IKEA vs. Custom Kitchen Cabinets in Ontario: The Same Kitchen, Priced Five Ways

The answer, before the article

Yes, IKEA is cheaper than custom. On the boxes, it is a lot cheaper. On the finished, installed kitchen, it is 25 to 40% cheaper than a mid-grade cabinet shop and about half the price of real custom. The gap shrinks every time you add something IKEA does not do well: an odd-sized run, a nine-foot ceiling, a panelled fridge, or a door style that is not in the catalogue.

The honest comparison is not IKEA versus custom. It is IKEA versus semi-custom, which is what most Ontario cabinet shops actually sell. Against that, IKEA saves you roughly $5,000 to $8,000 on a typical kitchen and costs you a Saturday in Vaughan, a thinner back panel, and a layout built in 3-inch steps. Whether that trade is a good one depends on who you are, which is the last section.

The same kitchen, priced five ways

My reference kitchen, used across this site: 18 feet of base cabinets, 14 feet of uppers, a 3-foot pantry and a 6-foot island. Painted or white shaker-style door, soft-close, drawers in the base run. Cabinets, hardware, trim and installation. No countertop, no appliances, no HST.

IKEA figures built from current IKEA.ca prices: a 36-inch SEKTION base frame is about $73, a wall frame $40 to $60, a pantry frame about $150, with doors, drawer fronts, MAXIMERA drawers, UTRUSTA hinges, legs, toe kick and cover panels all sold separately. Shop figures are the mid-grade and premium rates from the Ontario cabinet cost guide. Run your own footage through the calculator.

What you get with IKEA

The box

SEKTION frames are 3/4-inch particleboard with melamine foil and plastic edging, a galvanized steel front rail, and a painted fibreboard back. The 3/4-inch side is a genuine point in IKEA’s favour; plenty of builder-grade Canadian cabinets are 5/8. The back is the weak spot: thin, stapled, and it is what holds the cabinet square. The frames hang on a steel suspension rail, which is a better system than screwing each cabinet to the studs and is the reason a careful amateur can get them level.

The sizes

Frames come in 12, 15, 18, 24, 30 and 36-inch widths, 15 and 24 deep, with wall cabinets at 15, 20, 30 and 40 high and pantries at 80 and 90. That is it. Your 19-foot-4 run will be filled out with cover panels and fillers, and the corner is solved with a lazy susan or a blind cabinet with a dead zone behind it. In a square new-build kitchen this is fine. In a 1962 bungalow it is a day of fillers.

The doors

This is where IKEA earns its reputation. Fronts range from the plain VEDDINGE and ASKERSUND lines to the painted BODBYN and the shaker-style AXSTAD, and the fit and finish on the painted lines is as good as most semi-custom factory doors. The doors are also where the money is: a kitchen’s worth of BODBYN fronts can cost more than the frames behind them.

The hardware

UTRUSTA hinges are made by Blum and are soft-close as standard. MAXIMERA drawers are full-extension, soft-close, steel-sided and better than what ships in a lot of mid-grade Ontario cabinets. The hardware is not the compromise. The hardware is the bargain.

The warranty

Twenty-five years on SEKTION frames, fronts, UTRUSTA hinges and MAXIMERA drawers, for the original purchaser, with a receipt. That is longer than most cabinet shops offer and it is real. What it excludes is also real: anything damaged in installation, anything you moved or reconfigured, water damage from a leak, and normal wear. The IKEA Canada kitchen warranty brochure is six pages and worth reading before you decide the warranty is why you are buying.

What you get from a cabinet shop

A semi-custom shop sells you a factory line with a much deeper catalogue: widths in 1-inch or 3-inch steps, depths you can specify, heights to suit a nine or ten-foot ceiling, and a door you choose from fifty styles and a colour deck instead of six. The box is usually 5/8 or 3/4-inch melamine with a thicker back than IKEA’s, and the better lines offer plywood for 15 to 25% more.

What you are mostly paying for is three things IKEA does not sell. A designer who measures your room, draws it, and owns the mistakes. Delivery of assembled cabinets so the install is a day and a half instead of four. And one company responsible for the whole thing, from the drawing to the last piece of crown, so when the pantry door hits the fridge handle there is one phone number to call.

A custom shop adds plywood boxes as standard, any size to the inch, dovetailed drawers, a sprayed finish, and a door that is made rather than chosen. That is the $25,000 kitchen, and whether it is worth $10,000 more than the semi-custom one depends on how long you are staying and how much you care.

Six things IKEA does not tell you at the store

1. The planner is not a designer. The free kitchen planning tool is good software and it does not know your walls are out of square, your window is off-centre, or that your dishwasher needs a cabinet beside it to screw into. Measure three times. Then pay an independent IKEA kitchen planner $300 to $600 to check it, which is still the cheapest design help in the business.
2. Assembly is most of the install. A 24-cabinet kitchen is 24 flat packs, 12 drawers, 50 hinges and a few hundred cam locks. An experienced IKEA installer assembles and hangs it in three to four days and charges $100 to $175 per cabinet. A first-timer takes two weekends and will have two drawers that never close right.
3. Something will be out of stock. Plan the order, then plan a second trip for the two doors and the one pantry frame that were not on the shelf. Ordering online helps and is not immune.
4. Fillers, panels and toe kick are extra and you will need more than you think. Budget $600 to $900 and expect to go back for a cover panel.
5. The countertop is still a countertop. IKEA’s own laminate tops are good value. Quartz from a fabricator costs the same on IKEA boxes as on anybody’s, $95 to $130 a square foot installed, and the fabricator will want the cabinets dead level before templating.
6. Returns are easy; refunds on time are not. If the plan is wrong you can take the extra cabinet back. You cannot take back the week.

Where each one wins

The hybrid: IKEA boxes, custom doors

There is a third route that neither the IKEA store nor the cabinet shop will suggest, because neither sells it. You buy the SEKTION frames, drawers and hinges from IKEA, and you buy the doors, drawer fronts and panels from a company that makes them to fit SEKTION in any style and colour you like. Several do this in Canada; Nieu Cabinet Doors is the biggest, and they price MDF fronts at roughly $50 to $115 a square foot depending on the profile, delivered in about four weeks. Semihandmade in California built a whole business on the same idea.

A reference kitchen has about 90 square feet of fronts, so the custom doors add $5,000 to $9,000 to an IKEA parts bill. The installed result lands at $12,500 to $20,000, which overlaps with the semi-custom shop. What you get for that: IKEA’s hardware and warranty on the boxes, a door in exactly the colour you wanted with a finish most semi-custom lines cannot match, and still no designer, no assembled delivery and no single phone number. It is the right answer for a surprising number of people and the wrong answer for anyone who wanted the shop to handle it.

Who should buy which

And if you are not sure which you are, price your footage both ways in the cabinet cost calculator, builder grade for IKEA installed and mid-grade for the shop, and look at the difference. If the number between them would not change your life, buy the kitchen you will not have to think about. The longer background on box construction and door materials is in the guide to choosing kitchen cabinets in Ontario.