Kitchen Worktop Costs UK — What to Charge to Supply and Fit Worktops in 2026

Worktop Materials and Who Fits Them

The material drives everything — the price, the lead time, who does the install, and how much risk you carry. Get the customer onto the right material early, because the quoting and scheduling are completely different depending on whether you're cutting a top on site or coordinating a templated stone delivery.

Laminate (Cheapest — Fitter Installs)

Laminate worktops are a chipboard or MDF core wrapped in a printed melamine surface. They come in standard 3m and 4m lengths, usually 600mm deep and 28–40mm thick, and the kitchen fitter cuts and installs them on site with a circular saw, jigsaw and router. Modern laminates mimic stone, wood and concrete convincingly, and a square-edge or postformed (rounded front) profile suits most budgets.

This is the bread-and-butter worktop for landlord kitchens, rentals and budget refurbs. You buy the boards, mark up the supply, and charge fitting labour. No templating, no third party, no waiting weeks for delivery — you can often fit a laminate run the same day the units go in.

• Supply per linear metre: £25–£90
• Fitted per linear metre: £60–£150
• Typical small kitchen run fitted: £150–£400

Solid Wood / Timber (Fitter Installs, Needs Oiling)

Solid timber worktops — oak, walnut, beech, iroko — are staved (small strips glued together) and arrive as oversized blanks the fitter trims to size. They're a craft job: butt joints or mitred joints need worktop bolts and a router jig, end grain has to be sealed, and the whole surface must be oiled before and after fitting, then re-oiled periodically. Wood moves with humidity, so fixings have to allow for expansion or the top cracks.

Wood carries more labour than laminate because of the oiling, jointing and finishing time. Budget for the customer being told it's a maintained surface — they need to re-oil it and keep water off the joints, or it stains and lifts. Price the finishing time in; it's easy to underquote a timber top.

• Supply per linear metre: £120–£350
• Fitted per linear metre (inc. oiling): £200–£450
• Typical kitchen run fitted: £400–£900

Solid Surface (Corian-style)

Solid surface — Corian and similar acrylic/resin composites — is a halfway house. It's fabricated and fitted by approved installers rather than the kitchen fitter, because joints are thermo-bonded into a seamless run and integrated sinks are moulded in. The big sell is the invisible seam and the ability to repair scratches by sanding. It's usually quoted by the project rather than per metre and tends to land between solid wood and quartz on price.

• Supplied & fitted per linear metre: £300–£600

Quartz and Granite (Templated and Fitted by a Stone Specialist)

This is the key point for any kitchen fitter: you almost never fit quartz or granite yourself. These are engineered (quartz) or natural (granite) stone slabs, cut on a CNC machine and wet-polished in a workshop, then delivered and fitted by the stone company's own team. The kitchen fitter installs the base units, the stone firm templates off the finished units, and they return a week or so later to fit the tops.

Quartz (Silestone, Caesarstone, Cosentino and similar) is non-porous, consistent in colour and the most popular premium choice. Granite is natural so every slab is unique, slightly more porous and needs occasional sealing. Pricing for both is similar and quoted per linear metre supplied and fitted, with the slab grade and colour band making a big difference — exotic granites and designer quartz colours sit well above the entry range.

• Quartz supplied & fitted per linear metre: £350–£700
• Granite supplied & fitted per linear metre: £300–£650
• Premium colours / thicker slabs: £700–£1,000+

Dekton and Porcelain

Dekton (sintered stone) and large-format porcelain are the newer premium options — ultra-thin, extremely hard, heat- and scratch-resistant, and increasingly specified for islands and outdoor kitchens. They're harder to cut than quartz and demand a specialist fabricator with the right tooling, so they sit at the top of the price scale, broadly £500–£900+ per linear metre supplied and fitted. Treat these exactly like quartz for scheduling: template off finished units, fit by the stone firm.

The Templating Process for Stone

Templating is why stone scheduling differs from laminate. The fabricator can only template — measure the exact shape — once the base units are installed, level and fixed in their final position. They come out with a laser templater or a physical template, capture every wall line, return, sink position and overhang, then take that back to the workshop to cut the slab on the CNC.

This is why you fit the base units first and why a stone kitchen has a gap in the middle of the job. Typical flow: fit and level units, book the template, wait 5–10 working days for fabrication, then the stone team returns to fit. Plan plumbing and electrics around that gap — the sink and hob can't be fully connected until the top is on. Set the customer's expectations on this timeline at the quote stage so the wait isn't a surprise.

