How long cabinets, countertops, appliances and windows take to arrive

The ranges, by category, as the suppliers published them

The table below collects the lead time ranges that could be found in writing on a named supplier's own page. Those pages were read on September 22, 2026. A lead time is a number a supplier revises, so each range describes what that supplier published on that date and nothing beyond it.

Typical range, verify with your professional. Every figure in this table is a range a named supplier published on the date shown, read on September 22, 2026. None of it is a market average, an industry standard or a promise. One cabinet manufacturer states inside its own dealer documentation that its lead times are subject to change and are reviewed weekly. The only lead time that governs your project is the one your own supplier gives you in writing.

Read the sources column before you use a row. Four independent suppliers behind each cabinet row is thin evidence. One retailer behind the appliance rows and one installer behind the window row is thinner still, and those rows carry that warning inside the table rather than in a note underneath it.

When does a cabinet lead time actually start

A published cabinet lead time starts at the signed order. It does not start at the first design appointment, it does not start at the showroom visit, and it does not start on the day a door style was chosen. Everything in front of the signed order is time that no published figure counts.

One direct seller of cabinets defines its published lead time as the span from checkout to delivery at the final destination, which means nothing before checkout is inside the number. One custom manufacturer counts from the deposit. Both definitions were published on the pages read on September 22, 2026, and both put the weeks of choosing outside the quoted figure.

Design work sits in front of all of it. One dealer of custom cabinetry published a design phase of 4 to 8 weeks that happens before an order exists, on the date that page was read. Put that in front of a published custom range of 6 to 18 weeks and the distance between a first design meeting and cabinets standing in the room is most of a season.

Typical range, verify with your professional. The 4 to 8 week design phase is one dealer's own published figure for its own process, read on September 22, 2026, in one regional market. It is not a duration anybody has surveyed. Your designer has a different process and a different queue, and the way to find out is to ask how many weeks of design work sit in front of the order.

The lead time you were quoted is the part of the wait that begins after the hard part is already finished.

Why two suppliers quote such different lead times

Two cabinet suppliers can publish 6 weeks and 16 weeks for what sounds like the same product, and both numbers can be honest, because the two figures are not measuring the same span. The span, not the number, is the thing to ask about.

• One manufacturer publishes production time only and states in the same document that shipping and transit time are not included, so its weeks stop at its own loading dock.
• One manufacturer publishes standard lead times that run from the factory to the dealer, which leaves the dealer transport and the delivery appointment outside the figure.
• One direct seller defines its figure as checkout to delivery at the final destination, which does include transport.
• One retailer publishes how fast cabinets leave the warehouse in business days, which is the day the boxes go out and not the day they arrive.
• One custom manufacturer counts its weeks from the deposit rather than from the order acknowledgement.

Every one of those definitions appeared on the page it came from. None of them is hidden and none of them is dishonest. They simply cannot be lined up against each other, which is why the fourth column of the table above exists and why the ranges in it are described as observed rather than as typical.

How many weeks from the day I sign the order to the day it is on my site, and what starts the clock. Both halves of that question have to be answered, and the answer belongs in writing.

Countertops cannot start until the cabinets are installed and level

A stone countertop is measured in your house, on the cabinets, after they are installed and leveled. One fabricator states that sequence rule in its own published documentation: templating happens after the cabinets are fully installed and level. The countertop schedule is therefore downstream of the cabinet schedule in every project, without exception.

On the pages read on September 22, 2026, the published spans from template to installation ran 10 to 15 business days at one fabricator, 10 to 15 business days at a second, and 5 to 15 business days as a standard case at an industry source for stone fabricators. That same industry source puts peak season, which it defines as March to August, at 10 to 20 business days, and a rush job with a surcharge at 3 to 5 business days. Converted to weeks, the observed range across the three is 1 to 4.

The useful detail inside those figures is which part of the wait is actually work. The same industry source separates the cut from the queue and puts fabrication itself, meaning cutting, edging and polishing, at 1 to 2 business days, with 0 to 7 business days of queue and scheduling sitting in front of it. Most of the wait for a countertop is somebody else's calendar, not somebody else's saw.

The practical consequence is that a countertop date cannot be promised before a cabinet date exists, and a cabinet date cannot be promised before the cabinet order is released. Anybody who gives you all three dates at the first meeting is giving you a hope, politely.

The delays that cascade, and what each one adds

The ranges above describe a normal week at each supplier. The delays below are the ones those same suppliers put in writing, and each one adds to a lead time rather than replacing it.

Read the custom color row as the trap in the whole category. A custom color program on a semi custom cabinet line was published at 10 to 12 weeks for the order, which is longer than the entire 3 to 9 week semi custom range it sits inside. A color chosen casually across a showroom counter can move a project by a month, and nothing about the conversation feels like a scheduling decision at the time.

