What to Include When Requesting a Trade Kitchen Quote
Share
Short answer: a kitchen supplier needs eight things to price a project properly — a cabinet list with widths and quantities, the door style and colour, whether you want cabinets rigid or flat-packed, worktop décor, profile and run lengths, the finishing items, appliances and sinks by model, handles and storage, and a delivery postcode with the date you need it on site. Send all eight and you get a firm itemised price back. Send three of them and you get a week of questions.
Most quote requests that land with a kitchen supplier cannot be priced as written. Not because they are badly intentioned, but because they leave out the two or three details that change the number. The supplier then emails back asking, the buyer replies two days later, and a job that could have been quoted the same day takes a fortnight.
This guide is written from the receiving end. It sets out exactly what to put in the email, what to do if you have no plan at all, and how to read the quotation when it comes back.
Why “how much is a kitchen?” cannot be answered
It is the most common opening line in a trade enquiry and it has no useful answer. A kitchen is not one product; it is between forty and two hundred separate items, and almost every variable moves the total independently.
Two kitchens in identically sized rooms can differ by a factor of three. One has eight base units, a laminate worktop and a freestanding cooker. The other has a larder bank, an island, integrated appliances and twice the door count. Both are “a kitchen for a three-bed semi”. Neither price tells you anything about the other.
What a supplier can do quickly is price a defined list. So the fastest route to a number is not to ask what a kitchen costs — it is to describe the kitchen you actually want.
The eight things every quote request needs
| # | What to send | Why it changes the price |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cabinet list: type and width in mm, with quantities | Every width is a different product; “10 base units” cannot be priced |
| 2 | Door style and colour | Determines the door cost, which is often the largest single line |
| 3 | Rigid or flat-packed | Changes the supply, the packaging and the space you need on site |
| 4 | Worktop décor, profile and run lengths wall by wall | Board quantity depends on the runs, not the total metreage |
| 5 | Panels, plinth, cornice, pelmet, upstands | Routinely omitted, always needed on fitting day |
| 6 | Appliances, sink and tap by make and model | The model sets the housing, aperture and worktop cut-out |
| 7 | Handles, storage and waste | Counted per door and per drawer front, not per cabinet |
| 8 | Delivery postcode and required date | Determines the delivery service and whether surcharges apply |
1. The cabinet list
Widths in millimetres are the identifier that matters. Use the categories a supplier actually stocks so nothing has to be interpreted: highline base, drawerline base, wall, corner, larder, appliance housing, bridging and boiler units. The full unit range is listed by type and width, so you can build the list straight from it.
Flag the cabinets with a specific job: the sink base, the housing for the built-in oven, the unit taking the integrated dishwasher. That lets the supplier tell you if the appliance you have chosen will not fit the cabinet you have specified — which is much better news at quotation stage than on site.
2. Door style and colour
State them once, at the top. If part of the kitchen is in a contrast colour, split the door schedule into two blocks rather than annotating individual lines. Remember that a drawerline base with a three-drawer pack needs three fronts, not one door — that single miscount is the most common reason a quotation and a delivery disagree. Browse the door range and quote the range name back to the supplier.
3. Rigid or flat-packed
Say which you want. Cabinets can be supplied fully rigid — built and glued before delivery — or flat-packed for assembly on site. Rigid saves your fitter a substantial amount of labour and leaves far less packaging to clear; flat-pack is easier to carry up a tight stairwell and takes less storage space. Rigid assembly does not include installation. There is a full explanation on the rigid assembly page.
4. Worktops
Give run lengths wall by wall, not a single total. Three separate 2.4m runs and one continuous 7.2m run need completely different quantities of board. State the décor and whether you want postformed or square-edged, and add matching upstands and splashbacks to the same request so they come from the same order.
Brooklands supplies laminate worktops only, in Kronodesign and Duropal décors, with lengths, depths and thicknesses varying by décor and listed on each product page. Cutting, jointing, cut-outs and templating all happen on site — you are asking for material, not for a fabricated worktop.
5–8. Everything else
End panels, plinth, cornice and pelmet do not appear obviously on a layout drawing and are needed on the day of the fit, so count them deliberately. Appliances need make and model, not “integrated oven”. Sinks and taps determine the cut-out. Handles are counted per door and per drawer front. Storage and waste systems and other accessories are easy to add at quotation stage and irritating to add afterwards.
Finally, give the delivery postcode and the date the goods need to be on site. Delivery is fully tracked across mainland UK, with larger kitchen and worktop deliveries on a dedicated service and the day arranged with you. Scottish Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland, offshore and certain remote postcodes may be excluded or surcharged, and that is always confirmed before an order is processed — see the delivery page.
What to send if you have no plan
Plenty of good projects start with nothing more than a room and a tape measure. You do not need a drawing to get a quotation.
- Wall lengths. Every wall in the kitchen, in millimetres, corner to corner.
- Ceiling height, and the position and size of every window and door opening.
- Services. Where the water, waste, gas and consumer unit are, and whether they can move.
- Photographs. One from each corner of the room tells a planner more than a paragraph of description.
- What you want in it. Appliances, whether you need a larder, whether the washing machine is staying.
Send that and the free kitchen planning service will turn it into a workable layout and a priced list. If you already have a plan from somewhere else, you can send it for review instead — a second pair of eyes on a layout before it is ordered has saved a lot of people from a corner cabinet that cannot open.
Sending another supplier's quotation
This is entirely legitimate and it is the quickest route of all. If you already hold a detailed quotation from elsewhere, send it over and ask for a like-for-like price. It is a complete specification — unit types, widths, quantities, door style, worktop, appliances — already in a format that can be worked through line by line.
Two things to check when you compare the two documents. First, that the same items appear on both: quotations frequently differ on whether hinges, drawer boxes, panels and plinth are included. Second, that the cabinet specification is genuinely equivalent, because two lists with the same number of units can be built very differently. Trade and project pricing is assessed individually according to the products, quantities and requirements of each project, so the comparison is worth doing properly rather than on the headline total alone.
What a good quotation back looks like
You should get a document you could hand to a fitter, not a single number with a kitchen's name above it. A quotation that is worth accepting will show:
- Every line item separately — each cabinet by type and width, each door by size, each worktop length.
- Quantities against every line, so you can check the count yourself before you commit.
- Whether cabinets are rigid or flat-packed, stated explicitly rather than assumed.
- What is and is not included — hinges, drawer boxes, panels, plinth, cornice, handles.
- Delivery shown as its own line for the postcode given.
- Appliance models written out, so you can confirm the housings match.
If a quotation cannot be checked line by line, it cannot be compared with another one either. Ask for it to be itemised. Any supplier who is confident in their pricing will do it without complaint.
How to send it
Upload a plan, a schedule or a set of photographs through the project submission form, which takes PDF, JPG and PNG. Spreadsheets, DWG and DXF files can be emailed to sales@brooklandskitchens.co.uk with your company name in the subject line, or speak to the trade team directly on 07951 989439. We aim to reply within one working day. Quotations are free and carry no obligation, and there is no minimum order or minimum project size.
If your project is a single kitchen and you are flexible on specification, it is worth pricing a bundle deal alongside your bespoke list before you decide — the components are already matched, so there is less to specify and less to get wrong.
Send us your list and we will price it
A schedule, a drawing, a set of measurements or another supplier's quotation — whatever you have, we will work through it line by line. We aim to reply within one working day.