Interiors
Cabinet refacing cost
Refacing is bought in doors and drawer fronts and quoted in linear feet, which is why two quotes for the same kitchen never line up. And it costs 45 to 75 per cent of a new kitchen — which against semi-custom is a real saving and against stock cabinets is often barely one. This prices painting, refacing and replacing on exactly the same kitchen so you can see which you are actually choosing between.
Written and edited by Pablo Ruiz Quintero
Last reviewed 2026-09-21 · Nothing you type leaves your browser
Doors, not linear feet
Refacing does not touch the boxes, so what you buy is doors, drawer fronts and veneer for the frames. A 36 in cabinet and an 18 in one are two doors and one — almost the same money for twice the wall.
Two runs meeting at one inside corner. That corner costs you two feet of base run and needs a corner unit, and it is the commonest layout there is.
Along the cabinets.
The other wall.
Appliance gaps — no cabinet, no door
What you have now
Takes paint perfectly after a degrease, a scuff sand and a bonding primer. Open-grain woods like oak show their grain through paint — some people want that and some are horrified by it, so look at a sample before committing the kitchen.
Pantry or oven stack. Two doors each.
Cabinet sides that show — at the end of a run, beside the fridge. Each one is a whole surface to veneer.
The new face
MDF wrapped in a vinyl skin. The cheapest door worth fitting, seamless to clean, and it has the same weakness as the thermofoil it might be replacing: sustained heat lifts it, so it wants a heat shield beside a wall oven.
New doors are bored for a specific cup position. Old hinges rarely transfer.
Dampers on the hinges. Cheap, instant, and the upgrade people notice most.
New fronts on old drawers is the commonest disappointment in a refaced kitchen — they look new and still stick.
Check the hole spacing first — 3 in and 96 mm look the same and are not.
Sets the wall cabinet height, which sets how many doors are up there.
Veneering frames neatly is the hard part and it is where a home job announces itself — the doors are the easy half.
Used only to pick a regional labour rate. It stays in your browser.
20 doors, 7 fronts, fitted
$3,916
$145 a piece · 38 ft² of veneer · 102% of a new stock kitchen
This is close enough to new cabinets to be a real question
Refacing is 102 per cent of what a whole new stock kitchen costs, and for that you keep the same boxes, the same drawers and the same layout. Refacing earns its keep against semi-custom, not against stock — and a refacing quote is usually being compared against semi-custom without saying so.
Cheaper on this kitchen
Paint the doors you have
$1,896 against $3,916
Cheapest by a distance and it changes only the colour. Every door, every hinge, every dated profile and every layout problem stays exactly where it was.
What refacing does not fix
Worth reading before the deposit, not after.
- The layout. Refacing keeps every cabinet exactly where it is, so an awkward kitchen stays awkward at a cost not far off a new one.
- The boxes. Sagging shelves, a swollen sink base and racked carcasses are all still there behind the new doors.
- The interior. Wire shelves stay wire shelves and the dead corner stays a dead corner unless the fittings are changed separately.
- The worktop, the backsplash and the floor, none of which are touched.
- Cabinet heights. If the wall cabinets stop a foot short of the ceiling, they still will.
The same kitchen, four ways
Identical geometry in every bar — the replacement figures come from the same box schedule.
What actually gets bought
- Rigid thermofoil doors
MDF wrapped in a vinyl skin. The cheapest door worth fitting, seamless to clean, and it has the same weakness as the thermofoil it might be replacing: sustained heat lifts it, so it wants a heat shield beside a wall oven.20 - Matching drawer fronts
Smaller, so cheaper — about three fifths of a door each. They are also the piece most likely to be a different colour by year three if the kitchen gets sun.7 - Veneer for the frames
Peel-and-stick matching the doors, over every stile and rail that shows, plus 2 exposed end panels. This is the part that separates a good refacing job from an obvious one.38 ft² - Concealed hinges
New doors are bored for a specific cup position, so old hinges rarely transfer.20 - Handles
Check the hole spacing before ordering — 3 in and 96 mm look identical and are not.27
What it costs
National average. 20 doors, 7 drawer fronts and 38 ft² of frame veneer, fitted. Not included: the worktop, the backsplash, the interior fittings, and anything at all about the layout.
