Full service kitchen showrooms are set up w certified designers and they would be selling their cabinetry . You might benefit as their on site visits will offer scrutiny and advise re aesthetic and layout , for good efficiency. It appears medium sized or larger so wouldn't you want a person w cabinet lines of various sorts in their repertoire along w interaction at the site to help you? You will be looking at details and not inexpensively w your stated goals ....help only w a digital plan doesn't seem feasible. Explain more what you have in mind for planning then.

I beg to differ most cabinet stores have “designers: trained only to use the software for their cabinets and that is fine but sometimes you need to think outside the box to get really great design and that does not happen in most cabinet sales places. As for finding a KD depending on where you live you might want to start with Houzz pros the next step in look up design firms in your area and find designers that also do kitchen design.

Here if you wan to take the time you can do a to scale floor plan usually on graph paper showing all windows, doors. plumbing if it is staying make sure all measurements are clearly marked clearly and the drawing can be enlarged then see what pops up . I have a MCM house so I get the aesthetic . Also post some more pictures and also tell on your drawing what the spaces are around the kitchen. You might be surprised how much help you will get here.

We used Certified Kitchens in Edison (I think, def in Middlesex Co) and they were terrific.

If most kitchen designers in your area are with the kitchen places I would select three and have each place come out and measure and give you a layout plan. We did this and it really helped give an idea of what you could do with the space. Two designers had almost identical layouts with a window seat that we had never even thought about so it really helped figure out layout for us and told us what we could do. This is the first step to pricing as well. This works especially well if you have an idea of the style of cupboard and countertop you would like.

Search on Houzz for a pro.

Your current kitchen seems to embody exactly what you are asking to have done as new. Why are you changing it? What is prompting new things instead of restoration of the existing?

I have done “updating” of mid century spaces, but used the original aesthetic as the guideline. I always suggest working with what you have as the first choice though.

Finding a truly independent KD is hard. There aren’t many that survive on the pay!

In my experience, it is almost impossible to find an independent kitchen designer because it is difficult to earn a decent living. It isn't a business model that works for the most part unless the scope of the project is big enough so that the total budget for the project is large enough to support an adequate payment for an independent designer.

For most people, the best way to proceed is to visit as many kitchen/bath design stores as possible and meet with the designers. You can determine what cabinet lines you are interested in based on your budget as well as the actual cabinets themselves. In my experience, the cabinet stores seem to clump together in terms of cost - e.g. the highest cost line in one store might be the lowest in another.

While you wouldn't get a full design just from a preliminary visit, my experience was that if you bring measurements, you can get a sense of what a designer might be like to work with.

I had planned a kitchen remodel a few years ago but life got in the way. During my period of researching the kitchen remodel, I visited a whole lot of kitchen places.

For my recent remodel, I did a gut remodel of my entire condo and so the scope of the project was large enough so that I was able to hire a designer who was both aesthetically talented and extremely knowledgable regarding construction, Codes and functionality.

However, I would never have been able to hire her for just a kitchen because it wouldn't have paid for her to undertake the work for what would be a relatively small amount of money. And also, if you hire an independent designer, you need to pay for the design services up front and that may or may not be a significant extra cost.

Not all kitchen designers affiliated with kitchen stores are hacks. I would assume that there is a hierarchy of talent - with those with less experience working for lower end places like Home Depot and more experienced ones working at independent stores and/or cabinet lines that are more expensive.

I always recommend working with someone who understands the aesthetics you are going for. That means walking into kitchen centres and LOOKING at what they offer. If you see hunky-chunky cabinetry that had it's best days in the 80's, then feel free to leave.

If you walk into a company's showroom and it screams out "MY HOUSE!" then stop and chat with their design team.

A certified Kitchen Designer will get you what you need for functionality (and hopefully) and your desired look. But it REALLY helps if the person you hire is DRAWN to your personal vision.

Don't ask someone who LOVES hunky-chunky to work with sleek and modern. It just isn't in their comfort zone.

And if you find someone you can COMMUNICATE with AND YOU TRUST, then stick with them. These are two SOFT SKILLS that only translate DURING the build...you can never find them at the bottom of an invoice.

Helen summed it up perfectly.

An independent kitchen designer may come up with a fantastic plan, but then you’ll have to search high and low for the exact cabinets and appliances with the exact features in the plan and exact measurements. Designers working with specific lines of cabinetry and appliances know what is available in what dimensions and how much it will cost and what all fits together nicely. Anything custom comes with a big price tag and a certain amount of risk that it may not fit as expected. With cabinets, even tiny things that are “off” can cause big problems. You can’t cut off an inch of cabinets.

It's really not a problem to use a KD that is in a showroom that carries one or two brands of cabinets, so long as you're not in a Big Box store. Visit a few and talk with the designers. Look at the cabinets. Get some ballpark figures. And then choose one and pay them to design your kitchen.

I worked with a KD at a cab place. I walked in with a sketch but she gave some useful input to refine it. I paid her for her time but ended up not going with her cabs or exact design. I ended up using a local custom cab guy and he was much less expensive and did fantastic work. If you have a good idea of what you want I’d check out custom cabs.

There is so much more to kitchen design than the cabinets and I am an Interior Designer who loves to do kitchen design so often have been hired for kitchen design only and made a good living at it too.

I'm not sure where you are in NJ, but we are located about an hour north of Philly. I have two kitchen designers that you might want to talk to. First is Liz Walton: http://lizwaltonhome.com/. Her cabinets are made by the Amish and the literally can do everything. Second is Carol R. Cherry http://kitchensbycarol.com/wordpress1/. Both are independent KDs. Both are amazing designers and both have done work for me multiple times. Good luck!

I worked with a KD who represented a cabinet company and worked out of the cabinet company’s showroom. He was excellent. He had a Certified Kitchen Designer (CKD) designation which requires seven years of experience just to get that, and had been a CKD for 17 years. THAT is what you should look for - years of experience. This obsession that a couple of the Pros on here have that a KD be independent and should be run out of Dodge if they work out of a cabinet showroom is out of touch with reality. Like any profession in the universe, there are good ones and bad ones, including the independent KD category. And we have seen here many stories of people inquiring with independent KDs only to be told they won’t work on a kitchen that is under $75k or even more.

Thank you all ! I have an appt with a KD end of this week- while he reps several lines he understands that I need design only for a custom cabinet maker to make per the design. I feel much more comfortable paying for design work vs having a bunch of designs done as part of a "sales process". I need to update the kitchen as it was built in the 60's and the cabinets are original so they are a bit tired, the vent is also not to the outside so I cant get the kitchen aired out, and the drawers do not accommodate storage of silverware etc. The walls are concrete block so the flow will need to stay about the same.

@megs1030 I am in Towaco NJ -in Morris country and will definitely look at your suggestions, my cabinet maker is in Bucks county PA

@deb s, we live in Bucks County! LOL.

Who is your cabinet maker? I'm in Bucks Co. too.

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