Custom kitchen with Ichijo

12 Apr 2025 | #japan | #housing

We are building a house in Tokyo with Ichijo 一条工務店. They are known to provide outstanding cost-performance (especially in insulation), but a lack of customization options. One place where this caused us extra work was the kitchen, and I’ll share our journey in this post.

I will share prices in this post, but those of course change with time. For reference: we signed the pre-contract with Ichijo in January 2024, and talked with the kitchen companies from the summer of 2024, signing the final contract for the selected kitchen in March 2025.

Our requirements

Both my wife and I like cooking, so kitchen is one of the places in the house where we spend quite a bit of time. So making sure it meets our needs and desires was important from the beginning. Our initial requirements can be summarized as this:

• front-open, big dishwasher - Japanese homes still often don’t have dishwasher or only a small one
• IH stove - since we’ll have solar on the house, we decided to make our home electricity-only (オール電化)
• separate tap for purified water - the water filter is often included in the main tap, and one needs to press a button to switch between normal or purified water. However we have this type now, and we often forget to switch
• a balance of plenty of storage but an open feel - no overhead storage in the middle of the room
• space for all of our appliances (coffee maker, rice cooker, kettle) and two microwaves (both have oven functionality, and often times when we bake in one, we use the other one for heating up leftovers, or baby food)

Other than the front-open dishwasher, these were pretty standard and doable with many options. However the dishwasher turned out to be the challenge.

Dishwasher options

Option 1: Panasonic from Ichijo

Ichijo offers multiple house lineups, which affect the available options. We went with one of their higher end option, GRAND SMART, which just recently introduced the option to have a front-open dishwasher (from Panasonic) in their Grace Kitchen option (they offer other kitchen designs, but those don’t have the front-open dishwasher option):

So this was one possibility, although as this was only available in a single size of the Grace Kitchen, it would have limited our choice. Moreover this is the first model of front open dishwasher that Panasonic has ever made, and when we saw it in person, it really had that first-gen feeling: the shelves were a bit wobbly, and overall it didn’t feel like it will last. (This could have been due to the machine being in a showroom where people open it much more than in normal use, but this was Panasonic’s own showroom, so I would expect them to fix/replace it if it is broken/worn out.)

Option 2: add it later

One unofficial option that Ichijo offers is that they are willing to leave the dishwasher’s space empty, and you can install your own dishwasher later. This blog has the costs from 2021. Based on this we would have roughly the following costs:

• Buying the dishwasher. We found a Miele that we liked that had a list price of ¥517,000
• Fee of installing the dishwasher. The blog said ¥50,000, but likely a bit higher due to inflation
• Fee to Ichijo to prepare the pipes and electricity connections. The blog said ¥31,260, but again, likely higher now

Still, this is likely a good option for people who are happy with Ichijo’s kitchen design and just want a custom dishwasher.

Option 3: fully custom kitchen

Ichijo also lets you skip their kitchen, and get the kitchen from another company. They have a relationship with many kitchen makers, so you can get a discount from the list price, and Ichijo will also give back some money for cancelling their kitchen (which is included in the price of the house), however Ichijo will charge some extra for installing the kitchen. Compared to adding it later, this has the benefit that Ichijo will install the full kitchen. We ended up going with this option.

Custom kitchens

There are many companies making custom kitchens, and we got estimates from a few of them. Since we did these while we were still finalizing the layout, the size of the kitchen changed between these, so direct comparison is not perfect.

LIXIL

The first company we talked to was LIXIL. At this point our layout would have worked best with an L shape kitchen. Once we told that we wanted the front-open Miele dishwasher, they immediately recommended us their highest lineup (as otherwise there would be a gap at the bottom, which would look bad).

With Miele dishwasher, Panasonic IH stove, and stainless steel counter-top this came out to be 3,643,500 yen at list price.　With Ichijo’s discount this price went down to 2,883,500 yen (although it wasn’t clear if we would have to pay the installation fee on top of this, or if that was already included).

Panasonic

Next we visited Panasonic’s showroom. Since we were disappointed in their front-open dishwasher (and they only use Panasonic equipment), we sort of ruled them out almost immediately. Their estimate for a kitchen very similar to LIXIL’s above came in at 3,494,500 yen after the Ichijo discounts.

