Range hood installation cost dataset

Four jobs with one name

The same hood is $888 in the first row and $2,249 in the third, and a flat-rate install price is written for the first. ⚠️ This dataset does not publish anybody else’s prices — three of the four questions on this search ask for them, and they change, vary by store and are not ours to verify. What it publishes is which row you are in, which is the part that decides the number. On the last row the federal guidance is unambiguous: “Recirculating fans do not provide ventilation that is compliant with modern codes.”

The hob decides the airflow

The step across the 400 CFM line is $1,948 — a second duct from outside, a motorised damper and a control that opens it when the hood runs. ⚠️ What crosses it is the burner input, not the hood, so a high-output gas range decides the price of a job most people think is about a hood. The Department of Energy states the requirement in DOE Building America Solution Center, Kitchen Exhaust Retrofit Duct Guide (read 2026-08-25): “The 2018 IRC, Section M1503.6, requires that if the range hood is capable of exhausting more than 400 CFM of air, make-up air must be provided.” The threshold belongs to the ICC and is neither reproduced nor derived here; your local code decides. An island crosses the same line at a smaller hob, because air escapes on all four sides.

The duct you measured is not the duct the hood sees

8 feet of duct becomes 73 once the fittings are counted: 15 feet per 90 degree elbow and 30 for the capped grille outside. On a short run the fittings are almost all of it. ⚠️ A 6 inch duct carries about 100 equivalent feet before the airflow suffers — and that limit is itself a correction: at 60 feet, which is where this dataset started, the commonest kitchen in America failed the test, because the fittings alone came to sixty-five. A limit that fails half the country is not measuring what it claims to. The federal guidance puts the effect plainly: “Longer ducts and more elbows will reduce flow rate, sometimes to the point where a fan with a higher rated CFM must be considered.” and, on why bends matter twice over, “Elbows not only reduce flow but can allow the build up of grease over time.”

Line items

83% of the reference total comes from estimated rather than official figures, which is high and honest: an appliance has no published price series and the official half here is the labour. The reference job is an under-cabinet hood swapped into existing ductwork above an ordinary 30 inch gas range: 400 CFM through 6 inch duct, 2.5 trade hours. Options that are not selected sit at zero quantity, so the table below is all six hood types and all four scopes rather than one job.

The reasoning behind each figure

Under-cabinet hoodestimated, ±59%

• The commonest hood there is, and the cheapest. The band runs from a plain builder unit to a quiet variable-speed one — and quiet is worth paying for on the only appliance in the house you turn off because it is annoying.

Wall chimney hoodestimated, ±61%

• Stainless canopy with a chimney cover up to the ceiling. It is bought as much for how it looks as for what it does, which is why the band is wide.

Island hoodestimated, ±58%

• ⚠️ Dearer than the wall version of the same range, and it has to be: air escapes on all four sides of an island, so the trade sizes an island hood higher for the same hob — which pushes it towards the make-up air threshold that the wall version would have stayed under.

Hood insert or linerestimated, ±59%

• The blower, the filters and the light, to be built into a surround somebody else makes. The surround is joinery and is not in this figure.

⚠️ Downdraft extractorestimated, ±52%

• ⚠️ Dear to buy, dear to duct and the weakest at the job, and the reason is physics rather than build quality: steam and hot air rise, and this is pulling against that from below and to one side. It exists because an island hood is visually intrusive, which is a real reason — just not a ventilation one.

Over-the-range microwave with extractionestimated, ±56%

• ⚠️ Check before buying that the one you are getting can be ducted. Most ship configured to recirculate, and converting them is a matter of turning the blower and fitting a damper — which is easy on the bench and awkward once it is on the wall.

The blower, priced by the air it movesestimated, ±43%

• ⚠️ Separated from the body of the hood on purpose, and it is a correction rather than a refinement: the first version priced every hood flat by style, so a 300 CFM unit and a 750 CFM one cost the same. They do not — a bigger blower is a bigger motor, a bigger housing and, if it is to stay bearable, a lot more work on the noise.
• It is also the line that makes the hob matter: sizing the airflow off burner input rather than off the width of the hood is what pushes a high-output gas range past the make-up air threshold, and this line is where you first see it.

Hanging and connecting the hood

• Setting out, fixing to something that will hold it, levelling, connecting and testing. It runs from two and a half hours for a box under a cabinet to six and a half for one hanging from a ceiling over an island, where it has to be braced to structure and it is visible from every angle.

