KitchenAid dishwashers are common across the United States. The companies parent is Whirlpool, so if you find some of the advice on this page doesn’t correspond to your model, you can try having a look at the Whirlpool dishwasher troubleshooting page, as designs, parts and error codes are often shared across the different brands.
If your KitchenAid dishwasher is suffering from a generic problem such as not draining, not drying, or not cleaning properly you can check out our general dishwasher troubleshooting page.
Like the vast majority of models, you can run a test cycle by putting your dishwasher into a service mode. This can help to diagnose any problems and help you troubleshoot the issue.
There are a few different ways of entering the service mode, so if the methods below don’t work for your model try removing the kick plate at the bottom of the dishwasher. Behind the kick plate you’ll often find a technical data sheet which will point you in the right direction.
Method one – Access the test mode by pressing the buttons on the dishwasher control panel in this sequence: “HEAT DRY, NORMAL, HEAT DRY, NORMAL”. All the lights on the display will illuminate. Press start and a test cycle should then begin which should cycle through the various functions of the dishwasher.
Method two – Press the buttons on the control panel in this sequence (starting from the left): “1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3”. If successful then all the lights on the panel should illuminate and you can commence the test by pressing START.
If a fault is detected then an error code will be displayed. You can find a list of the various KitchenAid dishwasher error codes used by different models here.