$145 a piece, which is the number to compare quotes on — the trade quotes refacing per linear foot and that hides how many doors your cabinets actually have. New cabinets on the same kitchen are worked out from the same schedule, so the comparison above is exact rather than a rule of thumb.
Worth knowing
- 20 doors and 7 drawer fronts across 12 cabinets, plus 38 ft² of veneer for the frames and 2 exposed ends. Those are the units refacing is bought in — not linear feet. A 36 in cabinet and an 18 in one are two doors and one, so the wide cabinet costs barely more to reface even though it is twice the wall.
- Refacing comes to $3,916 against $3,830 for a whole new stock kitchen — 102 per cent of it. At that ratio, refacing is hard to justify: you keep the same boxes, the same drawer boxes and the same layout for almost the same money. It earns its keep against semi-custom at $5,900, which is the grade most refacing quotes are quietly compared against.
- The drawer boxes stay as they are. New fronts on old drawers is the commonest disappointment in a refaced kitchen — the doors look new and the drawers still stick, still rattle and still stop two inches short of fully open. A whole new drawer box on soft-close runners. Worth it wherever the old drawer is a stapled pine tray on a plastic side runner, which is most kitchens before about 2005.
- Sprayed off-site is what makes a painted kitchen look factory-finished rather than brushed. It also means the doors leave for a week, which is the part nobody warns about — you live with open carcasses and a roll of masking tape.
On this page — 5 sections
It is bought in doors, and quoted in feet
The short version
- The unit is doors and drawer fronts, not linear feet. A 36 in cabinet and an 18 in one are two doors and one.
- Refacing is 45–75 per cent of new cabinets. Against semi-custom that is a real saving; against stock it often is not.
- Painting is a third of refacing — and impossible on thermofoil or laminate.
- The boxes, drawers and layout do not change. That is the whole trade-off.
Refacing keeps the cabinet boxes exactly where they are and changes the face of them: new doors, new drawer fronts, and matching veneer over every part of the frame that shows. The kitchen stays usable while it happens, which is most of the appeal.
Which means the thing being bought is a count of doors. And the trade almost always quotes it per linear foot — a mismatch that makes two quotes for the same kitchen very hard to line up.
The mismatch is not small. A 36 inch cabinet has two doors. An 18 inch cabinet has one. Twice the wall, one extra door — so on a per-foot basis the wide cabinet looks like twice the job and it is barely more work at all. A kitchen full of narrow cabinets and a kitchen full of wide ones can have the same footage and differ by a third in doors.
1 door
Cabinets up to 21 in
Plus a drawer front on a base unit
2 doors
Cabinets 24 in and over
Regardless of how much wider
$44
A thermofoil door
Before fitting
$68
To paint one instead
Sprayed, fitted, if the door allows it
MaterialsEstimator, Cabinet price survey — stock, semi-custom and custom, by the box · checked 2026-09-21
The comparison nobody selling refacing wants you to make
Refacing costs between 45 and 75 per cent of a new kitchen. That is the figure the whole decision turns on, and it is nearly always presented as though the comparison were obvious.
It is not obvious, because it depends entirely on which new kitchen.
| Refacing against semi-custom | Refacing against stock | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical saving | Substantial — often half | Small, sometimes none |
| You keep | Boxes, drawers, layout | Boxes, drawers, layout |
| You gain | A large saving for a smaller job | Very little for nearly the same money |
| Kitchen usable meanwhile | Yes | Yes — that stays true either way |
| Layout can change | No | Yes, if you replace |
| Sensible when | The boxes are good and the layout works | Rarely, unless the boxes are excellent |
There is a test that settles it faster than any price. Take one door off and look at the box. Plywood sides, a solid back, shelves that are not bowed — that carcass will outlast a new face and refacing is money well spent. Stapled particleboard with a thin card back, a sink base that has swollen, shelves sagging under a stack of plates: you are about to put an expensive face on something that is already failing.
Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, ANSI/KCMA A161.1 — Performance and Construction Standard for Kitchen and Vanity Cabinets · checked 2026-09-21
Painting, which is a third the price and not always possible
The cheapest way to change a kitchen is to change its colour, and whether you can depends on one thing: what the doors are made of.
| Existing doors | Paintable | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Solid wood | yes | Takes paint perfectly after a degrease, a scuff sand and a bonding primer. Open-grain woods like oak show their grain through paint — some people want that and some are horrified by it, so look at a sample before committing the kitchen. |
| MDF or painted | yes | The easiest of all to repaint, because it is flat, stable and already has a coating designed to be painted. If it has swollen anywhere near the sink, that door is finished whatever you do to the rest. |
| Thermofoil | no | A vinyl skin heat-wrapped onto MDF. Paint does not bond to it and no primer reliably fixes that — and once the foil starts lifting at a corner, usually next to the oven, nothing puts it back. These get replaced rather than refinished. |
| Laminate or melamine | no | A hard plastic surface designed specifically not to accept anything. Specialist bonding primers exist and the results are unreliable on doors that get handled daily. Reface or replace instead. |
| Wood veneer | yes | Paintable while the veneer is intact. Where it has lifted or worn through — the edge by the handle, the door under the kettle — it will not be hidden by paint, and those doors need replacing anyway. |
What a good paint job actually involves
- Doors off, hinges off, hardware off, everything labelled so it goes back where it came from.
- Degreasing — properly, with a degreaser rather than a wipe. Kitchen doors carry more cooking residue than anybody expects and paint does not stick to it.
- A scuff sand to give the existing finish a key, then a bonding primer suited to what is underneath.
- Doors sprayed off-site, which is what makes the difference between factory-finished and brushed. It also means about a week without doors.
- Frames done in place, by brush and roller, because they cannot leave.
- A cabinet-grade enamel rather than a wall paint — it cures hard enough to be wiped and knocked.
- Curing time before the doors go back on. Paint that is dry is not paint that is hard, and doors rehung too early stick to their frames.
- Expect the inside of the cabinets to stay the old colour. Painting those too roughly doubles the work for something only you will see.
The things to change while the doors are off
Refacing is the one moment when every door in the kitchen is off and every hinge is accessible. Several small upgrades cost almost nothing at that moment and are a real job at any other, so they are worth deciding now.
| Upgrade | Each | Why now |
|---|---|---|
| Concealed hinges | $7 | New concealed hinges. If the old ones are exposed barrel hinges, they have to change anyway — the new doors are not drilled for them. |
| Soft close | $9 | Dampers that clip onto the hinge. Cheap, fitted in seconds, and the single upgrade people notice most. |
| New drawer boxes | $82 | A whole new drawer box on soft-close runners. Worth it wherever the old drawer is a stapled pine tray on a plastic side runner, which is most kitchens before about 2005. |
| Handles | $11 | New handles. Check the hole spacing before ordering — 3 in and 96 mm are close enough to look identical and far enough apart not to fit. |
Of those, the drawer boxes are the one that decides whether the finished kitchen feels new. Everything else is visible; the drawers are what you touch. New fronts on drawers that stick is the commonest disappointment in a refaced kitchen, and it is entirely avoidable at the point where the fronts are coming off anyway.
What goes wrong
01Comparing a refacing quote against custom cabinets
That is the comparison the quote is designed to win. Against new stock cabinets, refacing is frequently close to a wash — and for that you keep every box, every drawer and the layout.
Instead — Price new stock and new semi-custom on your own kitchen before deciding. If refacing lands near the stock figure, it is not the saving it was presented as.
02Refacing boxes that are not worth keeping
Stapled particleboard with a card back, a swollen sink base or sagging shelves will not be improved by a new face, and they will fail behind it.
Instead — Take one door off and look at the carcass first. Plywood sides and a solid back are worth refacing; anything else is money into something already failing.
03Planning to paint thermofoil or laminate
Paint does not bond to either. Specialist primers exist and the results on doors handled every day are unreliable — it peels at the handle edge within a year or two.
Instead — Check the door edge and back before pricing a painter. If it is foil or laminate, the cheapest real option is refacing, not painting.
04Keeping the old drawer boxes
New fronts on stapled trays with side runners look new and behave exactly as they did. It is the commonest disappointment in a refaced kitchen.
Instead — Price new boxes on soft-close runners at about $82 each. The fronts are off anyway, and it is the part of the kitchen you touch every day.
05Assuming the hinges transfer
New doors are bored for a specific cup position. Exposed barrel hinges or a different boring means new hinges regardless of what the quote said.
Instead — Check before signing. It is a small per-door cost and a large surprise if it was assumed away.
