A panel-ready appliance is one built to take a cabinet door on its front, so the fridge or the dishwasher wears the same rift white oak, walnut veneer, or painted slab MDF as the cabinets beside it. The panel is made by us, not by the appliance maker. And the appliance has to be chosen, by model number, before the cabinets are drawn, because the panel size, the hinge side, the housing, and the ventilation gap all come from the model you pick.
The terms get mixed up, so here is the plain version. A built-in or counter-depth appliance sits flush with the cabinet fronts but shows its own stainless door. A panel-ready appliance accepts a custom panel on its door but may still show a frame, a grille, or a control strip. A fully integrated appliance sits inside a cabinet housing with its hinges and its frame hidden, and the panel covers it edge to edge, so the kitchen reads as a wall of cabinets. Dishwashers are usually one or the other of the last two. Fridges come in all three, and the price and the cabinet work rise in that order.
The panel is a cabinet door made in the same material and finish as your fronts, cut to the appliance maker's drawing and fixed to the appliance door on its mounting points. Two things constrain it. The first is weight. A fridge door has a maximum panel weight, and a thick solid front can exceed it, so on some fridges a veneered panel is the right call over a heavy one. The second is the handle. On a handleless kitchen the integrated handle profile continues across the panel so the fridge opens the same way as the drawer next to it. On a kitchen with pulls, the panel takes the same pull as the doors.
A dishwasher panel hangs on the door and swings down with it, so it has to clear the toe kick. If the toe kick is set low for the look, the panel is cut shorter to match and the difference is hidden in the plinth. These are small details, and they are the ones that decide whether the appliance disappears or nearly disappears.
A fridge makes heat and has to move air. Some models pull air in and push it out through a grille at the base, so the housing needs an open plinth in front of that grille. Others need a gap above or behind, and the housing is built with that channel in it. Getting this wrong shortens the life of the compressor, so the clearance on the spec sheet is not optional and we build to it.
Above the cooktop there are three common approaches. A visible chimney hood, which is the simplest. A hood insert hidden inside a cabinet over the cooktop, with a door or a panel in front, so the run of wall cabinets stays unbroken. Or a downdraft that rises out of the counter behind the cooktop. In a condo, ducting to the outside is often not possible, and the hood recirculates through a filter instead. The electrical circuit for any of these is the electrician's work, not ours, but the cabinet above the cooktop is built around whichever one you choose, so the choice comes first.
Every dimension around an integrated appliance comes from its model number. The housing width. The height of the cabinet above. The panel size and the hinge side. The toe kick height. The clearance for air. Change the fridge from a 24-inch model to a 30-inch model after the design is agreed and that wall has to be redrawn, and if it happens after measurement the cabinets for that wall have to be rebuilt. So we ask for model numbers at the design step. Not the brand, not the style. The model number, and the installation drawing that comes with it.
This also protects the schedule. Our standard lead time is about 4 weeks from confirmed design, and appliance delivery times can be longer than that. Choosing early means the cabinets and the appliances arrive in the same window.
A panel-ready appliance costs more than the stainless version of the same machine, and the panel is an extra front from our shop. A panel-ready dishwasher is a modest step. A fully integrated fridge and freezer is a larger one, and it is usually part of what we would call a high-end appliance package. In our calculator, the appliance package is one of the three inputs, alongside size and finish tier, and switching it from mid to high-end moves the planning band up. A medium kitchen with premium finishes and a mid package plans in the $30,000 to $50,000 range where most of our projects land. A large kitchen with top-tier finishes and a high-end package runs past $100,000.
Try the Vancouver Kitchen Cost Calculator and switch the appliance package to see the band move. Our post on what drives the cost of a kitchen up or down covers the other levers, and the Vancouver pricing guide sets out the full ranges. If you already have appliances in mind, book a free consultation and bring the model numbers. We will draw around them.