boxed service run.
• Units with a specific job flagged: the sink base, the housing for the built-in oven, the unit taking the integrated dishwasher, and any cabinet enclosing a boiler.

2. Doors, fronts and visible panels

• Door style and the exact colour name, stated once at the head of the section rather than repeated per line.
• A front for every drawer — a drawerline unit with a three-drawer pack needs three fronts, not one door. Browse the full kitchen doors range to fix a colour by its catalogue name.
• Contrast elements (an island, a run of tall units) split into their own sub-section, not annotated line by line.
• End panels counted physically — walk the plan and mark every cabinet side that will be visible, including the end of an island run.
• Plinth, cornice and pelmet in metres, with L and U-shaped rooms measured rather than estimated.

3. Worktop, upstand and splashback

• Décor named, and the range it comes from — Kronodesign or Duropal.
• Profile: postformed or square-edged. These are visually and dimensionally different and are not interchangeable late in a job.
• Run lengths given wall by wall, not as a single total. Three separate 2.4m runs and one continuous 7.2m run need different quantities of board.
• Depth and thickness taken from the product page for the décor chosen — these vary, and an island or a peninsula often needs a deeper board than the perimeter.
• Matching upstands and splashbacks specified in the same section as the worktop so they come from the same batch.
• Cut-outs, jointing and edge treatment noted as site works, with dimensions of the hob and sink apertures given so the installer has them.

4. Hardware and internal fittings

• Handles by model and finish, counted per door and per drawer front.
• Hinges and drawer boxes stated as included or excluded — in writing, on both the specification and the quotation.
• Pull-outs, corner solutions, bin systems and internal storage and waste listed against the specific cabinet each one sits in.
• Any soft-close requirement written as a requirement rather than assumed from the price.

5. Appliances, sink and tap

• Make and model number for every appliance. “Integrated single oven” is not a specification — the model determines the housing, the aperture and often the worktop cut-out.
• Built-in, built-under, integrated or freestanding stated for each item across ovens, hobs, cooker hoods, dishwashers, fridge freezers and washing machines.
• Extraction: ducted or recirculating, and where the duct goes. This is decided at design stage or it is decided badly on site.
• Sink and tap by model, with bowl configuration and whether it is inset or undermounted — the latter changes what the worktop has to be.
• Every appliance cross-checked against the cabinet in front of it. Full appliance dimensions belong in the specification, not in an email later.

6. Services and builder's work

These are not supplied by a kitchen supplier, but leaving them out of the specification is how a correctly supplied kitchen still fails to fit.

• Positions for hot and cold supply, waste, and isolation valves, related to cabinet positions.
• Socket and switch positions, including anything behind an appliance that must remain accessible.
• Gas or electrical provision for the hob, and the supply required by the specific model.
• Extract duct route and termination.
• Wall construction where wall units and tall units are fixed — dot-and-dab and metal stud both need to be known in advance.
• Floor finish and level, and whether the floor runs under the cabinets, because it changes the plinth height.

Specify to a real catalogue, not an ideal one

The most common failure in a kitchen specification is not an omission. It is a specification written against a product that does not exist in the form described — a door colour from one range, a cabinet width from another, a worktop depth taken from a generic figure rather than from the actual board.

It gets discovered at ordering stage, when the person pricing it has to substitute something. At that point the substitution is being made by whoever is quickest, not by whoever designed the room. Working from live catalogue pages while you write — cabinets, doors, worktops — avoids the whole problem, and takes less time than resolving it afterwards.

Check availability before client sign-off

Present a client with a colour and they will fall in love with it. If it then turns out to be unavailable in the quantity or the timescale the job needs, you own that conversation, not the supplier.

Ask the question before the presentation, not after it — particularly on a décor or a colour doing a lot of the design work, on any long programme, and on anything specified across multiple plots. Brooklands will confirm what is available against a specification free of charge; use the project submission form and we aim to reply within one working day.

Writing a spec that survives value engineering

Every specification meets a cost exercise eventually. A well-structured one survives it; a flat list gets cut in the places that hurt most, because whoever is cutting cannot see which lines are doing the design work.

• Separate the visible from the invisible. Doors, worktop, handles and the sink and tap are what the client sees. The carcass platform behind them is not. Structuring the document that way means the cheaper answer is found in the right half.
• Mark the load-bearing lines. Say plainly which two or three items the scheme depends on, and why. An unmarked line is a line someone will assume is neutral.
• Offer the alternative yourself. If a décor is likely to be challenged on cost, name an acceptable second choice in the specification. That is far better than discovering what got chosen for you.
• Never leave a specification with only a total. An itemised document can be reduced sensibly; a single figure can only be reduced by guesswork.
• Protect the quantities. Panels, plinth and worktop lengths are quantities, not choices. They are the first things cut and the first things to fail on site.

Residential and development specifications are different documents

A one-off residential kitchen is specified for a client and a room. Precision matters more than repeatability, the appliance list is usually driven by preference, and the design can afford to be particular about a finish.

A development specification is a different job. Write one schedule per plot type and state the quantity of each — “two-bed apartment × 14” is far easier to check and to change than a single list of 340 cabinets. Keep the cabinet platform identical across plot types and vary only the visible items between tiers, so a change to one tier does not force a rebuild of the whole document, and so replacements remain interchangeable years later. There is more on structuring this on the multi-unit kitchen projects page.

Build in tolerance on a development. Over a long programme, models get superseded and finishes get discontinued, so state a substitution rule — what may be swapped, what may not, and who approves it — rather than leaving it to whoever is placing the order in phase four.

Be explicit about the scope of supply

Worth stating on the front page of any kitchen specification, because it determines who is responsible for what.

Brooklands supplies material: cabinets, doors, panels, worktops, appliances, sinks, taps, handles and storage. Cabinets can be supplied fully rigid — built and glued before delivery — or flat-packed. Rigid assembly is not installation.

Brooklands does not install kitchens, and does not cut, joint, template, form cut-outs or otherwise fabricate worktops. Worktops are supplied as pre-finished lengths in the profiles and sizes listed on each product page; all cutting and jointing happens on site. A specification that assumes a fabricated worktop will arrive is a specification that will fail at second fix, so write the site works into the contractor's scope from the start. There is more detail on the trade worktops page and the trade units page.

Trade and project pricing is assessed individually according to the products, quantities and requirements of each project.

Frequently asked questions