06Refacing a layout that does not work
Refacing freezes the plan exactly as it is. A kitchen that is awkward to cook in stays awkward, at a cost not far from a new one that would not have been.
Instead — If the layout is the complaint, the money belongs in a replacement. Doors are not what is wrong.
07Underestimating the frame veneer
The doors are the easy half. The veneer has to be cut tight to every opening, rolled without bubbles and trimmed without tearing, on frames that are not square — and it is what a home job announces itself with.
Instead — If doing it yourself, practise inside a cabinet nobody opens before touching the run that faces the room.
08Forgetting the worktop in the comparison
Refacing leaves it; replacing usually destroys it. A new kitchen quote that looks close to a refacing quote may still need a worktop on top of it.
Instead — Add the worktop to the replacement side of the comparison before deciding. It is often what tips a close decision back towards refacing.
- 01Find out what the doors are made ofSolid wood and MDF can be painted. Thermofoil and laminate cannot, reliably, which removes the cheapest option before anything else is considered.
- 02Take a door off and look at the carcassPlywood sides and a solid back are worth keeping. Stapled particleboard with a card back is not, and refacing it is putting a new face on something that is failing behind.
- 03Count the doors and drawer frontsThat is the unit refacing is bought in. A 36 in cabinet and an 18 in one are two doors and one — the wide cabinet is barely more to reface despite being twice the wall.
- 04Price new cabinets on the same kitchenStock and semi-custom both. Refacing is only a saving against the grade you would actually have bought, and against stock it is frequently not one.
- 05Ask what the layout is costing youRefacing freezes it. If the kitchen does not work now, it will not work with new doors on it, and you will have spent most of a new kitchen finding that out.
- 06Decide about the drawer boxes separatelyNew fronts on old drawers is the commonest disappointment there is. If the drawers are stapled trays on side runners, price new boxes in or accept that they stay.
- 07Check the hinges before assuming they stayNew doors are bored for a specific cup position. If the old hinges are exposed or bored differently, they change whatever the quote assumed.
New cabinets are priced from a schedule of boxes, with the corner overlap and the filler strips counted — and that is the figure this page compares against, worked out on exactly the same kitchen.
If replacing turns out to be the answer- Refacing
- New doors and drawer fronts on the cabinets you already have, with the exposed parts of the frames covered in matching veneer. The boxes, the drawer boxes and the layout are untouched.
- Face frame
- The flat frame across the front of a cabinet box that the doors hang on. On a refacing job it is the part that gets veneered, and doing it neatly is what separates a good result from an obvious one.
- Rigid thermofoil
- MDF wrapped in a heat-formed vinyl skin. The cheapest door worth fitting and seamless to clean, with one weakness: sustained heat lifts the foil, so it wants a shield beside a wall oven.
- Drawer front
- The face of a drawer, as opposed to the box behind it. Refacing changes the front and leaves the box, which is why a refaced kitchen can look new and still have drawers that stick.
- Cup hinge
- The concealed hinge on a modern door, seated in a 35 mm bored recess. New doors come bored for a specific cup position, so old hinges rarely transfer even when they look identical.
- Exposed end
- A cabinet side that shows — at the end of a run, or beside the fridge. On a refacing job each one is a whole panel to veneer rather than a strip.
- Bonding primer
- A primer formulated to grip surfaces paint will not stick to. It extends what can be painted and it does not make thermofoil or laminate a sensible thing to paint.
- Peel-and-stick veneer
- Thin wood or vinyl with adhesive backing, applied over the face frames and end panels. It is the material that makes the frames match the new doors.
- Stock cabinets
- New cabinets in fixed sizes off a shelf. This is the number that matters, because refacing is only a saving when it is well below it — and often it is not.
- Semi-custom
- New cabinets with real choices of door and finish and the option of odd widths. It is the grade a refacing quote is usually being compared against, whether or not anybody says so.
- Carcass
- The box itself. Open a door and look: plywood sides with a solid back are worth keeping, and stapled particleboard with a card back is not.
- Spray finish
- Doors sprayed off-site rather than brushed in place. It is what makes a painted kitchen look factory-finished, and it means the doors leave for about a week.
Common questions
- How much does cabinet refacing cost?
