Are kitchen appliances covered by contents insurance?

Home insurance is sometimes called home-only insurance or building insurance. These policies only cover the physical structure of your property if it is damaged or destroyed by an insured event. Other permanent structures on your property may also be covered under a home insurance policy, such as your fences, sheds, and swimming pools.

Contents insurance covers the possessions you keep inside your property, such as your clothes, electronics, furniture, books, and more. If these contents are lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed in an insured event, the insurer can have your possessions repaired or replaced, often with new-for-old replacements.

Depending on your situation, you may be in the market for a home-only insurance policy, a contents-only insurance policy, or a combined home and contents insurance policy. For example, landlords may only take out home insurance policies on their investment properties, while their tenants may take out their own contents-only insurance policies on the possessions kept inside their rented home.

It's often clear what should be covered under the home or contents insurance policy. For example, if your roof collapsed, home insurance would cover the cost of repairs, while if a burglar stole your TV, replacing it should be covered under contents insurance.

Many kitchen appliances may be considered contents, as they’re movable goods that you keep in your home. A freestanding fridge or cooker may be covered by your contents insurance policy if they were to experience damage in an insured event, such as fusion damage following an electrical storm or power surge.

But sometimes it’s not quite so clear. Insurers may define different types of kitchen appliances as either Fixtures or Fittings, which will affect whether they should be covered by your home or contents insurance.

If a kitchen appliance is physically attached to your home (e.g. bolted, nailed or glued into place), hard-wired into the mains power, or plumbed into the water supply, and you likely won’t consider taking it with you when you move out, it may be considered a fixture. This could include built-in air conditioners, ceiling fans, cooktops, and the like.

As fixtures are considered to be part of the home itself, they will often be covered as part of your building insurance policy, rather than being considered contents.

Kitchen appliances that are only semi-attached to your home and are capable of being removed may be considered fittings by your insurer. This means they may be considered contents, and covered under a contents insurance policy.

Some insurers (though not all) also consider carpets, blinds and curtains to be fittings, rather than fixtures – even though these are often attached to the home, they can still be removed, and thus may be counted as part of your home’s contents.

Some kitchen appliances may occupy something of a grey area. For example, some fridges may be built into your kitchen’s cabinets, but if they haven’t also been hard-wired into your home’s power supply, the insurer may still consider them fittings rather than fixtures.

If you’re uncertain whether a specific kitchen appliance may be counted as part of your home insurance or your contents insurance, read your PDS and/or contact your insurer.