Two of these delays are seasonal and both are knowable in advance. A buffer does not remove any of them, and no buffer prevents a change order. What a buffer does is decide whether a one week slip is an inconvenience or a crew that has moved to another job.

Appliances and windows, where the evidence is thinnest

Appliances and windows are the two categories on this page that rest on a single source each. Declaring that is more useful than filling the gap, because a lead time you cannot check is a lead time you should not plan against.

One US retailer publishes appliance delivery in two separate tables, one historical and one current. On the page read on September 22, 2026, models the retailer holds in stock were published at 24 to 48 hours. The brand figures on the same page for 2020 to 2022, which the page itself presents as history rather than as current times, ran from about 2 weeks to more than 30 weeks depending on the brand and the appliance.

The same retailer names special and custom order brands as the exception that still runs long, without publishing a current number for them. No major appliance manufacturer publishes weeks to consumers at all, which is why there is no manufacturer row here. The figure for your appliance comes from the dealer taking your order, on the day they take it.

One window installer published lead times by product line, dated April 2026, for the Los Angeles market. Those ran from 4 to 7 weeks on one vinyl line to 8 to 12 weeks on a build to order line, with 2 to 4 weeks added for specialty shapes, historic profile matching or non standard rough opening sizes. That is one dealer, in one metropolitan market, on one date, and the same page says plainly that lead times have not returned to what that market saw before 2020.

Typical range, verify with your professional. The appliance rows come from one retailer and the window row from one installer, both read on September 22, 2026, and the appliance brand figures on that page are historical rather than current. Treat both categories as a prompt to ask your own supplier, not as a planning figure.

Tile, plumbing fixtures and shower glass have no row on this page at all, because no published lead time for them could be found. Shower glass is the one that hurts, because it cannot be measured until the tile is finished and set, and a bathroom is not usable until the glass is fitted. Ask your own supplier, and write the answer down next to the date you need it.

Working backward: ordering by, not needing by

A decision does not expire on the day the thing is needed. A decision expires one lead time before that, and the lead time is usually learned on the day somebody tries to place the order, which is one lead time too late.

1. Write the date the item is needed on site. Cabinets are not needed on demolition day, they are needed weeks into the work, and the difference is free time you would otherwise throw away.
2. Subtract the lead time your own supplier gave you in writing, not a range read off a page, and make sure that figure runs to your site rather than to a loading dock.
3. Subtract a buffer you choose yourself, sized against the cascading delays above rather than against optimism.
4. The date left over is the order by date. Everything that has to be settled before that order can be released now has a date too, and those dates run backwards from it.

Run that arithmetic through the cabinet chain and the shape of a remodel changes. A custom cabinet order observed at 6 to 18 weeks, with a design phase one dealer published at 4 to 8 weeks in front of it, means the layout question a designer asks in the first meeting has a closing date months before anyone touches the house. The countertop, which cannot be templated until those cabinets are installed and level, sits behind all of it.

Order by, not need by. The calendar that governs a remodel runs backwards from the trades, not forwards from today.

The second consequence is quieter and it is the one that catches people. A decision nobody makes is still made, by the supplier, by the contractor, or by whatever happens to be in stock the week the order finally goes out. Working backwards is not about deciding faster. It is about knowing which decisions have a closing door in front of them and roughly where that door is.

The two measurements of how long a remodel takes

Two figures circulate for how long a kitchen remodel takes, and they are not the same kind of number. Knowing which one you have been handed is most of the answer.

Homeowners surveyed in the 2026 Houzz and Home study reported an average of 9.5 months of planning and 5.8 months of construction for a kitchen, and 8.4 months of planning and 4.8 months of construction for a primary bathroom. Those are elapsed months, reported by the homeowners themselves, and they include every day on which nobody was working.

Separately, two US design and build firms and one marketplace publish kitchen construction figures that overlap in the range of 6 to 12 weeks. Those are planned working weeks, which is the kind of number a contractor quotes. One of those three publishes two figures on its own page that do not agree with each other, which is worth knowing before anybody treats the range as settled.

Do not average the two and do not choose between them. Ask your contractor for the working weeks, then expect the project to run on the elapsed months. The gap between the two figures is almost entirely waiting, and most of what is being waited for is on this page: a cabinet order, a slab, a template, a piece of glass that could not be measured any earlier.

Typical range, verify with your professional. The months come from one survey of homeowners and the weeks come from two firms and one marketplace publishing their own timelines. Two firms are not a sample and a survey of homeowners is not a schedule. Your own dates come from your contractor, and neither figure here is a commitment anybody made to you.