Kitchen Cabinet Painting & Refacing Calculator

Cabinet Refresh Options: Paint vs. Reface vs. Replace

Cabinet painting updates the color of your existing doors, drawers, and frame structures with specialized paint coatings. Cabinet refacing is a deeper upgrade: the original wood doors and drawers are discarded, the visible cabinet boxes are wrapped in real wood veneer, and brand new doors and drawer fronts are installed. This allows you to completely alter the wood species and door style (e.g., swapping old oak arches for clean walnut slabs) without ripping out your countertops or plumbing.

How to Measure Cabinet Linear Footage

To measure your cabinets, take a tape measure and calculate the horizontal width of your upper and lower cabinet runs. For example, if you have 10 feet of upper cabinets and 12 feet of base cabinets, your total cabinet run is 22 linear feet. Do not subtract for appliances like your range or dishwasher, as corner prep and side panels around appliances require extra masking and detail labor that equals the omitted spaces.

• The Sprayer Advantage: Hand-painting cabinets with a standard brush or roller is budget-friendly, but leaves behind brush textures. Professional craftsmen use High-Volume Low-Pressure (HVLP) sprayers that atomize the coating, creating a perfectly smooth, factory-level paint finish.
• Urethane and Lacquers: Standard wall paints are too soft for kitchen cabinets and will quickly wear down around handles. Professionals use specialized self-leveling waterborne urethane acrylics or conversion lacquers that cure into rock-hard, scrubbable shells.

Why Cabinet Boxes and Doors Get Different Treatment

Professional refinishers almost always remove cabinet doors and drawer fronts and spray them off-site in a dust-controlled booth, while the fixed cabinet boxes get sprayed or carefully brushed in place in your kitchen. That split exists because a spray booth produces a flawless, factory-smooth finish that's nearly impossible to replicate on a stationary box surrounded by walls, appliances, and countertops that need masking. It also means your kitchen stays functional, minus the doors, for most of the project instead of being completely shut down.

Should You Replace Cabinet Hardware at the Same Time?

If you're already paying for masking, sanding, and spray labor, swapping outdated knobs and pulls for new hardware is one of the cheapest upgrades you can bundle into the same project, often just the cost of the hardware itself since the doors are already off and being handled. It's also one of the easiest ways to modernize a kitchen's look without changing the door style or paint color at all. The one catch: new hardware with different hole spacing than your old pulls will leave visible old holes, so matching spacing or planning to fill and re-drill is worth deciding before ordering.