Rigid duct, elbows, transition and exterior capestimated, ±51%

• Smooth-wall rigid duct at the diameter the airflow needs, with the elbows, the transition off the hood and a capped grille outside. ⚠️ Flexible duct is cheaper and is the wrong material here: its ribbed wall roughly doubles the resistance and it collects grease in every corrugation.
• Priced per foot of the equivalent length rather than the measured run, because that is what the duct actually costs to build and what decides whether it works.

Running the duct and making the penetration

• Three hours plus half an hour per foot of run and an hour per elbow, out through a wall; half again as much out through a roof, where the run goes through a ceiling and an attic and somebody has to work up there.
• ⚠️ The roof route also has to be insulated where it crosses cold space, or the duct condenses inside and the water runs back down to the hood.

⚠️ Roof cap, flashing and making goodestimated, ±56%

• ⚠️ A hole in a roof is a hole in a roof. The cap has to be flashed into the covering properly and the duct insulated where it crosses the attic, and both of those are things a kitchen fitter is not the right trade for.

⚠️ Recirculating filter kitestimated, ±62%

• ⚠️ The charcoal cartridges and the deflector that send the air back into the room. They are a consumable — they load up and stop working, and nothing tells you when.
• ⚠️ Notice that this is an addition rather than a saving. A recirculating install is the same hood, the same fitting and this kit on top, so it only comes out cheaper than ducting when the duct has to be built from nothing. Against reusing a duct that already exists it costs more and does less, which is the opposite of how it is usually presented.

⚠️ Make-up air: duct, damper and controlestimated, ±54%

• ⚠️ Required above 400 CFM, and it is the line that changes what this job is. A duct from outside, a motorised damper that opens when the hood runs, and the control that links them — plus, in a cold climate, something to temper the air so the kitchen does not get a draught of winter every time somebody fries an egg.
• The band is wide because tempering is what separates the two ends of it, and whether you need it depends on where you live.
• The threshold is set by the residential code, which belongs to the ICC and is not reproduced here; the figure is the one the Department of Energy publishes in its own guidance, and your local code decides.

Fitting and commissioning the make-up air

• Six hours: a second penetration, a second duct, the damper, the interlock with the hood and proving that it opens when it should.

New dedicated circuit for the hoodestimated, ±54%

• Cable, a breaker and an outlet in the cabinet above the hood. ⚠️ Google shows "do I need an electrician for a range hood install?" on this search, and the honest answer is: for a like-for-like swap into an existing outlet, usually not; for a hood going somewhere there has never been one, yes, because there is no outlet there.

Running and terminating the circuit

• Four and a half hours: getting a cable from the panel to the back of a wall cabinet through a finished kitchen, and terminating both ends.

Permit and inspectionestimated, ±56%

• A new circuit, a new penetration through the building envelope or a make-up air system is usually permitted work; swapping a hood on an existing duct and outlet usually is not. Set locally.

Not included in this dataset

What a retailer charges for a flat-rate install

⚠️ Three of the four questions Google shows on this search ask exactly that, and this page will not put a number on somebody else’s price list — it changes, it varies by store, and we have not verified it. What is worth knowing is what those prices are written for: a hood coming out and another going in, using the duct and the outlet that are already there. That is the first row of the scope table on this page, and it is genuinely cheap. Every other row is a different job.

The cabinet the hood goes under

A chimney or island hood often means altering or losing a wall cabinet, and an insert needs a surround built for it. Joinery is priced on our kitchen cabinet pages, not here.

Tempering the make-up air

⚠️ Included in the band on that line rather than as its own figure, and it is worth naming: in a cold climate, four hundred-odd cubic feet a minute of outdoor air arriving in a kitchen in January is not a detail. Whether a heater or a mixing arrangement is needed depends on the climate and on where the air is introduced, and it can be most of that line by itself.

Whether your existing duct is any good

This model prices a new duct or assumes an existing one works. ⚠️ A great many existing runs are flexible, undersized, or terminate in a loft rather than outside — and a hood on a duct that ends in the attic is putting every pint of cooking moisture into your roof. It costs nothing to look before buying anything.

The range itself

Priced with the appliances on our kitchen remodel page. It matters here only because it decides the airflow, and therefore whether the make-up air threshold is crossed — which is the single largest step on this page.