Cabinet Refacing Cost Calculator

What Refacing Actually Replaces

A refacing crew strips the old doors and drawer fronts off the existing boxes, glues a thin veneer (wood or rigid thermofoil) over any visible box surfaces like end panels and face frames, then hangs new doors and drawer fronts with new hinges and pulls. The boxes themselves, and anything bolted inside them, stay exactly where they are. That's the entire reason refacing costs less than replacement: no demolition, no new cabinet carcasses, no re-plumbing or re-wiring around a shifted layout.

Is Your Kitchen Even a Good Candidate for Refacing?

Refacing only works if the boxes underneath are structurally sound. A cabinet installer will check the corners and shelf supports for water damage, especially under the sink and around the dishwasher, since swollen or delaminating particleboard can't hold a new veneer or support new hinge hardware reliably. It also assumes you're keeping the current footprint. Moving the sink, adding an island, or reconfiguring the corner cabinet all require new boxes, which turns the job into a partial replacement rather than a true refacing project.

• Plywood boxes reface more reliably than particleboard ones, since particleboard swells permanently once it's absorbed water and won't hold screws for new hinges as securely over time.
• If more than a couple of doors are already warped or the boxes are visibly out of square, get a second opinion before committing to refacing. Sometimes the cheaper long-term move is replacement.

Refacing Costs Less, But Not in Every Scenario

Refacing typically runs 30% to 50% less than full cabinet replacement, but that gap narrows on a kitchen with unusually elaborate box conditions, custom corner units, or an oversized layout with a lot of linear footage, since refacing labor is still priced per linear foot even though there's no new box construction. On a very large kitchen, the labor savings from keeping the boxes in place shrink relative to the material cost of veneer and new doors across that much cabinetry.

Hardware Upgrades That Come With Refacing

Since new doors and drawer fronts are already being hung during a refacing project, upgrading to soft-close hinges and slides is one of the easiest additions to bundle in, often for a modest add-on cost compared to retrofitting them onto old doors later. It's also a good time to reconsider pull placement or style, since the drilling for new hardware happens on fresh doors rather than requiring you to patch and re-drill an existing one.