Quick answer
You can design your kitchen online free in NZ with the designer on our site: pick a layout, set every cabinet's width in millimetres, choose finishes, and a live price builds from coded Schedule-of-Rates lines. It outputs to-scale drawings and a print-ready spec PDF, and a site measure locks dimensions before manufacture.
Key points
- Design your kitchen online free in NZ: pick a layout, set each cabinet's width in millimetres, choose finishes, print a priced spec.
- The price is live and built from coded Schedule-of-Rates lines, the same shape volume housing work is priced in.
- Drawings come out to scale, plan and elevation, with every dimension in millimetres.
- You can upload a photo or scan of a plan and the designer drafts the cabinet run for you to correct.
- The PDF is a quote-ready spec, and a site measure still locks final dimensions before manufacture.
The sequence people actually want from a kitchen tool is easy to describe and has been strangely hard to find: see the kitchen, change the doors, watch the price move, and print something a builder will take seriously. That is the whole wishlist. Most tools deliver either the pretty half or the priced half, and make you register before revealing which.
The designer on our site does the full sequence, so you can design your kitchen online, free, in NZ, with no CAD skills. Pick a layout, set every cabinet's width in millimetres, choose finishes, and a live price assembles itself from coded Schedule-of-Rates lines while you work. At the end you print a spec PDF with to-scale drawings. This guide walks through what it does, what the output is worth, and what still has to happen in the real world before anyone cuts board.
From layout to priced spec in four steps.
What the online designer actually does
Start with the layout that matches your room: straight run, galley, L-shape or U. Unsure which the room wants, kitchen layouts explained is the ten-minute primer. From there the work is concrete. Every cabinet in the run has a width you can set in millimetres, from a 150 mm base unit up to 1,000 mm, with 600 mm as the default module. Doors, benchtop and handles swap with a click. The view updates so you can see the thing, the price updates so you can afford the thing, and the tension between those two is the actual design process.
There is a faster on-ramp for anyone holding a drawing. Upload a photo, scan or screenshot of a plan and the designer reads it, drafting the cabinet run left to right with a width and a role for each unit. You check the draft, fix anything it misread, and carry on designing. It reads clearer images better, it estimates where widths are not labelled, and a person confirms everything before anything is built.
Millimetres are the whole point
The reason cabinet widths matter this much is that a kitchen is a stack of standard numbers. Here the convention runs: a 150 mm toe kick, a 720 mm base carcass, and the benchtop landing at a 900 mm finished bench height, then 600 mm of splashback up to 720 mm upper cabinets, about 2,220 mm overall. Bench depth is 600 mm. Appliances assume those numbers, and so does everyone who will ever price or fit your kitchen.
A design carrying real widths is quotable and comparable. Two suppliers can price the same spec instead of two guesses at your intent, and the conversation moves from what did you mean to what does it cost. That single shift is why a measured online design beats a beautiful unmeasured one for every practical purpose.
Watch the price move as you design
The live price is built from coded Schedule-of-Rates lines, the pricing shape used across volume and social-housing work, where every element carries its own line: each base cabinet, each metre of benchtop, the splashback, the small hardware. When you widen a cabinet or swap a benchtop, the affected lines move and the total follows. Nothing about your kitchen hides inside a lump sum.
Set expectations honestly before you start clicking, because the designer will tell you the truth and it helps to know the neighbourhood first. These are the rough Auckland bands by layout; the full context sits in how much a kitchen costs in Auckland.
| Layout | Supply only | Supply and install |
|---|---|---|
| Small galley | $4.5–7k | $6.5–9.5k |
| Standard straight or galley | $5.5–8.5k | $8–12k |
| L-shape | $8.5–13k | $12–18k |
| Large U or L plus island | $12–18k | $17–25k |
Is a free online kitchen design accurate enough to build from?
Accurate enough to price from, yes. To manufacture from, deliberately not. The drawings are to scale with every dimension in millimetres, which makes the design real to a quoter and legible to any builder you hand it to. What no browser can know is the truth of your walls: the out-of-square corner, the floor that is not level, the pipe that will not move. So a site measure locks the final dimensions before manufacture, and a person checks the design with you rather than a script sending it straight to the saw.
The honest comparison is with the alternatives. Against a hand sketch, the online design is far tighter and infinitely easier to price. Next to an AI render, it is the difference between a mood and a spec, and turning a ChatGPT kitchen design into a real quote covers that bridge. Compared with a full in-person design service, it trades a professional's eye for speed, price and your own control, which is a fair trade for a standard replacement and a poor one for a complicated space.
