Should kitchen renovators charge a design fee?

Kitchen renovators should charge a design fee, credited to the contract, when fewer than about 40% of their free designs become signed jobs. At 10 design hours and $80 an hour, a 25% design-to-contract rate costs $3,200 of design time per signed kitchen. At 40% or more, on kitchens of $40,000 and up, free design wins.

Rules of thumb (each is arithmetic from the worked model on this page or a cited source):

• Free-design cost per signed job = design hours x hourly cost / design-to-contract rate. Ten hours at $80 is $800 a design: $3,200 per signed kitchen at a 25% rate, $2,000 at 40%, $1,333 at 60%.
• Break-even credited fee = design cost / (1 – design-to-contract rate after the fee). At $800 a design and a 40% rate, a $1,333 fee kept from the clients who walk away covers all the design hours.
• A credited fee beats free design while the signed kitchens it costs you, times gross profit per kitchen, are less than the design cost it saves. In the model it saves $11,800 a month and can cost up to 0.98 signed kitchens before free design wins again.
• There is no legislative prohibition on charging for a quote except in Victoria, according to the Housing Industry Association, which adds that the client must be made aware of the cost before the work is performed.

What does free kitchen design cost a renovator per signed job?

Free kitchen design costs a renovator design hours times hourly cost, divided by the design-to-contract rate: $3,200 per signed kitchen at 10 hours, $80 an hour and a 25% rate.

A kitchen design (measure, layout, renders, selections, revisions) all happens before the homeowner commits. No credible public Australian source publishes kitchen design hours or design-to-contract rates, so every input below is a labelled assumption. Replace them with your own numbers from your last 20 designs.

The model assumes 20 design-stage enquiries a month, a $40,000 average kitchen at 30% gross margin ($12,000 gross profit per job), 10 design hours per kitchen at an $80 loaded hourly cost, and a $750 fee in the two paid options. It also assumes, because a fee filters out tyre-kickers, that 60% of enquiries accept a credited fee and 40% accept a kept fee, and that the design-to-contract rate rises from 25% (free) to 40% (credited) and 50% (kept).

The credited fee wins here because it gives up only 0.2 signed kitchens a month while cutting net design cost by $11,800. The kept fee cuts cost further but gives up a whole kitchen, worth $12,000 in gross profit. Designer hours only cost cash if the designer could be doing paid work instead.

Frequently asked questions about kitchen design fees

Should a kitchen design fee be refundable?

A kitchen design fee works best when it is credited to the contract if the client goes ahead and kept if they do not. In the worked model on this page, that credited version left $53,400 a month after design costs, against $47,600 for a fee kept in every case and $44,000 for free design.

Is it legal to charge for a kitchen design in Australia?

Charging for pre-contract work is generally possible, provided the client knows the cost before the work is done. The Housing Industry Association says there is no legislative prohibition on charging for a quote except in Victoria (HIA, charging for a quote), where Consumer Affairs Victoria treats a preliminary design agreement as a building contract that must comply with the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995 once it is over $10,000. This is general information, not legal advice.

Who owns the kitchen design if the client does not go ahead?

Ownership of the kitchen drawings depends on the written terms. HIA’s Preliminary Service Agreement includes a term that the builder keeps copyright in the documents it creates and that the client gets no implied licence to use them, so set out in writing whether a fee buys the plans or only the design work.

What design-to-contract rate is good for a kitchen renovator?

No credible public benchmark for kitchen design-to-contract rates was found, so compare yourself with your own history rather than an industry figure. On this page’s assumptions, 40% is the line above which free design often wins on kitchens of $40,000 or more.

Does a design fee reduce the number of kitchens a renovator signs?

A design fee often reduces the number of designs started, and may reduce signed kitchens slightly. In the model, a credited fee cut designs from 20 to 12 a month but signed kitchens only from 5.0 to 4.8, because the clients who paid converted at 40% instead of 25%.

Free design, credited fee or kept fee: which option wins at your conversion rate?

The winning kitchen design-fee option depends on design-to-contract rate and job value: free design wins at 40% or more on $40,000 kitchens, and a credited fee wins at 25%.

The decision table below reruns the same model across four design-to-contract rates and three job values. The fee assumptions are held fixed: take-up of 60% (credited) and 40% (kept), and a rate uplift of 15 points (credited) and 25 points (kept) on top of the free-design rate. Each cell shows the winner and its monthly lead over the next-best option.

