Plenty of Bay Area kitchens are put together from two sources: IKEA boxes for the structure and independent makers for the parts you look at every day. It is a practical way to get a kitchen that feels made for an Edwardian flat in the Richmond or a condo in SoMa without paying for fully custom cabinetry.

Inside the city, IKEA San Francisco is a smaller city-format store on Market Street. For a full kitchen planning session, IKEA East Palo Alto offers free planning for kitchens and is the usual choice for the Peninsula and South Bay, from San Mateo to Mountain View. East Bay households in Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda tend to use IKEA Emeryville on Shellmound Street. Further out, the Pleasanton plan and order point in Pleasanton Square serves the Tri-Valley. The Colma location on the Peninsula is now permanently closed.

Custom fronts are where the kitchen gets its character: a painted Shaker door, rift-cut oak or a flat slab in a deep color. Some homeowners hire a local refacer who measures, orders and fits everything. Others send their plan to a maker who builds custom doors for IKEA cabinets and ships them flat-packed.

If your IKEA kitchen is already in place, refacing an IKEA kitchen is mostly a matter of matching hinge positions and door sizes to the existing cabinets, so the boxes can stay.

Updated November 6, 2026 · Sources

IKEA San Francisco is a small, city-format store at 945 Market Street. ikea.com checked November 6, 2026
IKEA East Palo Alto, at 1700 East Bayshore Road, offers free planning services for kitchens, closet systems and bathrooms. ikea.com checked November 6, 2026
IKEA's Pleasanton plan and order point, in the Pleasanton Square shopping center at 5755 Johnson Drive, offers kitchen planning by appointment. ikea.com checked November 6, 2026
IKEA's Colma plan and order point is listed by IKEA as permanently closed, with East Palo Alto, Emeryville and San Francisco suggested instead. ikea.com checked November 6, 2026

Questions about custom IKEA doors and fronts in San Francisco

Where can I sit down with an IKEA kitchen planner near San Francisco?

IKEA’s own pages confirm kitchen planning at East Palo Alto, which offers it free, and at the Pleasanton plan and order point by appointment. The Market Street store is a smaller city-format shop, so check its booking page for kitchen appointments before you go. The Colma plan and order point has closed. You can also plan online and order from home.

Source

My flat's walls are out of square. Can custom doors still look right?

Usually, yes. The cabinets go in level and square, and the gaps at walls and ceilings are closed with filler strips and cover panels cut to fit. A refacer who measures on site can scribe those pieces to the wall. If you order from a maker who ships, measure carefully and ask them to send panels slightly oversized for trimming.

We own a TIC unit. Can we reface the kitchen without involving the other owners?

That depends on your tenancy-in-common agreement, so read it first. Many agreements give each owner control over the interior of their own unit, but some ask for notice before contractors come and go. Door and drawer front swaps are among the least disruptive kitchen jobs: no plumbing, no walls and usually a day or two of fitting.