Modular kitchen cost per running foot — what it costs you, and what to quote

Ask what a modular kitchen costs and you get a range: roughly ₹9,500 to ₹14,000 per running foot for a laminate finish, and ₹15,000 to ₹22,000 for acrylic. Your client has read that too, probably this morning.

What almost nobody writes down is where those numbers come from — which matters, because a designer who cannot break the figure apart cannot defend it, and a figure you cannot defend is one you discount.

Start with quantities, not with a price

Everything in a kitchen scales off the counter run — these are the same quantity multipliers that drive the rest of a BOQ. For a standard base-plus-wall layout, per running foot:

• Carcass — about 12 sqft of ply per rft, counting base and wall units together.
• Shutter face — about 7 sqft per rft.
• Countertop — 2 sqft per rft (a 2ft deep counter).
• Backsplash — 2 sqft per rft, counter to wall units.
• Hardware — roughly 2 fittings per rft: hinges, channels, handles.

A 10ft kitchen is therefore about 120 sqft of carcass and 70 sqft of shutter. Those two numbers do most of the work.

If you would rather not do this on paper, the modular kitchen cost calculator runs the same build-up for any counter run and finish, and shows every line of the arithmetic.

Now put your own rates against them

Indicative rates for a mid-range specification. Yours will differ by city, by brand and by the week — the method is the point, not the numbers:

That is roughly ₹5,000 per running foot. Against a market rate of ₹9,500 to ₹14,000.

The gap is the business

The difference is not padding. It is everything the cost sheet does not contain:

• Wastage — 5 to 10% on sheet goods, more on a kitchen with awkward corners.
• Accessories — tandem baskets, corner units, cutlery trays. Easily ₹40,000 to ₹80,000 on a kitchen, and the first thing a client adds after seeing the drawings.
• Supervision and site management — your time, which is the cost most studios never bill and always spend.
• Transport, loading, site debris.
• Rework — measure again, one shutter warps. It happens on most jobs and it is paid for out of margin if you did not price it.
• Overhead — studio rent, software, the designer who drew it.
• Profit, which is not a dirty word and is the reason the studio exists next year.

Costed properly, a laminate kitchen lands in that ₹9,500 to ₹14,000 band. If you quote at ₹6,000 because your cost sheet said ₹5,000, you have not won on price — you have agreed to work for nothing and pay for the accessories yourself.

Say what is excluded, in writing

The single most common dispute on a kitchen is not the price, it is the chimney. Standard quotes exclude appliances — chimney, hob, sink, RO, oven — and clients routinely assume they are in. Put the exclusions on the quote as their own lines with a zero or a note, not buried in terms. A line the client read is a line they cannot be surprised by.

The three numbers to keep

• Your cost per running foot, from your own rates. Recalculate it when ply moves.
• Your quoted rate per running foot, and the multiple between them. If you do not know your multiple you are pricing by feel.
• What you actually spent when the job closed. This is the only one that tells you whether the other two were right, and it is the one almost nobody records.

Do that on three kitchens and you will price the fourth better than any article can teach you.