My Honest Review of Our IKEA Kitchen

We installed an IKEA kitchen in our townhouse a few years ago, and now that we live in a different house, there are definitely a few things that I’m missing about our SEKTION cabinets! See my honest IKEA kitchen review in this post!

Waaaaaayyy back in 2015 when we still lived in our townhouse, we took on what has probably been our biggest DIY project to date: completely gutting our outdated kitchen and putting in an IKEA SEKTION kitchen with GRIMSLOV cabinet and drawer fronts instead.

Are IKEA kitchen cabinets strong?

Ever since completing that project, I’ve gotten questions almost weekly about how we liked it and how it’s holding up.

We moved out of the townhouse about nine months after we had completed the renovation, and while I’m not sure what condition it’s in now since we’re not in contact with the new owner, here is my honest IKEA kitchen review in a nutshell:

The IKEA cabinets held up beautifully for the entire time we had them– no complaints!

We now have a non-IKEA kitchen, and while there are many, many things that I love about it, I also thought it was interesting that there are several things I really do miss about our IKEA kitchen!

I thought I would write up my honest IKEA kitchen review for people who may be considering putting in an IKEA kitchen or are deciding between IKEA and another brand. Here we go!

7 Things I Miss About Our IKEA Kitchen– My Honest IKEA Kitchen Review

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

1. The IKEA kitchens have extra deep upper cabinets.

I’m jumping right into the thing that I miss the very most– three extra inches of depth in my upper cabinets, making them 15″ deep rather than the standard 12″ deep.

(IKEA offers the 12″ too in case you would have a kitchen that couldn’t accommodate the deeper ones for some reason, but if they’ll fit, definitely go for the 15″ version!)

While three inches might not seem like a big deal, it really made the cabinets feel so much roomier. Because our townhouse kitchen was small, we needed every extra inch we could get! The three extra inches also made it possible to store larger items like chargers in the cabinet, which is not usually possible in the standard 12″ cabinets.

2. IKEA kitchens have deeper drawers.

Going right along with the deeper upper cabinets, the drawers in our IKEA kitchen were much deeper and roomier than the drawers in our current kitchen as well.

In fact, I can’t even fit boxes of things like foil and ziplock bags in our current kitchen drawers because they’re just not deep enough. Those items fit in my IKEA SEKTION drawers with room to spare!

3. I loved the drawer within a drawer feature of IKEA SEKTION kitchens.

In addition to having deeper single drawers, IKEA also offers a “drawer within a drawer” option, which is especially helpful for maximizing every inch of space in a small kitchen!

We used this option to store our silverware and cutlery, and it worked like a charm!

The drawer looks standard from the front, but the interior of the drawer has two levels, which helps to make use of any otherwise wasted space. The silverware and knives shown above are behind the top drawer front in this photo:

Tip: Be sure to put the items you use more often in the bottom part of the double drawer because that’s what pulls out first when you open it. We put our silverware in the bottom part of the drawer, and then once that part was open, we could choose to pull open the top part to access the knives.

4. The IKEA kitchen has perfectly fitting drawer dividers.

IKEA truly thinks of everything, including drawer dividers and organizers that are made specifically for their kitchens.

I’m just a little completely type-A, so I like for things to fit exactly right rather than trying to retrofit a storage solution. I especially loved these drawer dividers that clipped easily onto the drawer and allowed me to create two separate sections for storage within the drawer.

5. IKEA kitchen corner cabinets feature a roomy lazy Susan.

I felt like there was a lot of extra space packed into all of the drawers and cabinets in our IKEA kitchen, including in the lazy Susan corner cabinet.

In the townhouse I used the lazy Susan to hold our pots and pans, which was really nice because everything fit in the same cabinet and was easily accessible.

When I tried to use the lazy Susan the same way in our current (much bigger overall!), more standard kitchen, it just wasn’t roomy enough to accommodate all of the pieces.

We moved things around and found a different solution for pots and pans in our current house, but especially if you’re working with a small kitchen where you don’t have a ton of cabinets to choose from, that extra storage space in the IKEA lazy Susan will make a big difference.

6. The white interiors of IKEA SEKTION cabinets make for a bright and clean look.

My last few items are more cosmetic things than functional things, but I think they’re important too! I really liked that the cabinets and drawers in our IKEA kitchen had white interiors (as opposed to the wood-looking ones my current kitchen has).

I think the white just made everything look clean, bright, and spacious, and it showed off the dishes and utensils so nicely. (And selfishly, I think the white looked better in blog photos. 🙂

Obviously, this one wouldn’t be a game changer, but it does have a rather big effect on the overall aesthetic of the open cabinets and drawers.

7. I loved our roomy IKEA farmhouse sink.

This last one may be cheating a little because clearly you can have a farmhouse sink without having an IKEA kitchen, but I was very impressed by the quality of the IKEA sink and how well it held up.

We had the smaller version, but if we had had more space, I would have put in the larger version because it is even more spacious.

I loved the look of the apron front and the cottage-y vibe that it gave the entire space.

(We would have had to cut into a cabinet in our current kitchen to make a farmhouse sink work, which made me nervous, so we went with this quartztone option instead, which we have liked as well.)

The Pros and Cons of an IKEA Kitchen

Like any project, IKEA kitchens have pros and cons.

In addition to the upsides I mentioned above, installing an IKEA kitchen yourself is a great way to get a sturdy, organized, beautiful kitchen at a much more affordable price than custom cabinetry.

But the DIY route is also a lot of work. (You can see our breakdown of the IKEA SEKTION kitchen installation process here.) Hiring a cabinet company may be more expensive, but you will likely get your end result faster and with a lot less effort by you personally.

But if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to assemble and install all of the IKEA drawers and cabinets yourself, the savings and beautiful end result is definitely worth it.

So that’s my honest IKEA kitchen review! The last thing I want to do is seem like I’m whining about our current kitchen— it has so many great features, and I really love it too!

But if we’re ever in a situation where we’d need to renovate a kitchen again, I would do another IKEA kitchen in a heartbeat. I was just so impressed with all of the features, and they really do think of everything when it comes to storage and organization!

Have you ever had an IKEA kitchen? Did you love it as much as I did? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Have a great day!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.