Most kitchen designers are cabinet sales people.

Well, there are fee-only independent designers around, but they are rare, and usually expensive. If you think instead about educating yourself on cabinets first, you'll be on the right path. Know the difference between face-frame, frameless, inset. You'll be exposed to a lot of salespeople if you shop around, and get a feel for it.

Best source of knowledge is to read a lot of the posts right here on this forum.

I guess what I am looking for is someone to come in and measure our space(s), tell me which size cabinets will fit where, best layout for the space and to create some renderings of the options so I can visualize. It's going to be an expensive project and I really want to be sure we do it right with as few mistakes as possible.

I also would like plans that I can shop around to cabinet retailers and to GCs, or is that not how it's done?

I don't see a problem with hiring a KD who is also a cabinet salesperson as long as he/she is a good KD. I actually liked the fact that I bought our cabinets from our KD, and since he sold 8 or 9 different cabinet brands, he could give us an apples-to-apples comparison of what same layout would cost us in each of the lines we liked. He also had an option where we could use him for the design and buy our cabinets elsewhere, of course paying him for the design, but we liked him and trusted him so that wasn't ever a real question in our minds.

As to how we got our KD, we asked around to friends and neighbors who had redone their kitchens about who they used, and whether they liked them and why. Then we interviewed 4 or 5 of these people. We found a wide disparity in approach (and trustworthiness), and then went with our gut. I went into this process not knowing a thing about different finishes, etc. and not having much time to plan (we had just bought the house, wanted to renovate before moving in, and didn't want to wait forever to move in). The KD we chose turned out to be invaluable in steering us through this process.

I think so, but I did it backwards. I have a layout and have a lot of my materials picked out, which is probably an odd time to bring a designer in.
If you go with an independent designer, surely she will have cabinetmakers and GCs to recommend.

I worked for a kitchen dealer for twelve years and just recently went independent. I feel that there is a place for a designer to learn what you would like in a new kitchen, attain the dimensions, and crank out a suggested layout without any bias to buy cabinets from any particular place. This person could also guide you on appliance and countertop suggestions without you feeling pressured to buy what they carry. I also have seen general contractors get comfortable with one source and tend to migrate to "one fits all". Whatever you do, keep in mind it's your kitchen, your cooking style, your needs and desires and the designed layout should address those factors and not just what happens to be offered from any particular cabinet seller from Home Depot to the fancy boutique. You are are the right track by simply getting on this site and placing your question. Best wishes.

We had designs mocked up by a couple designers at cabinet stores, and they were terrible. Like, they'd never cooked in their lives. And didn't listen to anything we said. I'm sure we could have got to something in the end, but it would have taken painful amounts of back and forth. It was one of the reasons i ended up doing ikea with semi-handmade. I got to have full ownership of the design. I mean, we see tons of terribly designed kitchens on this site all the time, and in open houses, etc. Someone designed those things.

I used a local kitchen/bath design company. They sell a couple of different brands of cabinets - I used Shiloh. I had multiple conversations with the owner, he came out and measured, and then I gave him $1000 to work up a working design. If I didn't order cabinets from him, the design was mine to keep and could have been used to get bids from other places. I chose to order from this company and the $1000 was applied to my purchase. I could not have been happier with the entire process.

Here is how one person found a KD. [https://www.houzz.com/discussions/spokane-kitchen-reno-part-2-dsvw-vd~4929811[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/spokane-kitchen-reno-part-2-dsvw-vd~4929811)

When we renovated our previous kitchen, I had come up with a wish list and provided it to each of the three KDs who came to our house. Two of them basically kept our existing layout and added a very narrow island, since I had that on my list. The designer who we ended up going with provided a design that was outside the box and required taking a wall down--something we hadn't considered. I would say the first two were more cabinet salespeople than designers, whereas our KD was a true designer. Talk to as many people as it takes until you have the right fit.

Sophie, is there a thread about online designers? Or how would one find one?