Either you’ve genuinely got an IKEA kitchen already and fancy new doors on it, or you’ve got a completely different kitchen and you’re hoping IKEA’s famously affordable doors might just clip onto what you’ve already got. If it’s the second one, there’s some bad news before the good news.
Why IKEA doors are built for IKEA kitchens, and not much else
IKEA’s own hinges and fittings, the UTRUSTA range, are described on IKEA’s UK site simply as “kitchen door hinges for METOD kitchens.” Nothing in that description mentions any other cabinet brand, and that’s not an oversight. IKEA’s whole kitchen system, called METOD, hangs cabinets on a suspension rail and drills its carcasses to a specific, consistent pattern. IKEA doors are sized and hinged to match that exact pattern.
That’s fine if your kitchen actually is a METOD kitchen. It’s a real problem if it isn’t. A cabinet from a different manufacturer, a kitchen fitted by a local joiner years ago, or anything even slightly older than IKEA’s current range will almost certainly have its holes drilled in different places, at a different depth, on a different rail system entirely. Turn up with a mismatched carcass and an IKEA door and you’ll be reaching for the power drill, several trips to the shed, and quite possibly a stronger cup of tea than the job usually calls for.
So what if your kitchen isn’t IKEA?
This is where most people land on that search term without quite realising it. They’ve seen IKEA’s door prices, assumed a “replacement door” is a replacement door wherever it comes from, and only found out about the hanging system and hole spacing once a door was already sat in the boot of the car. It’s a completely reasonable assumption to make. It just isn’t how it works in practice.
The good news is the actual goal, a new look on your existing kitchen without a full refit, is still entirely achievable. It just needs doors made to fit what you’ve actually got, rather than doors made to fit a system you haven’t got.
The real choice: an IKEA swap versus a proper made to measure replacement
An IKEA door swap only really works cleanly in one of two situations: you already have a METOD kitchen, or you’re happy to swap out the carcasses too, which is a much bigger and more disruptive job than most people searching for “replacement doors” actually want.
A made to measure replacement door service works the other way round. Whoever measures your kitchen takes it as it actually stands, whatever brand it started life as and however many years it’s been fitted, and makes new doors to match. The existing carcasses, plumbing, tiling and electrics all stay exactly where they are. What changes is the bit everyone actually looks at.
Getting a fit that works, whatever you started with
According to Andy, who oversees the day to day fitting side of things here, the measuring visit is where most potential headaches get caught before they ever become a problem.
“People are sometimes surprised how much variation there is between kitchens that look identical from the front,” he says. “Two kitchens from the same era can have completely different hole spacing once you actually get a tape measure on them, which is exactly why we measure every job individually rather than working off a standard template.”
That individual measuring is really the whole difference between a door that fits properly on day one and a door that needs persuading into place with a mallet.
If you do genuinely have an IKEA kitchen
To be fair to IKEA here, if your kitchen really is METOD, their own replacement doors are a legitimate option worth considering, and this whole compatibility issue simply doesn’t apply to you. The trade offs to weigh up are more about range and finish. IKEA’s door styles and colours are more limited than a made to measure service, and if you ever want something outside their current catalogue, you’re back to the same custom route everyone else needs.
Where this leaves you
If you’ve read this far because your kitchen almost certainly isn’t IKEA, the door swap you’re picturing is still possible. It just needs to start with a proper measure of what you’ve actually got, rather than a size chart built for someone else’s cabinets. That’s exactly what our replacement kitchen doors service is built around, whatever your kitchen started out as.
If you’re still weighing up whether a door swap is even the right move for your kitchen versus starting again completely, our earlier piece on repairing versus replacing your kitchen is worth a read alongside this one.
