Pre made cabinets, what you actually get for the price

Summary: Pre made cabinets can mean stock flat-pack boxes, pre-assembled stock, or made-to-order cabinets, and those are very different price brackets. The key is to separate cabinet cost from worktops, end panels, installation, filler strips, and whether the wall actually fits the grid.

My sister rang me last March from a kitchen showroom outside Eindhoven. She'd been quoted 14,200 euros for a galley kitchen, 3.6 m long, eight base units and four wall units, no appliances. She wanted to know if pre made cabinets were the same thing she was looking at, because the salesman kept switching between "custom" and "pre-built" and "modular" depending on the question. By the end of the afternoon she'd written down four different definitions of "pre made cabinets" on the back of a parking ticket and she still didn't know which one she'd been quoted on.

She was right to be confused. The phrase means three different things depending on who's selling.

So this post is about what you actually get when you order pre made cabinets, where the savings really come from, and the few places where pre made costs you more than it should.

The three things "pre made" can mean

In showroom and retailer language, "pre made cabinets" usually points at one of these:

1. Stock cabinets, also called RTA (ready to assemble). These are flat-packed in fixed widths, usually 30, 45, 60, 75, or 90 cm, with a small range of heights. You pick from a catalog, the boxes arrive, you screw them together. IKEA Metod is the obvious example. So is Wren in the UK and Cabinets To Go in the US.
2. Pre-assembled stock, sometimes called "pre-built" or "fully assembled". Same fixed widths as RTA, but the boxes show up already glued and screwed. You pay 15 to 30% more for the assembly time you didn't spend.
3. Pre made to order, which is the confusing one. The cabinet is built in a factory, but the dimensions, finish, and hardware are picked by you. Lead time is usually four to eight weeks. Amish kitchen lines in the US work this way. So do most British "fitted" kitchen brands.

The first two are stock. The third is custom dressed up as pre made. The price gap between them is enormous, somewhere between two and four times depending on materials, and most of it has nothing to do with quality.

What you're really paying for in stock pre made cabinets

A single 60 cm base unit, melamine-faced chipboard, 18 mm carcass, soft-close hinges, no door, no handle: about 65 to 90 euros at IKEA. Add the door and you're at 110 to 180. Multiply that by eight base units, four wall units, a sink cabinet, and an appliance housing, and you're at maybe 2,400 to 3,800 euros for the carcasses and doors. Worktops, taps, sink, lights, and fitting are extra.

That's the floor.

The reason stock pre made cabinets are cheap is that the factory makes the same 60 cm box ten thousand times a month. Cutting list, edge banding, hole pattern, all identical. The machine doesn't pause. Materials are usually 16 to 18 mm melamine-faced chipboard, sometimes MDF for doors, occasionally a real wood veneer if you go up a tier. Solid wood is rare at this price.

Where stock pre made cabinets stop being cheap is when your kitchen is the wrong shape for the grid. A 3.4 m wall takes either four 80 cm units (3.2 m, leaves a 20 cm gap) or three 1 m units (3 m, leaves 40 cm). Most retailers fill the gap with a "filler panel", which is a flat board the same finish as the doors. It's fine. It's also dead space you paid for. On my sister's 3.6 m wall, she would have lost about 24 cm to a filler. That's a small drawer she didn't get.

The hidden costs nobody itemises

When the showroom quote comes in, the cabinet line is usually the smallest part of it. Three things tend to inflate the total:

• Installation. Fitting a flat-pack kitchen runs 1,200 to 2,500 euros depending on country and how level the floor is. If the floor isn't level, add a half-day.
• Worktops. A laminated worktop is 200 to 400 euros for 3 metres. A solid timber one is 600 to 1,100. Stone, more. The worktop alone can equal the cabinets.
• End panels and cornices. These are the bits the renderings show without commenting on. Ten to thirty euros each, but you need six to twelve of them.

The point is that "pre made cabinets" sometimes look 40% cheaper on the cabinet line, and 5% cheaper once everything's added up. Worth knowing before you commit.

Pre made vs cut-to-size, briefly

Cut-to-size cabinets sit between stock pre made and a bespoke carpenter. The carcasses are made to your measurements, usually in 18 mm birch ply or MFC, and shipped flat with every panel labelled. You assemble them yourself. No filler panels, because the cabinets fit the wall instead of the wall having to fit the cabinets.

Cost-wise, you're typically paying:

• Stock pre made (RTA, melamine chipboard, IKEA-tier): 100% baseline
• Cut-to-size in 18 mm birch ply: 130 to 170% of the baseline
• Pre made to order in solid wood, 4 to 8 week lead: 250 to 400%
• Bespoke carpenter, full install: 350 to 600%

For my sister's 14,200 euro quote, a cut-to-size run in birch ply, sized to the actual 3.6 m wall, was 6,800 to 8,400 depending on hardware and door style. She was pretty annoyed.

When pre made still wins

Stock pre made cabinets are the right answer in plenty of situations:

• Your wall is already on the 60 cm grid (3, 3.6, or 4.2 m walls are basically free)
• You want it within a fortnight, not in six weeks
• You're renting and you'll leave the kitchen behind
• The kitchen is small and a single filler panel won't bother you
• You're doing a holiday let or rental flip and the spec only needs to last five years

Stock loses when the wall is awkward, the ceiling slopes, the appliances are non-standard sizes (a 54 cm dishwasher fits no grid), or the kitchen is the only thing you'll look at for ten years and you don't want a 24 cm dead panel staring back.

There's a fourth option, somewhere between IKEA and the eight-week pre made to order route, which is what we ended up building knuslabs.com to do. You upload a photo, add measurements, the panels come back cut to your wall in 18 mm birch ply, and assembly is the same flat-pack and cam-lock dance you'd do with stock. If your kitchen is one of the awkward ones, that's the workflow that solves it.

If you're planning the same kind of project, start with built-in bookcase concepts or compare it with online cabinet maker workflow. For adjacent planning detail, read Custom wardrobe cabinets, when one big wardrobe doesn't fit and Custom made cupboards, and the small mistakes that make them stop fitting.