What your deposit is actually paying for
A kitchen deposit is asked for before any board has been cut. Most suppliers use it to book your order into their manufacturing schedule, and the units themselves often will not arrive for several weeks after that money has left your account. In that gap, your position depends almost entirely on the supplier still being there to finish what they started.
That is why the checking happens before the deposit. Once you have paid, a dispute over a late delivery, a wrong-sized unit or a supplier that stops trading becomes something you have to chase. The checks that tell you whether a supplier is worth that trust, and where to confirm each one for yourself, are the practical part of this decision.
The wider sequence of steps this sits within, from first measuring the room to living with the finished kitchen, is set out in the step-by-step buying guide.
What to check before you choose a kitchen supplier
A showroom tells you about styles and price. These are the checks that answer that.
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Trading history
Check the company's status and filing history at Companies House before committing, particularly with a smaller local retailer.
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Written guarantees
Ask for guarantee terms in writing, covering the carcass, doors, hinges and runners, worktop and workmanship separately, since each part is often covered for a different length of time.
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Trade body membership
Look for membership of the KBSA (the Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom Specialists Association) or BIFIS (the British Institute of Fitted Interiors Specialists, renamed from BiKBBI on 1 October 2025), both of which set standards their members agree to meet.
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Deposit protection and its limits
Ask what protects your deposit if the company cannot complete the order. A KBSA member issuing a certificate protects the lesser of 25% of the contract price, the deposits paid, or £18,750, and that cover ends at delivery, on cancellation, or after 120 days, whichever comes first.
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Dispute-resolution scheme
Ask which scheme the supplier belongs to for resolving disagreements that cannot be settled directly, and get the name of it before you sign.
Where a supplier cannot produce one of these when asked, that is information in itself. For a dispute already underway, Citizens Advice and Trading Standards, through the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, are the bodies to contact.
What to ask when you meet a supplier
A showroom conversation or a home visit is your best chance to see how a supplier actually works, before any money changes hands. The questions below are ones you can ask directly, and each answer tells you something concrete about how the job will run.
The survey visit
Most supply-and-fit kitchens start with someone coming to measure the room. Who does that, and how they do it, tells you a lot about what happens later.
- Who carries out the survey? A designer or surveyor employed by the supplier gives you one point of contact through the whole job; a subcontracted surveyor means the person who measures your room may not be the person who designs it.
- Is the survey free, and does it commit you to anything? Some surveys are free and non-committal, others are chargeable or deducted from a deposit if you go ahead. Ask before you book it.
- Will they check the appliance niches and worktop height against the actual appliances you're buying? A survey that only measures the room, without checking specific appliance dimensions, can leave a gap that only shows up once the units arrive. The worktop height and appliance niche checker lets you run that check yourself with the figures from your own appliance instructions.
Fitting and who does the work
A quote for a kitchen and a quote for a fitted kitchen are not the same thing, and it is worth being clear which one you are being given.
- Does the price include fitting, or is it supply only? This changes what you are comparing between suppliers, and it is one of the first lines the quote guide tells you to pin down.
- Are the fitters employed by the company or subcontracted? Either can do good work, but it affects who you raise a problem with if the fitting itself goes wrong.
- Who arranges first fix and second fix work? First fix is the plumbing and wiring done before the units go in; second fix is connecting appliances and fitting sockets once they're installed. Ask whether the supplier coordinates this or leaves it to you to book separately, and see the guide to gas, electrics and building control for what each stage needs to satisfy.
What happens if something is wrong
Every kitchen has a snagging list, the record of small defects found after installation for the installer to correct. How a supplier talks about this before you've signed anything is a fair test of how they'll handle it afterwards.
- Is there a formal snagging process? A supplier who describes one, and a rough timescale for it, is telling you they expect to fix things without an argument.
- Who do you contact if a cabinet arrives damaged or a hinge fails after fitting? A single named contact or aftercare line is a better sign than being told to go back to the fitter, the supplier and the manufacturer separately.
- Which dispute-resolution scheme does the business belong to? This is the route available to you if a disagreement can't be settled directly. From 6 April 2026, consumer dispute resolution schemes work under accreditation through section 293 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which sets out how a scheme qualifies to handle complaints of this kind.
- Is the business a member of a trade body such as the KBSA or BIFIS? Membership isn't a guarantee of workmanship, but it usually means the business has agreed to a code of practice and a route to independent review if things go wrong.
None of these questions takes long to ask, and a supplier who answers them plainly, without needing to check, is telling you something useful before you've paid anything. Once you've had these conversations with more than one supplier, the guide to getting and comparing quotes sets out how to put what they've quoted side by side.
You've checked the supplier. Now check the kitchen fits.
Enter your carcass height, leg height, worktop thickness and the appliance's niche range from its own instructions, and the checker returns the finished worktop height and whether the appliance fits. It works from the numbers you give it, so it's only as accurate as those figures.