LeadsNow calls the pattern the 40% Design Line: if four in ten free designs already sign, a fee mostly filters out clients you would have won, and on bigger kitchens each lost job costs more than the design hours saved. Below that line, a credited fee pays for itself. A kept fee only edges ahead on small, low-converting jobs, by $500 a month: treat that as a tie.

The grid is only as good as its uplift assumptions: if paying clients would not convert better, the fee options lose ground in every row.

How much should a kitchen design fee be?

A kitchen design fee that fully covers design time equals design cost divided by the share of fee-paying clients who do not sign: $1,333 at $800 a design and a 40% rate.

That figure is a ceiling, not a target. The $750 fee in the model covers $5,400 of $9,600, which is why the credited option still carries $4,200 of net design cost.

No verified public survey of Australian kitchen design fees turned up in our research, so this page does not quote a “typical” fee. Published practice varies. Sydney joinery business Kastell Kitchens says on its FAQ page that if a client needs plans released, there is a charge whose amount “will depend on Scope of works covered by the plan”, and that it is fully refundable if the client proceeds with Kastell.

What do Australian rules say about charging for kitchen design?

Australian rules on charging kitchen clients for design before the building contract vary by state: the Housing Industry Association flags Victoria as the exception, and NSW sets out how preliminary contracts work.

• Disclosure first. The Housing Industry Association says there is no legislative prohibition on charging for a quote except in Victoria, that the client must be made aware of the cost before the work is performed, and that the details are best evidenced in writing and signed by the client.
• Victoria. Consumer Affairs Victoria says a preliminary agreement used to develop design, plans and specifications is a building contract under the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, and a contract over $10,000 must comply with section 31(1) of that Act. The Domestic Building Contracts Amendment Act 2025 lets builders and clients make their own agreements for developing plans and specifications; it takes effect by 1 December 2026, and until then the current laws apply.
• NSW. The NSW Government guide lists “developing design, plans or specifications” and site measurements among the services a preliminary contract may cover. A preliminary contract cannot include residential building work; if it does and the total is over $5,000 including GST, it is treated as a residential building contract. The same guide caps a building-contract deposit at 10 percent.
• Who owns the drawings. HIA’s Preliminary Service Agreement includes a term that the builder retains copyright in the documents it creates and that the agreement does not create an implied licence for the client to use them. Put your own version of that term in writing before design starts.

This is general information, not legal advice; check your own state regulator before changing your terms.

How do you introduce a kitchen design fee without losing good clients?

Introducing a kitchen design fee works best when the fee arrives after a free qualifying conversation, is framed as a credit against the kitchen, and is written down before design starts.

1. Measure your current rate. Count designs started and contracts signed over the last six months.
2. Keep the first conversation free. A short phone or video call that checks ownership, budget band and timing filters out most poor fits before any design hours are spent. The four questions are set out in our guide on how kitchen renovators qualify leads before quoting.
3. Name it as a credit. “$750 design deposit, credited in full to your kitchen” reads differently from “$750 design fee”, even though the cash is the same.
4. Write down what it buys and who owns it. Number of revisions, renders included, and whether plans are released.
5. Trial for three months and re-measure. Track enquiries, fee take-up, design-to-contract rate and signed jobs. If signed jobs fall by more than the break-even in the model (0.98 kitchens a month there), go back to free design.

The fee decision for kitchen design follows the same arithmetic as the quote decision for smaller trade jobs, covered in should tradies charge for quotes.

What should you do with kitchen designs that never signed?

Kitchen designs that never signed are a list of homeowners who already paid attention, and sometimes paid a fee, so they deserve a follow-up schedule rather than a closed file.

In the free-design column of the model, 15 designed kitchens a month do not sign. Some of those homeowners were not ready yet rather than lost; kitchen buyers often take months to decide, which is covered in how long kitchen renovation clients take to decide. A client who paid a credited fee has a reason to come back: the credit is still waiting.

Doing this yourself means a dated list and a call or message at 30, 90 and 180 days. The method is laid out in how to reactivate dead quotes, and LeadsNow runs database reactivation as a done-for-you service. Kitchen businesses looking at new enquiry volume can see how LeadsNow approaches lead generation for kitchen renovation companies, and the wider trades hub.