What kind of kitchen are you really being sold?
The word “bespoke” gets used everywhere in the kitchen industry, and almost never to mean the same thing twice. We classify every company on the platform into one of three honest manufacturing tiers — Range Selected, Custom Configured, or Handcrafted — based on how the kitchen is actually made. This page is the system, in full.
The vocabulary problem
The word “bespoke” is used almost everywhere in the kitchen industry, and it almost never means what it should. A national chain selling pre-sized cabinets from a catalogue can call itself bespoke. A handcrafted joiner spending six weeks at the bench can call itself bespoke. The word has been worn smooth by overuse, and the people it lets down most are the customers trying to compare like with like.
KitchenCoCo classifies every kitchen company on the platform into one of three tiers. The tiers are not a quality ranking. A well-run Range Selected showroom can deliver an excellent kitchen for the right customer, just as a poorly-run Handcrafted maker can disappoint at five times the price. The tiers describe how the kitchen is made, not whether it is good.
Customers can then judge value, fit, and craft on honest terms.
Range Selected
The customer chooses from a defined catalogue. Doors come in pre-set styles and a fixed palette of colours. Cabinets come in standard sizes from a published list. The retailer's role is to help the customer make selections that fit their room and to manage the installation. Configuration is real but bounded.
Typical signals
- A printed or online range brochure that the customer browses and selects from
- Standard cabinet widths (300mm, 400mm, 500mm, 600mm, 800mm, 1000mm)
- Doors and finishes from a published colour and material list
- Quoted from a price book based on cabinet count and chosen range
- Sales consultant rather than a named designer
- Lead times typically two to six weeks from order
Where you’ll find it
Examples of companies operating at this tier in the UK include the major DIY chains (Wickes, B&Q, Homebase), the larger national specialists in their entry ranges (Wren, Magnet base ranges), and Howdens at its volume end.
Custom Configured
The kitchen is built from manufactured components, but configured with meaningful flexibility. Cabinets can be made to non-standard sizes. Doors are painted to order in any colour the customer wants. Internals can be modified. Different door styles can be mixed across one kitchen. End panels, plinths, cornices, and integrated furniture pieces are made to fit the room rather than chosen from a catalogue.
The companies operating at this tier typically buy rigid cabinet components from established suppliers (Symphony, Daval, Second Nature, Crown Imperial, Pronorm and similar) and treat those components as building blocks for a designed kitchen rather than as a catalogue to be sold. The design work is done by the retailer, not the manufacturer.
This is the tier where the kitchen industry’s “bespoke” misuse causes the most consumer confusion. The classification depends on how the company actually sells, not which supplier they buy from. The same component supplier can sit behind both Range Selected and Custom Configured showrooms. The tier is about the depth of design and configuration the retailer brings, not the brand on the cabinet box.
Typical signals
- A named designer or design consultation as part of the process
- Paint-to-order doors in any RAL or Farrow & Ball colour
- Non-standard cabinet sizes used routinely, not as exceptions
- Mixed door styles, finishes, or ranges within a single kitchen
- Bespoke end panels, dressers, or feature pieces made to fit the room
- Lead times typically six to twelve weeks
- A showroom that displays full kitchens rather than door samples
Handcrafted
The cabinets are made by joiners, in a workshop, to the dimensions of the room. There is no catalogue. Each kitchen is drawn from scratch, built from solid timber and timber-based sheet materials, finished by hand, and installed by the same workshop or a closely partnered installer.
A Handcrafted kitchen is the most expensive of the three tiers because it carries the most labour. It is the right choice for customers who value craft as an end in itself, who have unusual rooms that defy standard configurations, or who want a kitchen that will be repaired rather than replaced over the next forty years.
Typical signals
- An in-house workshop or a long-term workshop partnership
- In-frame cabinet construction in solid timber
- Dovetailed drawer boxes, often in solid oak or walnut
- Hand-painted finish, typically multiple coats with hand sanding between
- Cabinets built to exact room dimensions rather than adjusted with fillers
- Lead times typically twelve to twenty-four weeks
- Pricing reflects the labour, not just the materials
- Often a single design lead working with the customer end to end
Where you’ll find it
Examples of companies operating at this tier in the UK include Plain English, deVOL, Smallbone, Martin Moore, Naked Kitchens, and many regional joinery-led makers operating from a workshop rather than a showroom-only model.
How we classify
Every company on the platform is reviewed against four questions:
- 1.Are doors painted to order in any colour the customer chooses?
- 2.Are cabinet sizes routinely non-standard?
- 3.Is a named designer involved beyond a sales consultant?
- 4.Is there a workshop where cabinets are made from raw materials?
Four “no” answers places a company in Range Selected. A “yes” to questions one through three but “no” to question four places a company in Custom Configured. A “yes” to question four, with the workshop genuinely making cabinets rather than assembling pre-made components, places a company in Handcrafted.
A small number of companies operate across two tiers, typically by offering a configured range alongside a separate handcrafted range. In those cases we assign a primary tier based on the majority of their work, and the secondary tier is disclosed on the company’s profile.
What the tiers do not measure
The tier does not measure quality, customer service, design talent, value for money, or whether a particular company is right for a particular customer. Those judgements belong to the CoCo Score, the customer reviews, and the customer’s own conversation with the company.
The tier exists so that customers know what they are comparing. A £15,000 quote from a Range Selected showroom and a £15,000 quote from a Handcrafted maker are not the same kitchen at the same price. They are different products that happen to share a number. Once the tier is clear, the comparison becomes honest.