Cabinet Refacing Price: Scope, Options and Trade Offs

Updated August 2026 · Home Project Resources

Refacing replaces your cabinet doors, drawer fronts and the visible face of the cabinet boxes, while the boxes themselves and the layout stay exactly where they are. A cabinet refacing price is built from four things: the linear feet of cabinetry, the number of doors and drawer fronts, the door style and material, and how many exposed ends, islands and add ons the kitchen carries. Labor is roughly half of a refacing quote, which is why the same job lands differently in different markets.

The real question is not the number on the quote. It is whether your boxes deserve the investment, because refacing a bad box is money set on fire, and that is a decision you can make yourself in about ten minutes with a flashlight.

Refacing keeps your countertops, replacing usually does not. Use our free Countertop Calculator to work out your counter square footage before you decide, because new counters are the hidden line item that flips the math toward refacing.

Updated August 2026

A note on numbers. This page covers scope, specifications, the condition test and the questions that make quotes comparable, not dollar figures. Door pricing, veneer supply and installer rates all move by region and by season, and we do not set any of them. Take the checklists below to three local installers and compare their written scopes.

What Drives the Cabinet Refacing Price

Two quotes on the same kitchen can differ enormously. Here is where the money moves, in order of how much it matters.

Linear feet of cabinetry. The base number every quote starts from. Measure along the wall at the base cabinets, then measure the wall cabinet run separately, because some installers count them apart.

Door and drawer count. More pieces means more hinges, more drilling, more hanging and more adjustment. A kitchen with a bank of six drawers costs more to reface than a kitchen with the same linear footage in a few large doors. Ask every bidder to state the piece count on their proposal so you can see whether they counted the same kitchen.

Door style. Flat slab is the cheapest to produce. Shaker is the volume standard. Raised panel, mullion and glass insert doors add real cost per piece, and glass adds a separate insert line.

Material. The spread from the least expensive door material to solid wood is roughly threefold per door, which on a large kitchen is the single biggest lever you control.

Soft close upgrades. Adding soft close hinges and slides throughout a kitchen with thirty pieces is a meaningful add, and it is worth asking whether it is included or extra, because installers differ.

New drawer boxes. Replacing stapled particle board boxes on side mount rollers with dovetail boxes on full extension slides is the priciest common upgrade and often the most satisfying. It is also the one thing refacing can genuinely improve about how the kitchen works.

End panels and crown. Exposed cabinet ends, island backs, peninsula returns and crown molding are usually priced separately. On an island heavy kitchen these can be a sizable share of the job.

Working around counters and backsplash. Refacing normally works around both, but where the face frame veneer has to tuck behind an existing backsplash, some crews charge for the care that takes.

Refacing Against the Alternatives

Here is the whole menu, cheapest to priciest, with what each one actually changes.

Read the all in figure for new cabinets carefully. The cabinet order is only part of it. Add demolition and disposal, and add new countertops, because countertops almost never survive removal intact. That counter line is why a cabinet order becomes a whole project budget, and it is the single biggest reason refacing keeps winning on money.

For the full picture on where cabinets sit in a whole kitchen budget, see our kitchen remodel cost breakdown.

Should You Reface? Open a Cabinet Door and Check

This is the part that matters, and it costs nothing to do.

Open a lower cabinet door, pull the shelf out, and look at the box.

Reface when all of these are true

• The box material is plywood or dense particle board. Tap the side panel. Plywood sounds solid and shows layered edges. Good particle board is dense and heavy. Both hold screws well.
• No water damage anywhere. Check under the sink first, always. Swollen, soft or delaminating panels near the sink or dishwasher mean the boxes are finished.
• Shelves are flat. A shelf bowed more than about a quarter inch over its span tells you the material is too weak, and refacing does not fix a shelf.
• Face frames are tight and square. Push on a face frame corner. If it flexes, or a gap opens at a joint, the frame is loose.
• Doors close square and hinges hold. Wobbly doors that will not stay aligned usually mean the hinge screws have stripped out of the frame.
• The layout already works for you. You know where everything lives and you do not fight the kitchen.
• Boxes are level and plumb. If a run has sagged, refacing makes the misalignment more obvious, not less.

Do not reface when any of these are true

• Boxes are swollen, soft or delaminating. Refacing glues a nice face onto a failing structure.
• The cabinets are thin builder grade particle board. If the side panels are under about half an inch and crumble at the screw holes, new hinges will not hold. This is the most common bad refacing outcome, and it shows up six months later as doors that sag.
• You want a different layout. Refacing cannot move, add or resize a cabinet. Nothing about the footprint changes.
• You need more storage. No extra drawers, no pull outs where there is a fixed shelf, no pantry cabinet appearing.
• The corner cabinet is a black hole and it bothers you. Refacing makes the door prettier and the corner just as useless.
• There is damage from a leak, pests or fire. Replace.
• Boxes are past about thirty years old and were budget grade when new. You would be refacing something with limited life left.