Cut-outs, Edge Profiles and Drainer Grooves

Cut-outs and detailing add cost on every material, and they're where quotes leak money if you don't itemise them.

• Sink cut-out: inset, undermount or flush each carry different prep. Undermount on stone needs the cut edge polished. Budget £40–£150 per cut-out.
• Hob cut-out: similar to the sink; £40–£120.
• Tap and accessory holes: drilled per hole, often £15–£40 each on stone.
• Edge profile: square/pencil-round is standard; bullnose, ogee or a chunky mitred 40–60mm edge on stone costs more per metre.
• Drainer grooves: machined drainer grooves beside an undermount sink are a popular stone extra at £80–£180 per set.

On laminate and wood you do these on site; on stone they're machined in the workshop and itemised by the fabricator. Either way, count the cut-outs before you quote — a kitchen with a double sink, a hob and a separate drainer is a very different price to a plain run.

Joints, Seams and Upstands

Joints and Seams

Long L-shaped or U-shaped runs need joints. On laminate, a mason's mitre or a worktop-bolt butt joint with colour-matched sealant is standard. On wood, mitred or butt joints are bolted and glued. On stone, the fabricator plans the seam at the least conspicuous point and colour-matches the resin — a good seam is barely visible. Each joint is labour, so a kitchen that needs two or three of them costs more to fit than the linear metres alone suggest.

Upstands and Splashbacks

Upstands are the short vertical strip — usually 100mm — that runs along the back of the worktop where it meets the wall, replacing tiled splashbacks. Matching-material upstands look seamless and are a near-automatic upsell on stone and wood jobs. Full-height splashbacks behind the hob in the same material are a bigger-ticket extra.

• Matching upstands: £25–£70 per linear metre supplied & fitted
• Full-height splashback (stone, behind hob): £150–£400

What Affects the Quote

Two kitchens of the same length can be priced very differently. The main variables:

• Material and slab grade: the single biggest driver — laminate to premium quartz is a 5–10x spread.
• Linear metres: total run length, plus whether you're charged per metre or per slab (stone is often slab-based, so offcuts matter).
• Number of cut-outs: sinks, hobs, taps and drainers each add labour and fabrication.
• Edge detail: a square edge is cheap; a thick mitred or profiled edge adds real cost.
• Islands: a separate island top means another template, often a larger single piece, and sometimes an extra slab.
• Templating and delivery: the fabricator's template visit and delivery distance are built into stone pricing.
• Fitting access: upstairs flats, tight kitchens and long carries make heavy stone slabs slower and riskier to install.

How a Kitchen Fitter Prices This — and Where the Margin Is

Where you make money depends on the material. On laminate and wood, you buy the boards, mark up the supply, and charge your fitting labour on top — both lines are yours. A laminate run might cost you £40–£80 a metre to buy and bill out at £120–£150 fitted, so you keep the supply markup and the labour.

On quartz, granite, Dekton and porcelain you're not the fitter — the stone firm is. Your margin comes from one of two models: either you get a trade price from the fabricator and add your markup before quoting the customer, or you let the customer contract the stone firm directly and you charge only for fitting the units and coordinating the job. The trade-markup model earns more but means you carry the supply risk and the customer-facing warranty. Whichever you choose, fitting labour for the base units and the overall project management is always your money.

Typical fitting-only labour for a worktop run — where you're installing laminate or wood, or prepping and coordinating for stone — sits around £200–£600 depending on size, cut-outs and joints. Day rates for kitchen fitters across most of the UK run £180–£280, more in London and the South East.

How to Quote Profitably and Time the Stone

The classic loss-maker on worktop jobs is the gap between fitting the units and the stone arriving. You can't bill the customer for standing around, so book the template the moment units are levelled and slot other work into the fabrication window. Confirm the fabricator's lead time before you commit a completion date to the customer, and price the coordination — chasing the template, being on site for the fit — as part of your job, not a freebie.

Always quote in writing with the material, finish, edge profile, every cut-out, upstands and who is fitting clearly listed. Stone fits get disputed when the customer expected a polished undermount edge or a drainer that wasn't in the price. Itemising protects your margin and your reputation.

It also pays to know which jobs actually make money once the dust settles. Tracking each worktop job — material, true cost, fitting hours, final margin — in a tool like Trade2Base shows you whether the stone-markup model or fitting-only is earning more for you, and which kitchens you should be quoting toward. Over a year that's the difference between guessing and knowing your real numbers.

Quick Reference: Kitchen Worktop Prices UK 2026