Takara Standard

The next company was Takara Standard. Their appeal should be that they offer less fancy options than LIXIL for a cheaper price. We can confirm both, as the only color option we liked was from their highest tier, and they indeed ended up being cheaper than LIXIL. Also they make the shelves and drawers from steel, so magnetic dividers, hooks, etc. can be attached everywhere. (They do this likely to lower the price, but I really liked it for the flexibility of attaching things to it.)

Their estimate came in at ¥2,479,300 on list price, which went down to 2,049,600 after the Ichijo discount.

WoodOne

We weren’t really happy with either of the above options: they felt overpriced and didn’t like that they all pushed us towards their most expensive lineup by pulling weird tricks like making the bottom have a gap that looks really bad with the front-open dishwasher. Also the pricing felt really arbitrary (which wasn’t helped by the fact that they all sent their quotes to Ichijo only, and we had to ask our Ichijo contact to share them with us).

Then my wife found WoodOne: this is a company that focuses on the wooden part of the products they offer: they will add the equipment, but since their focus is the body of the furniture, they have better design (at least for us) and much clearer pricing: for each equipment they list its price in their catalog, and that’s it. This also allowed us to compare multiple options for the IH, and kitchen hood.

This comparison let us upgrade the IH stove from the standard Panasonic one (that we chose with the other makers) to a Gaggenau one. To me this feels that it was designed by people who actually cook a lot, unlike other makers that seem to be content with the status quo. (The only reason most IH stove look like they do is that they are modelled after gas stoves. Gaggenau on the other hand gives you the whole surface with much more control options.)

In the end this was the kitchen that we went with from WoodOne (the layout meanwhile changed, so instead of an L shape we got an I shape peninsula type kitchen):

Their list price came out to 1,983,300 yen, which went down to 1,264,500 yen after the Ichijo discount. This includes the installation fee and the original kitchen’s cancellation refund too. (This was the actual price we ended up paying in the end.)

Price summary

So let’s compare the price. For Ichijo, I added the following options (as we made similar choices with the other makers, and we would have added these options if we go with Ichijo’s kitchen):

• water purifier: ¥107,000
• upgraded IH stove: ¥72,600
• Panasonic front-open dishwasher: ¥275,000

Maker	List price	Discounted price
Ichijo with Panasonic front-open	454,600 yen	454,600 yen
Ichijo with bring-your-own Miele	777,860 yen	777,860 yen
LIXIL	3,643,500 yen	2,883,500 yen
Panasonic	no information as they only sent the quote to Ichijo	3,494,500 yen
Takara Standard	2,479,300 yen	2,049,600 yen
WoodOne	1,983,300 yen	1,264,500 yen

Cupboard

Moreover, we also wanted to have a cupboard in the kitchen, which is a paid option from Ichijo:

While it would be possible to get the cupboard and the kitchen from different companies, they are placed close to each other, so having them in different design won’t look good. So we decided to get them from the same company as the kitchen, so for the full comparison, let’s add them too.

The cupboard options:

Maker	List price	Price after discount and with installation fee
Ichijo (180cm wide Grace Cupboard)	354,200 yen	354,200 yen
LIXIL (183 cm wide)	839,500 yen	860,000 yen
Panasonic	no information as they only sent the quote to Ichijo	1,197,000 yen
Takara Standard (180 cm wide)	550,400 yen	550,400 yen
WoodOne (229 cm wide, without overhead storage)	503,600 yen	595,000 yen

Talk about a spread! From 354,200 yen to more than triple that at 1,197,000 yen.

Comparison

So let’s compare all options, their prices, and anything that sets them apart.

Option	Price	Comment
Ichijo with Panasonic front-open	808,800 yen	The dishwasher would be Panasonic, which we didn’t like that much. Also the design is meh.
Ichijo with bring-your-own Miele	1,132,060 yen	The design is meh, installation is an extra step (another company has to do it), and the price is likely higher (we used numbers from 2021)
LIXIL	3,743,500 yen	This was for the L shape, so the I shape without overhead storage would be cheaper.
Panasonic	4,691,500 yen	The dishwasher is Panasonic. The price would be less due to the smaller size.
Takara Standard	2,600,000 yen	The price would be less due to the smaller size.
WoodOne	1,859,500 yen	No overhead storage on either the kitchen or the cupboard. Real wood front (pine) and cupboard top (oak). Gaggenau IH.

Decision

We have friends who built with Ichijo and went with one of the first 2 options, and those are very reasonable decisions. However we really didn’t like Ichijo’s design, and enjoyed working with WoodOne, so we decided to go with them. I’ll share photos and our experience once we move in.