What to make IKEA METOD fronts from — materials and costs

Three materials realistically compete for custom kitchen fronts: laminated board, lacquered MDF and veneer. Laminate is the cheapest, comes in the widest range of decors and copes best with daily kitchen life; lacquered MDF costs roughly twice as much and gives a look laminate cannot fake; veneer is a separate shelf altogether, for people who want real wood. Published cut-to-size rates for lacquered MDF run 700–1,000 zł per m² (≈ €160–230/m²) of finished front as of July 2026, and laminate runs roughly half that. The drawing itself is material-independent — it specifies dimensions and holes — so you can change your mind without buying anything twice.

Laminate

Particle board faced with laminate: the standard furniture material, and the default choice for fronts unless you have a specific reason to pick something else. Why it usually wins:

Price. Roughly half the lacquered-MDF rate quoted above. Across a whole kitchen's worth of fronts, that gap becomes a very concrete number.
Choice of decors. Whites, greys, wood-effect decors, deep matt textures — board makers' catalogues run to hundreds of entries, and shops keep the popular ones in stock.
Durability. The laminate surface is hard and fairly indifferent to scratches and cleaning products, which is precisely what a kitchen front meets.
Availability. Every cut-to-size shop cuts, bands and drills it. You do not have to find a specialist.

This is not a theoretical recommendation. The first fronts fronteli grew out of were laminate: EGGER W1000 ST9, white on both sides, 18 mm board — an ordinary stock item, cut and banded at an ordinary shop. Same kitchen system, same way of ordering as these guides describe.

It has one limitation worth knowing: laminate cannot be routed into a profile or painted a custom colour. You get a flat panel in a catalogue decor. If you have your heart set on a milled front or a colour outside the board range, this is not the material for it.

Lacquered MDF

MDF panel, sanded and sprayed — the material you reach for because of how it looks. Lacquer gives a continuous, seamless surface: the colour runs across the face and the edges with no banding line anywhere, it can be ordered matt, satin or gloss, and in essentially any colour a sprayer can mix. MDF can also be machined, from a soft chamfer to a full framed front.

For that you pay roughly twice what laminate costs; the per-square-metre range at the top of this page is the lacquered-MDF one. We know that ratio not from a price list but from two quotes on the same set of four fronts at the same shop, one in laminate and one in lacquered MDF.

Two things are worth knowing before you commit. First, spraying is a separate process on a separate schedule: not every cut-to-size shop has a spray booth, so the job is sometimes split between two places, which stretches the lead time. Second, lacquer is more vulnerable to knocks and scratches than laminate — but, unlike laminate, it can be repaired and re-sprayed.

Veneer and foils

Veneer is a thin layer of real timber bonded to a panel. It looks and ages like wood because it is wood — and for the same reason it demands decisions laminate never asks of you. The grain direction has to be given to the shop alongside the dimensions, and across a run of fronts it matters whether the grain should carry continuously along the whole run, which is a very different job from cutting each front on its own. Colour and figure vary from sheet to sheet, so the exact repeatability laminate gives you is not on offer. Some people choose veneer precisely for that; others cannot live with it.

Foil-wrapped fronts (MDF wrapped in a decorative film) are the third, intermediate route: something close to the lacquered look at a lower cost. We publish no price band for them, because we have no quote of our own to stand behind.

One thing is common to this whole group: veneering and wrapping are usually not services a cut-to-size shop offers, but a separate workshop's work. Before you plan a kitchen around one, ask directly who will do it and how long it takes. The drawing does not change — outline, dimensions and hinge cups are identical whatever the surface — but the logistics do.

Thickness and edge banding

Whatever the material, plan on 18 mm board. Our drawings are dimensioned for 18 mm, the thickness is printed in the title block of every sheet, and every drilling depth assumes it — that is the thickness we recommend. 16 mm board also works: it is what many IKEA fronts are made of, so it is the choice when new fronts have to sit flush beside original ones. The same drilling depths then leave only a few millimetres between the bottom of the bore and the face of the front, so ask the shop to set the depth stop carefully. Never go thinner than 16 mm, and do not go thicker than 18 mm either — the drawings do not cover it.

Edge banding is the second thing to decide deliberately, because it adds to the dimension. The size on the drawing is the finished front after banding, with the gap to the cabinet already deducted — the shop cuts the blank smaller by the band thickness on every banded edge. The arithmetic is unforgiving: a 597 mm front given 2 mm ABS banding on both sides measures 601 mm and does not fit a 60 cm cabinet. That is exactly why the drawing states the finished size rather than a blank size: there is only one finished size, while the blank depends on the banding you choose.

In practice: tell the shop which edges to band (on kitchen fronts, usually all four), in what thickness, and confirm that the figure on the drawing is the size after banding. Thinner bands look more discreet, thicker ones take knocks better — but either way the shop has to subtract it from the blank.

What to choose

If you have no firm expectations about the look, take laminate. It is the cheapest, the toughest, the easiest to source, and it almost certainly has a decor you will like, wood-effect ones included. It is what the kitchen that started this project is made of, and it is where we suggest starting.

Choose lacquered MDF when you have a specific reason: a colour outside the board ranges, a deep matt or a gloss, a routed profile, or an edge with no banding line. You pay about twice as much and wait longer, but you get something laminate does not imitate.

Veneer makes sense when you want real timber and accept its irregularity — and accept that you will have to go looking for someone to make it.

One last thing that separates this route from buying ready-made fronts: you choose the material after buying the drawing, not before. The drawing specifies dimensions and hole positions, not a decor, so no manufacturer's catalogue limits you — you can take the same file to three shops and compare what each of them has in stock.

Set up your fronts and their sizes in the configurator. Once you know what to make them from, the ordering guide lists the services to request and the questions worth asking before you accept a quote. Sizes matter to the quote as well: a rate per square metre is billed against the finished front, and the size table gives those dimensions for every size we support. The other guides cover dimensions, hinges and how to keep the kitchen from looking like a catalogue.