The spec PDF is what changes the conversation
The output that matters is printable: a spec PDF carrying the to-scale plan and elevations, every cabinet width, the finishes and the priced lines. Hand that to a builder and you get taken seriously, because you have already answered the questions they were going to ask. Give it to us and the quote that comes back is confirmation rather than interpretation. What each part of the document means, line by line, is unpacked in the kitchen spec document explained.
Volume buyers get a shortcut of their own: social-housing presets set the fit-out in one click, white fronts, a stainless wet bench at the sink run, laminate on the dry runs, glass splashback behind the cooker, childproof catches on the defined cupboards. That gives a coded, compliant baseline before any customising starts, which is most of the paperwork on that class of work.
Finishes worth testing while the price is live
Because changes cost nothing, test the decisions that usually get made under time pressure in a showroom. Swap the door finish across the same layout and watch the gap between white melamine and gloss. Step the benchtop up and down a grade. Try the handleless look you saved on your phone and see what it does to the number before you commit to it. Colour deserves the same patience, and choosing a benchtop colour that lasts is worth reading before you lock the top, because the top outlives every repaint of the room.
From printed spec to fitted kitchen
When the design stops moving, the path out of the browser is short. Send the spec through as a quote request, with photos of the room attached, and it gets answered within 24 hours with a reference number. A confirmed quote follows, then a site measure locks every dimension before manufacture at our East Tāmaki workshop. Supply-only or supply and install, your call, and the spec you printed is the document the whole job runs off.
A good next 48 hours looks like this: measure your walls at bench height tonight, build the kitchen once in the designer, sleep on it, change three things in the morning, then print the spec. The version you print second is nearly always the one that gets built.
Frequently asked questions
Can I really design my kitchen online free in NZ?
Yes. The designer on our site is free and runs in the browser: pick a layout, set every cabinet's width in millimetres, choose finishes, and a live price builds from coded Schedule-of-Rates lines as you work. It stays free through drawings and the printable spec PDF. The paid part is the kitchen itself, if and when you order it.
Do I need CAD skills to use an online kitchen designer?
No. The designer works by picking a layout, typing widths in millimetres and clicking finishes; there is no drafting, no layers and nothing to install. If you can measure a wall and type the number, you can produce a to-scale, priced kitchen design. Uploading a photo or scan of an existing plan makes the start even faster, because the cabinet run is drafted for you.
How accurate is the live price?
It is built from coded Schedule-of-Rates lines against the exact cabinets and widths you set, so it is accurate to the design as you have specified it. What it is not, yet, is a contract price: a person confirms the design and a site measure locks final dimensions before manufacture. If your measurements were honest, the confirmed quote usually sits close to what the designer showed.
Can I upload my floor plan instead of starting from scratch?
Yes. Upload a photo, scan or screenshot of a plan and the designer reads it automatically, drafting the cabinet run left to right with widths and roles for each unit. You check and correct the draft, then the price and drawings follow. Clearer images read better, and where widths are not labelled the tool estimates until you fix them.
What is in the spec PDF?
A to-scale plan and elevation drawings with every dimension in millimetres, the width and role of each cabinet, the finishes you chose, and the priced lines behind the total. It is print-ready, which means a builder, a landlord or a partner can read it without you translating. A formal quote gets confirmed against that same document.
Does the online price include installation?
You choose. The designer prices the kitchen itself, and quotes come as supply-only or supply and install. That gap is real: a standard straight kitchen runs roughly $5.5–8.5k supplied against $8–12k installed in Auckland. Decide which side you are on before comparing anyone's numbers, because the two are different products.
Can I design a social housing or Kāinga Ora spec kitchen in it?
Yes. Social-housing presets set the standard fit-out in one click: white fronts, a stainless wet bench at the sink run, laminate benchtop on dry runs, glass splashback behind the cooker, childproof catches and cutlery inserts, with the pricing carried as coded lines. It is the fastest way to a compliant baseline you can then adjust per site.
Will someone check my design before it is made?
Always. The designer's output starts the conversation, then a person confirms every cabinet, finish and dimension with you, and a site measure locks the final numbers before manufacture. Nothing goes from browser to saw untouched. Your design work speeds the process up; it never removes the checking.