Electrical scope
How many circuits the new kitchen needs, and whether your panel has room
A kitchen is the most electrically dense room in a house, and the electrical scope is almost never in the first quote. It arrives later as a change order, because the moment the walls open the job stops being "reuse what is there" and becomes "bring this room up to what is currently enforced".
Circuits, devices and whether the panel can take them
Derived new circuits
9
Needing 10 breaker spaces, against 4 free.
Panel verdict An older breaker panel may physically accept the circuits, but several brands from that era are no longer supplied with new breakers and some are refused outright by inspectors. Have the brand identified before you plan around it.
- Confirm the panel brand and whether replacement breakers are still listed for it.
- The kitchen needs 10 breaker spaces and 4 are free. You are 6 short.
- Projected demand of 88 amps leaves 13 amps of headroom on a 100-amp service. A service upgrade involves the utility and their calendar, not just your electrician.
- Island receptacles are the requirement that changed most recently and the one most likely to be handled differently by two inspectors in the same county. Ask before the counter is fabricated, because the answer can put a hole in it.
The circuit schedule this kitchen derives
| Circuit | Poles | Rating | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small-appliance branch circuit 1 | 1 | 20 A | Serves the countertop receptacles. These are the circuits a toaster and a kettle fight over. |
| Small-appliance branch circuit 2 | 1 | 20 A | Serves the countertop receptacles. These are the circuits a toaster and a kettle fight over. |
| Electric range | 2 | 50 A | A 240-volt appliance takes two breaker spaces and a four-conductor run, not one. |
| Dishwasher | 1 | 15 A | Runs on its own circuit so a motor start does not trip the counters. |
| Garbage disposal | 1 | 15 A | Runs on its own circuit so a motor start does not trip the counters. |
| Refrigerator | 1 | 15 A | Runs on its own circuit so a motor start does not trip the counters. |
| Microwave | 1 | 15 A | Runs on its own circuit so a motor start does not trip the counters. |
| Lighting circuit 1 | 1 | 15 A | Kitchen lighting is kept off the small-appliance circuits so a tripped breaker does not leave you in the dark. |
| Lighting circuit 2 | 1 | 15 A | Kitchen lighting is kept off the small-appliance circuits so a tripped breaker does not leave you in the dark. |
Take this schedule to your electrician and ask which of these already exist, which can be reused, and which are new home runs. The answer to that question is most of the electrical price, and it is a twenty-minute conversation rather than a survey.
What an hour of this work is worth, and why the quotes differ
This page derives scope rather than price, because the price of a circuit is set by your county and the scope is set by your kitchen. The one part of it the United States government does measure is what the person pulling the wire is paid, and it is worth seeing the line that figure was read out of.
Hourly median wage for Electricians in All Industries in the United States 30.38 (2025 Annual)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) — BLS public API, electrician median hourly wage
What it means for your kitchen That is a wage paid to an electrician, not a rate charged to you: the gap between the two covers payroll tax, insurance, the van, the licence, the unbillable hours and the profit, and on the labour page it is an editable multiplier of ours rather than anything the agency published.
The electrical line is the least predictable on any kitchen bid
Of the six trades a kitchen employs, electricians carry the widest published pay spread — 69.9% from the twenty-fifth percentile to the seventy-fifth. That is measured within one occupation, in one country, in the same year. It means two electrical quotes for the identical circuit schedule above can differ substantially without either bidder being unreasonable, and it is why the useful question is how many circuits are new home runs rather than why one number is bigger.
What the wage series says nothing about
It covers the person, not the parts and not the paperwork. A panel, breakers, AFCI and GFCI devices, wire, boxes and a permit are all priced separately, and in a kitchen with a service upgrade the utility appears on the invoice as well, at a figure the electrician does not set. When an electrical quote surprises you, the surprise is more often in that list than in the hourly rate.
It also says nothing about how long any of this takes, which is the other half of every labour number. The hours behind a circuit are our own estimate and are disclosed as one:
When the panel becomes the project
Spaces, not amps, is usually the binding constraint
People assume a service upgrade is about running out of amps. Far more often the panel simply runs out of physical spaces, and a kitchen adds five to eight of them at once. Tandem breakers recover some spaces in panels that permit them; a subpanel recovers a lot; a full replacement recovers all of them and brings the utility into the schedule.
Old panels that inspectors will not pass
Several panel brands from the mid twentieth century are no longer supplied with listed breakers, and some are refused outright. If your panel is one of them, that is not a kitchen cost — it is a house cost the kitchen happened to uncover, and it has to be scheduled before rough-in rather than discovered during it.
The utility is on the critical path, and does not care about yours
A service upgrade needs a utility appointment for the disconnect and reconnect, and that appointment is scheduled on their calendar. Two to six weeks is common and it is not negotiable by paying more. If the panel is being replaced, get the utility booked the day the decision is made.
Sources for this page
Two wage series, both national, both retrieved by machine on the date shown. Nothing on this page cites a code provision, and the reason is on the methodology page: we could not read the code text from its publisher, so every code-driven quantity here is a control you set from what your own jurisdiction enforces rather than a constant we printed.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, electricians — the midpoint of the band quoted above.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Twenty-fifth percentile hourly wage, electricians — the bottom of the spread cited in this section.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Seventy-fifth percentile hourly wage, electricians — the top of that spread.