- Roughly $96 to $180 a door and drawer front fitted, which on an average kitchen of twenty-five to thirty-five pieces comes to about $4,000 to $9,000. The useful way to hold that figure is as a fraction of new cabinets: refacing lands at 45 to 75 per cent of a new kitchen. Against semi-custom that is a real saving; against stock it frequently is not.
- Is refacing cabinets cheaper than replacing them?
- It depends entirely on what you would otherwise buy, and that is the question nobody asks. Against semi-custom or custom cabinets, refacing saves a great deal. Against new stock cabinets it is often close to a wash — and for that you keep the same boxes, the same drawer boxes and the same layout. The calculator above prices all three on your actual kitchen, using the same cabinet schedule for each, so the comparison is exact rather than a rule of thumb.
- How is refacing priced — per door or per foot?
- The trade quotes per linear foot and the work is per door, which is exactly the mismatch that makes quotes hard to compare. A 36 inch cabinet and an 18 inch one are two doors and one, so the wide cabinet costs barely more to reface despite being twice the wall. Ask for the door and drawer front count and compare on price per piece.
- Can I just paint my kitchen cabinets instead?
- If the doors are solid wood or MDF, yes, and it is about a third the cost of refacing. If they are thermofoil or laminate or melamine, no — paint does not bond to either and no primer reliably fixes that. The way to tell is to look at a cut edge or the back of a door: real wood grain that continues round the edge is solid; a seam or a wrapped edge is foil.
- How much does it cost to paint kitchen cabinets?
- About $68 a door and $44 a drawer front professionally, plus around $19 a cabinet for the frames in place — so roughly $1,500 to $3,500 on a normal kitchen. Sprayed off-site is what makes a painted kitchen look factory-finished rather than brushed. It also means the doors leave for a week, which is the part nobody warns about — you live with open carcasses and a roll of masking tape.
- What does refacing not fix?
- The layout. Refacing keeps every cabinet exactly where it is, so an awkward kitchen stays awkward at a cost not far off a new one. The boxes. Sagging shelves, a swollen sink base and racked carcasses are all still there behind the new doors. The interior. Wire shelves stay wire shelves and the dead corner stays a dead corner unless the fittings are changed separately. That last one matters most: if the kitchen does not work now, new doors will not make it work, and you will have spent most of the price of a new kitchen discovering it.
- How long does cabinet refacing take?
- Two to four days for a normal kitchen, and the kitchen stays usable throughout — which is the genuine advantage over replacing and the reason a lot of people choose it. Painting takes longer in calendar time if the doors are sprayed off-site, because they leave for about a week and you live with open carcasses.
- What is the best material for refacing doors?
- Rigid thermofoil for value: cheapest worth fitting, seamless to clean, and it wants a heat shield beside a wall oven because sustained heat lifts the foil. Wood veneer if the point is that it should look like wood, and it is also where a careless frame veneer job shows most. Solid wood doors are the most expensive and put you close enough to new cabinets that the boxes need to be genuinely good to justify keeping them.
- Should I replace the drawer boxes too?
- If the existing drawers are stapled trays on plastic side runners — which is most kitchens built before about 2005 — then yes, and it is about $82 each. New fronts on old drawers is the commonest disappointment in a refaced kitchen: everything looks new and the drawers still stick, still rattle, and still stop two inches short of open.
- Can I reface cabinets myself?
- The doors are the easy half — order them bored, hang them, adjust the hinges. What announces a home job is the veneer on the face frames: it has to be cut tight to every opening, rolled without bubbles and trimmed without tearing, on frames that are rarely square. Practise on the inside of a cabinet nobody opens before touching the run that faces the room.
- How do I know if my cabinet boxes are worth keeping?
- Take one door off and look at the carcass. Plywood sides, a solid back and shelves that are not bowed mean the box will outlast a new face on it. Stapled particleboard with a thin card back, a sink base that has swollen, or shelves sagging under a stack of plates all mean you are about to put an expensive face on something that is already failing.
- Does refacing add value when selling?
- Less than a kitchen that works. A buyer sees a layout, a worktop and a floor before they see a door style, and refacing changes only the last of those. If the kitchen is fundamentally sound and looks tired, refacing shows well for the money. If it is awkward to cook in, the money is better spent elsewhere.
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About the author
Pablo Ruiz Quintero — Editor
Editor of MaterialsEstimator. Decides which documents count as a source, what every default value is, and where the line sits between what the reader parses and what the engines compute.
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