Interior Designer.cy
Search

Kitchen design

The kitchen designer process in Cyprus, step by step

How a kitchen design job runs in Cyprus stage by stage: what the survey has to find, what you sign off, and where Cypriot programmes usually slip.

9 min read

The Kitchen Designer Process in Cyprus, Step by Step — illustrasjonsbilde

Photo: Samuel Peter 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

A kitchen design job in Cyprus runs in five stages — survey and brief, layout options, services coordination, specification and pricing, then installation — and the two that decide both the final cost and the finish date happen before anything on site looks like a kitchen. Most of what goes wrong is not a design problem. It is a services position agreed too late, or an appliance substituted after the cabinet sizes were fixed.

Overview and timeline

Three of the five stages move at the speed of your decisions. Two do not, and those are the ones to ask about first.

The stages you control are the brief, the layout choice and the finishes. A week spent deciding whether the tall units go on the window wall costs nothing. The same week spent after the furniture has been ordered costs a re-order.

The stages you do not control are furniture lead time and worktop fabrication. Cypriot kitchens are largely imported, so the delivery date depends on whether the range is held in stock on the island or shipped in — and a model that goes out of stock is a sailing schedule, not a short wait. Stone and composite worktops are templated only after the carcasses are levelled and fixed, then fabricated off site, then installed on a separate visit. Between those dates you have cabinets and no worktop, sink or hob.

Ask any designer for two dates in writing before you sign: the expected furniture delivery window and the expected worktop fabrication window. A designer who gives you both has coordinated the job before.

Season matters as well. In the free area of Famagusta, refurbishment concentrates between November and March because Ayia Napa and Protaras are letting rooms the rest of the year, and inside that window the good fitters are booked out rather than cheap. Our area pages record that pattern district by district.

Before you start

Decide which kind of designer you want. Two models exist here and they are not interchangeable. A showroom designer produces the layout against that showroom's own range, and the design cost sits inside the furniture price. An independent designer charges a fee and specifies across more than one supplier. The showroom route is efficient when you already like the range; the independent route is what you want when you need someone comparing suppliers on your side of the table. Ask which one you are dealing with, because it changes how you should read the advice.

Collect what the survey needs. The property's drawings if you have them, photographs of the existing room including inside the sink cupboard, and — in an apartment — the block's rules on working hours, lift use and debris removal. The management committee decides when trades can be on site, and that constraint belongs in the programme rather than in an argument later.

Find the fixed points. Some things generally cannot move cheaply: the soil stack position, the incoming water main, and the electrical board's spare capacity. Add the fuel arrangement to that list — there is no domestic gas grid in Cyprus, so a gas hob runs on bottled LPG stored outside, and the cupboard, line and regulator are part of the design rather than an afterthought. Establish all of them before anyone draws a layout.

Ask the VAT question at the start. Renovation and repair of a private residence in use for more than three years can be invoiced at the reduced VAT rate of 5% rather than the standard 19%, provided the value of the materials does not exceed 50% of the value of the services. A kitchen is material-heavy, so it sits close to that threshold, and how a supplier splits supply from labour can decide the answer. Confirm the current conditions with the Tax Department.

Those figures are read from recorded quotes when the page loads rather than typed into this text, so they do not go stale here. Our kitchen design pages break them down by district.

The stages in order

  1. Survey and brief

    A measured survey of the room, not a tape reading from your phone. The designer records wall deviation, floor fall, ceiling height under any bulkhead, window reveals, and the exact position of water, waste, sockets and the extraction route. Block walls here are rarely plumb and tiled floors are often laid to a fall, so the survey is what stops a run of units arriving too long for the opening it has to fit. The brief runs alongside it: who cooks, how many people eat in the room, and what you are unwilling to compromise on.

  2. Layout options

    You should see more than one arrangement, each with the working triangle, door swings and appliance positions marked. This is the stage to argue. Layout changes cost nothing now and cost real money after the services stage. Look specifically at whether the layout keeps the sink and waste where they are — leaving them in place is the single largest saving available on a Cypriot kitchen.

  3. Services coordination

    The layout is translated into a services plan: where each water feed and waste run goes, which circuits are new, where the hood ducts to. In concrete-frame construction you do not chase columns, beams or slabs, so the routes run in block infill, under the floor, or in a boxed duct that then needs finishing. Electrical alterations are carried out and certified by a registered electrician; ETEK maintains the register of technical professionals in Cyprus. Agree here who holds that certificate.

