What you can check yourself
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- Get a written repair quote before deciding anything — it's hard to compare against a guess.
- Check your appliance's age against the typical lifespan ranges below for its type.
- Ask specifically what failed — a control board or sealed-system failure changes the math differently than a door seal or a sensor.
- Factor in any remaining manufacturer warranty, which can make an otherwise expensive repair free or low-cost.
Still not working? A technician can take it from here.
Book a visitWhen to call a technician
Ask your technician directly for their honest opinion after diagnosis — a good repair company tells you plainly when replacement is the better value, rather than repairing something that isn't worth fixing.
Typical lifespans by appliance type
These are general ranges, not guarantees — actual lifespan depends heavily on usage, maintenance, water quality, and build quality. They're useful as a reference point for roughly where your appliance sits in its expected life, not a hard cutoff.
- Refrigerators: 12 to 17 years
- Freezers: 12 to 16 years
- Washers: 10 to 14 years
- Dryers: 10 to 13 years
- Dishwashers: 9 to 12 years
- Ovens and ranges: 13 to 15 years
- Cooktops: 13 to 15 years
- Wine coolers: varies widely by build quality and unit type
- Ice makers (as a component of a refrigerator): 12 to 17 years alongside the fridge itself
The "half the cost" rule, and when it doesn't apply
For most repairs — a part, a sensor, a seal, a valve — if the quoted cost is under about half of what a comparable new unit would cost, repairing is almost always the better financial choice, especially on a unit under 8 to 10 years old. The math shifts for compressor or sealed-system failures on refrigerators and freezers, since those repairs can approach a meaningful fraction of a new unit's cost even though they're technically repairable — at that point, age and remaining expected life matter more than usual.
A control board failure on a unit already near the end of its typical lifespan range is the other common case where replacement often wins, simply because you'd be paying a real repair cost on a machine that may only have a year or two of life left anyway.
What a straight answer actually looks like
Every repair-or-replace page on our site for a specific appliance (refrigerator, washer, dryer, dishwasher, oven, cooktop, and the rest) gives you our honest take for that category — we'd rather tell you plainly that replacement makes more sense than talk you into a repair that doesn't.
