Design Plus Kitchens

Before the design: what gets measured, and why it matters

What a kitchen survey actually records, the site conditions that change a design, and the three mistakes that cost the most to fix later.

27 October 2026

Almost every expensive problem in a fitted kitchen traces back to a measurement taken from a drawing instead of from the room. Buildings are not built exactly as they are drawn, and a kitchen is made to the millimetre.

What is recorded

• Wall-to-wall width at floor level, at counter height and at the top — walls lean.
• Ceiling height at several points, because floors and ceilings are rarely parallel.
• Where the water inlet, the drain and the electrical points actually are.
• Where the gas point is, and where the extraction can physically go.
• Which way every door and window opens, and what it hits when it does.
• Floor level along the run, since a counter must be level even when the floor is not.

The three costly mistakes

The first is ordering appliances after the drawings are approved. The cabinetry is cut to the units you named; a different model means a different opening, and openings are cut once.

The second is measuring before the floor is laid. A tiled floor sits higher than a bare slab, and a kitchen measured on the slab arrives too tall for the room it was made for.

The third is leaving the extraction until last. Where the hood can vent decides where the hob goes, and where the hob goes decides the whole layout. It is a first-day question, not a last-week one.

When the site is ready to measure

Final measurements are taken when the walls are plastered, the floor is down and the service points are in their final positions. Anything earlier is a planning measurement — useful for a layout and a budget, not for cutting.

Design Plus measures the site itself rather than working from a supplied drawing, and nothing goes into production until you have approved the drawings and the dimensions taken from that visit.