There is a simpler version of this test. If you like where everything is and you only dislike how it looks, reface. If you fight the kitchen every day, replace.

What Refacing Actually Includes

A standard professional refacing job covers:

• New doors in your chosen style and finish
• New drawer fronts to match
• Veneer or laminate applied over the face frames, so the frame between the doors matches the doors
• New end panels on exposed cabinet sides, including the ends of runs and any peninsula or island
• New hinges, usually concealed European hinges even where the old ones were surface mounted
• New handles and knobs
• Toe kick covering to match

Common add ons that cost extra: new dovetail drawer boxes with full extension slides, soft close hinges and slides, crown molding and light valances, glass door inserts, and pull out shelves retrofitted into base cabinets. Get each of these priced as its own line rather than folded into a total, so you can decide which ones you actually want.

What refacing does not include, stated plainly: the interiors stay as they are, and the layout cannot change. If the inside of your cabinets is worn melamine, it will still be worn melamine when the crew leaves. Adding adhesive shelf liner or painting the interiors yourself before the new doors go on is worth doing while everything is open, and it costs almost nothing.

Door and Veneer Material Options

Material choice drives both the quote and how the kitchen looks in ten years.

For the veneer that goes over the face frames the choices are the same in miniature: wood veneer in a thicker or a peel and stick thickness, rigid thermofoil, or laminate. Match the veneer to the door material or the face frames will read as a slightly different color under kitchen lighting, which is the most common giveaway of a cheap refacing job.

One practical note. If you want a painted white kitchen, thermofoil and laminate hold a uniform painted look better than painted solid wood, because there are no panel joints to crack. If you want stained wood, only real wood veneer or solid wood will do.

The Painting Alternative, Honestly

Painting is the best value in this entire article and it deserves a fair hearing.

A well painted kitchen looks genuinely transformed for a small fraction of a refacing quote. Doors, frames and boxes all get the same color, and a new set of handles finishes the job. Where painting falls down is prep and application, and both are entirely within your control.

Prep is the whole job. In order:

1. Degrease everything with a strong cleaner. Kitchen cabinets carry a film of cooking grease you cannot see, especially above the range and around handles. Paint does not bond through grease, and skipped degreasing is the number one reason DIY cabinet paint chips within a year.
2. Scuff sand with 150 to 220 grit until the sheen is gone everywhere.
3. Vacuum and tack cloth every surface.
4. Bonding primer, one coat, cured fully. On slick factory finishes this is not optional.
5. Two thin coats of cabinet grade enamel, with light sanding between coats.
6. Cure before reassembly. Most cabinet enamels are dry to touch in hours but take one to four weeks to reach full hardness. Reassembling too early is how you get doors that stick together at the edges.

Brushed wall latex wears at the touch points. Around handles, at the sink base, on the trash pull out, it softens and burnishes within a year or two. Use a purpose made cabinet enamel, whether waterborne alkyd or acrylic urethane.

Spraying gives a far better result. An HVLP or airless sprayer lays down a level, brush mark free finish that reads as factory, and it is the single biggest quality jump available in a DIY paint job. Sprayer rental is modest against the result, and you will need a spray area with drop cloths and ventilation.

Time is the real cost: roughly 25 to 45 hours spread over five to eight days, most of it waiting for coats to cure. Label every door and its hinge location with tape as you take them off, because unlabeled doors will not go back where they came from.

Painting only works on paintable surfaces. Thermofoil and heavy laminate doors do not take paint reliably, and no primer fully solves it. If your doors are thermofoil, replacement doors are the honest path. Our guide on cost to paint a room covers the same prep drives finish logic for walls and trim.

Worked Example: A 20 Linear Foot Kitchen, Three Ways

A typical suburban kitchen: 20 linear feet of cabinetry, 24 doors, 8 drawers, plywood boxes in good condition, layout works fine, dated oak doors the owner is tired of. Countertops are laminate and getting replaced either way.

Option A: DIY painting. Prep supplies, primer, cabinet enamel, a sprayer rental for two days, plus new hinges and pulls for every piece. About 35 hours of your own labor over a week, plus cure time. Result: same doors, same profile, new color, new hardware. Oak grain still shows through paint unless it is grain filled, which adds a day.

