Kitchen Range Hood Installation Cost Calculator

Where these numbers come from

A flat install price is for one of four jobs, and probably not yours

Three of the four questions Google shows on this search are about what a shop charges to fit one, which is a good question with a misleading answer. A flat rate is written for a like-for-like swap — a hood out, a hood in, using the duct and the outlet that are already there. That is a genuine morning’s work and $864 on this model with the hood included. ⚠️ The question it does not ask is whether there is a duct. If there has never been a hood over that range, there is not one, and the same hood becomes $1,671 out through an exterior wall or $2,198 up through the roof — the roof route because the duct crosses an attic, penetrates the covering and has to be flashed and insulated up there. We do not publish other people’s prices and would not know if they changed; what this page can tell you is which of the four rows you are standing in, and that is the part that decides the number.

The hob decides the airflow, and the airflow decides the price

The trade sizes extraction off what is being cooked on, not off the hood: 100 CFM per foot of hob against a wall, 150 over an island because air escapes on all four sides, and for gas about 1 CFM per hundred Btu an hour of burner input — whichever is greater. So an ordinary gas range wants 400 CFM and a high-output one wants 750, and that second figure crosses a line. ⚠️ Above 400 CFM the code requires make-up air, and the Department of Energy states it in one sentence 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.” That is a second duct from outside, a motorised damper and a control that opens it when the hood runs — $1,936 on this model, and nobody mentions it when you buy the range. The threshold itself belongs to the ICC and is not reproduced here; your local code decides. An island pushes the same way for a different reason: a 36 inch hob is 300 CFM against a wall and 450 over an island, which is the difference between staying under the threshold and not.

You measured the duct. The hood is working against something else

A hood is rated at zero static pressure and then asked to push air through a duct. Every fitting costs airflow, and the trade counts it in equivalent feet of straight duct: about 15 feet for a 90 degree elbow and 30 for the capped grille outside. On the ordinary case this page opens with — 8 feet of duct and 2 elbows — the hood is working against 73 equivalent feet, of which 65 is fittings. The duct on the drawing is a small fraction of the duct the hood sees, and that is the honest answer to why hoods so often seem not to work. ⚠️ The federal guidance says the same: “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 there is a second reason to want fewer bends: “Elbows not only reduce flow but can allow the build up of grease over time.” Flexible duct is worse again — the ribbed wall roughly doubles the resistance and holds grease in every corrugation — which is why this model prices rigid.

And the cheap option, which the federal guidance rules out

A recirculating hood is $981 on this model against $1,671 for building a duct out through a wall, and it exists because sometimes there really is no route outside. ⚠️ But look at the first row before choosing it: reusing a duct that is already there is $864, so recirculating costs $118 more than ducting whenever a duct exists — same hood, same fitting, plus a filter kit on top. It is a saving only against building the duct from nothing. It passes the air through a charcoal filter and returns it to the kitchen, which takes out some grease and none of the moisture, none of the heat and nothing from burning gas. ⚠️ The Department of Energy is unambiguous: “Recirculating fans do not provide ventilation that is compliant with modern codes.” And on why it matters at all: “Research has identified kitchens as the primary location where most harmful pollutants are generated in the home.” EPA, Nitrogen Dioxide’s Impact on Indoor Air Quality (read 2026-08-25) is more specific still: it names the source — “The primary sources indoors are combustion processes, such as: unvented combustion appliances, e.g. gas stoves” — says what it does — “NO2 acts mainly as an irritant affecting the mucosa of the eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract.” — and gives the remedy in five words: “Install and use an exhaust fan vented to outdoors over gas stoves.” Vented to outdoors is the part a recirculating hood cannot do. If there is any way to duct it, duct it, and do it while the kitchen is open — retrofitting a duct later is the expensive row on this page. One more thing worth checking before buying anything: a great many existing runs are flexible, undersized, or terminate in a loft rather than outside, and a hood ducted into an attic is putting every pint of cooking moisture into the roof. Labour is official: wages from BLS OEWS for carpenters, HVAC mechanics and electricians, May 2025, retrieved 2026-08-20, benefit-loaded from BLS ECEC. Every estimated band is on the dataset page, the approach on the method page, and the hood inside a whole kitchen is priced on our kitchen remodel page, which carries it as one line inside a much larger job — and the two cannot drift apart, because a check compares what that page charges for a ducted hood against what this one charges and fails the build if they separate.

Material prices

Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.

Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-25.