Four IKEA Stores, Four Planning-Only Studios: How Berlin Renters Actually Furnish a Kitchen

The Official Rule

Once it’s confirmed that a Berlin rental genuinely came without a kitchen, no cabinets, no counters, sometimes not even a sink, the framing most newcomers reach for is IKEA against a Küchenstudio. That framing is fine as a starting point, but it skips over how much structure actually sits underneath both options in this specific city.

Berlin’s IKEA presence is larger, and more layered, than the four warehouse-style stores most people picture. IKEA Berlin-Lichtenberg, at Landsberger Allee 364, opened on December 13, 2010, and Tagesspiegel’s coverage at the time described it as the world’s second-largest IKEA store, with 1,500 permanent parking spaces and an additional 450 temporary spaces laid on for opening weekend alone. IKEA Berlin-Spandau, at Gewerbehof 10, runs its own early-bird kitchen-planning slots starting at 8:30 a.m., ahead of the store’s regular opening hours, aimed squarely at people who want a planning appointment before the rest of the day gets busy. IKEA Berlin-Tempelhof, at Sachsendamm 47, and IKEA Berlin-Waltersdorf, at Am Rondell 8, round out the four full stores, though Waltersdorf sits just over the city line in Schönefeld, Brandenburg, near BER airport rather than inside Berlin proper.

What genuinely sets Berlin apart, though, is a second tier most newcomers never hear about. IKEA’s own overview of its Berlin footprint lists four additional Planungsstudios sitting inside the city itself, in Köpenick, Pankow, Reinickendorf, and Steglitz. These aren’t scaled-down warehouses, they carry no general retail floor at all and exist purely so a kitchen or wardrobe expert can sit down with you and finalize a plan close to home, with ordering and delivery handled from there. All eight locations, the four full stores and the four planning studios alike, offer the same free planning appointment for a kitchen.

The price trade-off underneath all of this stays consistent with the rest of Germany. Assembly is billed as its own line item rather than folded into the kitchen’s price, and the planning process leans on you and an in-store expert rather than a fully bespoke service. Kitchen manufacturer mahe-kuechen.com’s own comparison sorts custom Maßküchen into budget bands running from roughly 6,000 to 10,000 euros at the entry level up past 20,000 euros for a fully outfitted kitchen, against a genuinely lower IKEA entry price that narrows once appliances, worktops, and assembly get added back in as separate costs. The broader industry context behind all of this sits with the AMK (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die Moderne Küche), the kitchen industry’s own national trade association, based in Mannheim with more than 140 member companies spanning manufacturers, appliance makers, and suppliers, a useful reminder that both the flatpack and the bespoke route sit inside the same well-established German industry rather than one being a fringe option.

Photo by Valentin Ivantsov on Pexels

Berlin’s Küchenstudio Landscape

Berlin’s Küchenstudio scene runs from a large, multi-location chain to single-brand neighborhood studios, and the difference between them is mostly about scale, not honesty. Höffner’s Küchenstudio operates five locations across the city and its edges, in Schöneberg, on Landsberger Allee in Lichtenberg, in Schönefeld, in Vogelsdorf, and on Pankstraße, offering free consultation by phone, home visit, or in-studio appointment, professional installation, removal of your existing kitchen, and 0 percent financing options, alongside established brands including Nolte, Nobilia, and ALNO plus appliance lines from Bosch, Siemens, Miele, and NEFF.

A different, smaller model sits a few districts over. KüchenKonzepte Bartkowiak, founded in 2016 in Berlin-Köpenick as an offshoot of the Küchenbau Bartkowiak business running since 2011, sells exclusively Nobilia kitchens through a team of more than ten staff, handling everything from the initial measurement and 3D layout to installation, drywall work, and natural or engineered stone processing in-house. It’s a genuinely single-brand shop rather than a multi-manufacturer showroom, which trades away some brand choice for a more hands-on, single-point-of-contact relationship through the whole project.

Höffner and Bartkowiak sit at opposite ends of the same underlying deal, though. Neither treats measurement, planning, or installation as its own purchase, all of it is already folded into whatever number the studio quotes, and the cabinets get cut to fit your specific room rather than picked from a handful of fixed modular widths. That’s genuinely what the extra money buys, not just a nicer showroom wrapped around the same flatpack parts.

The Third Path: A Planner Who Only Sells Advice

A genuinely underused option in Berlin is hiring someone whose entire business is the plan itself, not a kitchen to go with it. Küchen Beratung Berlin, run out of Leibnizstraße 43 in Charlottenburg by kitchen planner Igor Tredler with more than 30 years in the industry, publishes its fees openly rather than folding them into a kitchen quote: a room analysis and consultation starts around 150 euros, a 3D plan with an installation layout around 250 euros, complete planning with purchasing guidance around 450 euros, and a full on-site visit in Berlin including measurement around 590 euros, with online consultation available nationwide by video for anyone outside the city.

The reasoning is straightforward once you see who each type of planner actually works for. A Küchenstudio’s in-house planner is ultimately paid to sell that studio’s own range, so even good-faith advice comes with a built-in incentive. A manufacturer-neutral planner like Küchen Beratung Berlin is paid only for the advice itself, which means the resulting plan, exact measurements, an installation layout, sometimes purchasing guidance too, travels equally well to IKEA, a Höffner studio, KüchenKonzepte Bartkowiak, or an independent Tischler. Instead of getting a different set of assumptions about your room from each provider you talk to, you walk into every conversation with the same numbers already settled, which turns three separate sales pitches into three genuinely comparable quotes.

Step by Step

1. Check whether the flat truly has no kitchen at all, and if the outgoing tenant is offering to sell theirs, work through the Ablöse math in the separate Germany-wide guide before you look at anything new.
2. Sketch out your actual kitchen footprint, or bring in a neutral planner such as Küchen Beratung Berlin when the room isn’t a simple rectangle, or you’d rather not repeat a measuring visit for every provider you talk to.
3. Book a planning slot at whichever IKEA location suits your transport situation, one of the four full stores or the four Planungsstudios, and push for a number that already includes delivery and assembly, not just the cabinet units.
4. Ask a Küchenstudio for a second number, Höffner or a smaller shop like KüchenKonzepte Bartkowiak, since what’s actually folded into the price differs from one studio to the next.
5. Factor in roughly how long you expect to stay in the flat, a longer horizon tips the case toward a Küchenstudio’s build quality and its resale appeal to whoever moves in after you.
6. Make the call based on the room, the budget, and your moving timeline, not on whichever number happened to be quoted first.

What Real People Say

Berliners who’ve priced out both routes often land on the same realization: once IKEA’s delivery and assembly show up as their own line rather than an afterthought, the total creeps a lot closer to a studio’s all-in number than the showroom price tag ever let on.

Renters who paid a neutral planner before setting foot in a studio describe those first appointments feeling noticeably calmer, since they arrived already knowing their own measurements instead of letting the first salesperson they met define the room on the studio’s own terms.

Compliance Note

This page explains general considerations around buying a kitchen in Berlin, current as of mid-2026, but it is not professional purchasing or legal advice, and specific offers, prices, and store details vary by provider and can change. For your specific situation, request direct quotes from IKEA, local Küchenstudios, and independent planners before committing.