  4. Specification and pricing

    Carcass material and thickness, door finish, hinges and runners, worktop material with edge detail and cutouts, splashback, handles, plinths, lighting, and the appliance schedule by model number. Priced line by line rather than as one total. If two quotes are far apart, the difference is almost always in services and hardware rather than in the doors you are looking at.

  5. Installation and templating

    Strip-out, then services first fix, then carcasses levelled and fixed, then the worktop template, then off-site fabrication, then worktop installation, sink and hob cut in, appliances connected, sealing. The gap in the middle is normal. What is not normal is discovering it exists on the day the templater arrives.

Where projects usually slip

Decisions left open. A layout that is still being discussed while the furniture order is being placed is the most common cause of delay, and it is entirely within your control.

Appliance substitution. Appliances arrive by sea. When a model goes out of stock and a substitute is offered, check the dimensions and the door opening before agreeing — in an integrated unit even a small difference in height, depth or hinge position is a cabinet change, not a swap.

Older blocks. In the 1970s to 1990s apartment stock that dominates Strovolos and the Nicosia suburbs, rewiring and replumbing drive renovation work generally, and a kitchen is where both surface. Opening a wall tends to reveal a waste run at the wrong fall or cabling with no earth at the point. Agree in advance what happens, and who pays, when that appears.

Access. On the hillside plots above Peyia, steep access roads limit delivery vehicle size, so a worktop slab and a full load of carcasses may need splitting across smaller deliveries. In the Limassol high-rise stock the constraint is different: lift dimensions, booked loading times and whether a slab will go up at all. Both are programme items, and both should appear in the quote.

Coastal specification. Direct coastal exposure in Kato Paphos means salt-laden air, which is why galvanised and marine-grade fixings are standard there. Hinges, runners and handles deserve more attention than the door colour on any kitchen within sight of the sea.

Season. If the property is a holiday let, do the design work during the letting season so installation can start the moment it ends.

What you sign off

Before the order is placed, you should be signing a set of documents rather than a single sheet with a total on it.

  • A dimensioned plan and elevations showing every unit, appliance and door swing.
  • A services plan showing each water, waste and electrical position, marked as existing or new, with the name of who certifies the electrical work.
  • An appliance schedule by model number, with a stated policy for substitution.
  • A finishes and hardware schedule: carcass, door, worktop material with edge and cutout detail, splashback, handles, hinges, runners, lighting.
  • The revision policy — how many changes are included, and what a change costs after the order is placed.
  • The VAT rate applied and the basis for it.

Common questions

Do you need a permit for a kitchen in Cyprus?

Replacing a kitchen within the existing room, without touching structure or the external envelope, is normally treated as repair and maintenance. Removing or opening a wall, closing in a veranda, or altering the envelope is a different matter: it involves drawings certified by an ETEK-registered professional and an application through the district authority. The Department of Town Planning and Housing is the authority for planning consent in the Republic, and it is worth confirming your specific case with them or with your designer before you assume either way.

How long does the design stage take in Cyprus?

The drawing work is rarely the constraint. The brief and survey happen in one visit; layout options follow; the services plan follows the layout. What sets the calendar is how quickly you settle the layout, and then the furniture and worktop lead times, which belong to the supplier and the fabricator rather than the designer. Ask for those two windows in writing rather than for a single overall figure.

Is the showroom's free design really free?

It is free in the sense that you are not invoiced for it, and paid for in the sense that it sits inside the furniture price and is drawn against one range. That is a reasonable trade when you have chosen the range. It is a poor one when you want someone to tell you that a different supplier suits your room better.

Do I need a designer if the fitter measures anyway?

For a straight replacement in the same layout, often not — a competent fitter surveys and orders well. The fee earns its place when the layout changes, when services move, when the room is awkward, or when the property is let and the specification has to survive turnovers rather than just look right on handover.

Who is responsible if the layout does not work?

Whoever produced the drawing you signed — which is the practical reason to keep the dimensioned plan, the services plan and the appliance schedule as signed documents rather than as emails.

Kitchen designers in Cyprus

8 companies covering this area.

Sources

  1. Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK) — register of technical professionals — retrieved 2026-07-29
  2. Ministry of Finance (Tax Department) — VAT rates and reduced-rate conditions — retrieved 2026-07-29
  3. Department of Town Planning and Housing — planning consent — retrieved 2026-07-29

Thinking of doing this?Get up to five quotes, free.

Describe the project and we will gather proposals from designers who have done something similar.

Get up to 5 quotes.Free, with no obligation.

Tell us briefly what you need. We gather quotes from qualified companies where you live, so you do not have to ring round yourself.

Free · No obligation · You decide whether to go ahead