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How to choose a kitchen designer in Cyprus

Most kitchen design in Cyprus is bundled into a units order. How to tell a paid designer from a showroom draughtsman, and what to check before you sign.

8 min read

How to Choose a Kitchen Designer in Cyprus — illustrasjonsbilde

Photo: Max Vakhtbovych on Pexels

ByStavros Loizou· Editor, kitchens, bathrooms and finishes

Stavros covers the rooms that carry the most cost per square metre and the finishes that go into them. He tracks the order trades have to arrive in, which moves a Cypriot renovation bill further than any hourly rate does.

Published

Most kitchen design in Cyprus is not sold as design at all. It is done at no separate charge by the showroom supplying the units, and the drawing is a sales instrument — competent, often very good, and financially attached to one range of cabinetry. The alternative is an independent designer who charges a fee and specifies units they do not sell. Both produce working kitchens. Settle which of the two you are talking to first, because the fee, the loyalties and the comparability of quotes all follow from it.

What can actually be verified

There is no licence for kitchen design in Cyprus and no register of kitchen designers. What you can check is concrete enough to be worth the hour.

  1. Whether the designer sells the units

    Ask directly: "do you earn anything on the cabinetry you specify?" A yes is not a problem. An evasion is. A showroom designer working to one range will design brilliantly inside it and will not tell you when a different carcase depth would have solved your corner.

  2. That the business is registered

    The Registrar of Companies confirms a company, its directors and its registration date in minutes. Many good kitchen people here trade as self-employed individuals rather than companies, which is fine — you simply need to know who the contract is with before you pay a deposit on units with a long lead time.

  3. Installed kitchens, not showroom displays

    A display is built in ideal conditions on a flat floor. Ask for two or three kitchens installed in the last year in buildings like yours, and ask to see one. On an island this size that is a reasonable request.

  4. How the electrical work is certified

    A new kitchen adds circuits. Ask who issues the certificate and whether it is inside the quoted price.

  5. Who measures, and when

    A survey taken before the old kitchen comes out is provisional. Ask who re-measures after strip-out and whether the quote is fixed before or after that. This one detail causes more variation orders than any other.

Supply is lopsided in a way worth knowing about. Our listings carry 7 practices under kitchen design against 26 under kitchen fitting — roughly four fitters to every designer, which is a fair picture of how the work is organised here. Design capacity concentrates in Larnaca, Limassol and Nicosia; fitting is spread across all districts including Paphos. In Polis Chrysochous or on a Peyia hillside plot, expect the designer to travel and expect that travel to sit somewhere in the price.

Registrations that matter

Fitting a kitchen inside its existing walls needs no permit and no registration. The moment the design opens the kitchen into the living room by altering a load-bearing wall, it becomes building work, and the drawings must be certified by a professional registered with ETEK, the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber. A kitchen designer without that registration can draw the layout; someone else signs for the structure.

This matters more here than the same sentence would in northern Europe, because Cypriot housing is overwhelmingly reinforced concrete frame with block infill. The wall you want gone is often not load-bearing — but the column beside it always is, and it is not moving. A designer who reaches for the structural question in the first meeting has worked on this stock. One who promises an open plan before anyone has looked at the frame has not.

Two credentials get quoted and mean less than they sound: manufacturer training certificates, which confirm familiarity with one brand's system, and membership of an overseas kitchen institute, which is a subscription.

Questions to ask

"What is in the price and what is a provisional sum?" Appliances, worktop and sink are frequently carried as allowances. An allowance is a placeholder, not a price, and quartz at the bottom of an allowance is a different material from quartz at the top.

"Where do the units come from, and what is the lead time?" German and Italian ranges arrive through the ports and clear from there; Cypriot and Greek workshops build closer to home. Neither is better. But a kitchen ordered without a stated lead time is a kitchen you may live without for an unknown number of weeks.

"Who is responsible if the worktop template is wrong?" Stone is templated after the carcases are installed and cut off site. If the designer, the fitter and the stone supplier are three separate businesses, be clear which one carries that risk.

"What have you fitted in a building like mine?" A 1970s block in Strovolos comes with fixed drainage runs and columns you design around, and renovation there is dominated by rewiring and replumbing rather than appearance — a new kitchen usually means new circuits. Near the sea in Kato Paphos, salt in the air attacks hinges, runners and handles, so stainless and marine-grade fixings are standard rather than an upgrade. Neither answer can be improvised.

What a good quote looks like

Read the quote against what the market actually charges for each of the three things you are buying.

Design and specification alone, excluding the units, runs roughly €800 to €3,200 per project. Fitting only, where you have supplied the units, runs about €1,200 to €3,800. A complete kitchen — units, worktop, appliances and fitting — runs from around €5,000 to €18,000 per room. That top figure is not a luxury outlier; it is what a large kitchen with stone worktops and integrated appliances costs when everything is specified rather than chosen from a promotion.

Each range is spread by specification and site condition, not margin. What moves you up: stone rather than laminate, a full-height run of tall units, integrated appliances, any change to plumbing or electrical positions, and an upper-floor flat with a lift too small to take a full worktop slab.

A quote worth accepting itemises the units, the worktop, the appliances, the fitting labour and the design fee as separate lines; states which lines are provisional sums; names the ranges and finishes rather than describing them; gives a lead time in weeks; says who re-measures after strip-out and what happens if the measurement changes; states the electrical and plumbing scope; and shows VAT explicitly. A reduced VAT rate applies to renovation of qualifying private residences rather than the standard rate — confirm with the Tax Department how your property is treated, because on a kitchen the difference is real money.

Works well when

Usually included: survey, layout drawings, elevations, an appliance and finish schedule, unit supply, delivery to the property, and installation.

Less suitable when

Usually extra: strip-out and disposal of the old kitchen, altering plumbing or electrical positions, tiling and making good, stone templating and fitting when bought separately, structural work and its certification, and appliance connection.

Warning signs

A free design with a deposit attached the same day. Time pressure on a kitchen decision serves the seller. The units are not going to run out.

A layout that ignores where the waste already runs. See the note about the slab. It is the single commonest source of a cost that appears after you have committed.

Appliances specified by category rather than by model. "Integrated oven" is not a specification. Model numbers are, and they let you price the same kitchen elsewhere.

No re-measure clause. Every kitchen in an existing building needs measuring twice. A quote that does not say what happens between the two measurements is a quote with a variation built into it.

Refusal to break out the fitting cost. If design, supply and fitting are one number, you cannot tell where you sit against the fitting range, and you cannot take the units elsewhere if the fitter falls through.

A summer date promised for a holiday let. In the Famagusta district, refurbishment of tourist accommodation is compressed into November to March because the buildings are occupied the rest of the year. A July kitchen swap in Protaras is a promise from someone who has not worked the season here.

Kitchen designers and studios in Cyprus

8 companies covering this area.

Common questions

Do I need a kitchen designer if the showroom designs for free?

Not necessarily. Where a paid designer earns their fee is when the answer might be a range the showroom does not carry, when the kitchen is part of a wider renovation, or when the layout is constrained enough that being tied to one carcase system costs you a working solution. For a straightforward replacement in the same footprint, the showroom route is often the sensible one.

Who is the best kitchen designer in Cyprus?

We do not publish an answer to that and we do not rate design quality. The listings carry documented specialism, the district a practice works from, the projects it shows and how it says it charges. What we can tell you is what to compare: the itemisation of the quote, the lead time, and who carries the measurement risk.

Is a permit needed to replace a kitchen?

Not for a like-for-like replacement inside existing walls. If the work alters a load-bearing element or the building envelope, it becomes building work with the certification and approval that go with it. Ask the structural question before the layout is agreed, not after.

How long should a kitchen take from order to finished?

The controlling factor is unit lead time, not fitting time, and imported ranges run considerably longer than locally built ones. Ask for the lead time in writing and treat the fitting week as the short part of the programme.

Can I supply my own units and hire only a fitter?

Yes, and the fitting-only range exists precisely for that. It works well when the units are a known flat-pack system and the room is square, and badly when it is not, because the person adjusting for that is also the person who did not choose the carcases. The kitchen design section and area pages here show which businesses offer fitting on its own.

Sources

  1. ETEK — Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber — retrieved 2026-07-28
  2. Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property — retrieved 2026-07-28
  3. Tax Department — VAT on residential renovation — retrieved 2026-07-28

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