Option B: Professional refacing. 24 doors and 8 drawer fronts in shaker wood veneer, veneer to the face frames and four end panels, concealed soft close hinges, new pulls, four days on site. Add eight new dovetail drawer boxes if the existing boxes are stapled particle board. Result: new door style, new finish, matching frames and end panels, same layout and same interiors. The kitchen stays usable most evenings.

Option C: New semi custom cabinets. The cabinet order, demolition and disposal, install labor, new countertops across roughly 45 square feet, plus new backsplash, paint touch up and trim. Six to twelve weeks including cabinet lead time, with two to three weeks of an unusable kitchen. Result: everything changes, including the ability to add a pan drawer bank, a pull out pantry or a different sink base.

Reading the three. If the layout works, Option B delivers most of the visual result of Option C for roughly half the all in money and a fraction of the disruption. Option A delivers most of the visual result of Option B for a small fraction of the money, at the cost of a week of your own labor and keeping the same door profile. Option C is the only one of the three that changes what the kitchen can do.

Since new countertops are part of two of these paths, measure them properly with our countertop calculator, and use the square footage calculator if you need floor or backsplash areas at the same time.

Questions to Ask Each Refacing Bidder

• How many doors and drawer fronts are in this quote, and does that match my count?
• What is the door material and core, and what veneer goes on the face frames?
• Is the veneer the same material and finish batch as the doors?
• Are soft close hinges and slides included, or an upgrade?
• Are exposed end panels, island backs and the toe kick included?
• Are the existing drawer boxes staying, and what condition did you judge them to be in?
• How do you handle the veneer where it meets the backsplash and the counter?
• How many days on site, and will the kitchen be usable in the evenings?
• What is the lead time on the doors, and what happens if a piece arrives damaged?
• What is the warranty on the doors, on the veneer adhesion, and on the labor?

Get the same list answered by all three bidders. Our contractor red flags page covers the verification steps, and how to get contractor bids has wording that produces genuinely matched quotes.

Cabinet Refacing FAQ

What determines the cabinet refacing price for my kitchen?

Linear feet of cabinetry, piece count, door style, door material, hardware level and how many exposed ends and add ons the kitchen carries. Labor is roughly half the quote, so local trade rates matter as much as the door order does. Two quotes on the same kitchen usually differ because they counted different pieces or specified different materials, not because one installer is cheaper.

How long does cabinet refacing take?

Three to five days on site for an average kitchen, after a lead time of two to four weeks for the doors to be made. The kitchen stays mostly usable throughout, since the sink, appliances and counters never come out. Compare that with six to twelve weeks and a fully unusable kitchen for new cabinets.

Is cabinet refacing worth it?

It is worth it when the boxes are structurally sound and the layout already works. You get most of the visual change of new cabinets for roughly half of the all in cost, and you keep your countertops and backsplash. It is not worth it if you want different cabinet sizes, more drawers or a different configuration, because refacing changes only what you see.

Can you reface particle board cabinets?

You can reface dense, thick particle board boxes that are dry and undamaged, and plenty of good cabinets from the 1990s and 2000s are exactly that. You should not reface thin builder grade particle board that crumbles at the screw holes, because new hinges will not hold and the doors will sag within a year. Check the side panel thickness and try a screw in a hidden spot.

Does refacing include new cabinet interiors?

No. The insides of the boxes, the shelves and usually the drawer boxes stay as they are unless you pay for upgrades. New dovetail drawer boxes with full extension slides and retrofit pull out shelves are both available as add ons, priced per drawer. Painting or lining the interiors yourself while the doors are off is the cheapest improvement on the whole list.

Is it cheaper to paint or reface kitchen cabinets?

Painting is dramatically cheaper, whether you do it yourself or hire it sprayed. Painting keeps your existing door style, though, and it will not hide damaged or dated door profiles. Refacing is the choice when the doors themselves are the problem, and painting is the choice when only the color is.

Can you reface cabinets yourself?

Yes, and DIY refacing is a genuine option. Order doors and drawer fronts to your measured sizes, then apply peel and stick or contact cement veneer to the face frames and end panels. The hard parts are measuring accurately, cutting veneer cleanly around inside corners, and drilling new hinge cups square. Budget two to three weekends and buy a little extra veneer, because the first inside corner is usually practice.

Does refacing add value at resale?

An updated kitchen presents better and usually helps a sale, but do not count on recovering the full outlay. Remodeling industry reports consistently show that minor cosmetic kitchen updates return a higher share of their cost than full gut jobs do. If resale is the goal, refacing or painting sits in the smarter half of that curve, while a full replacement rarely pays back in full.

Related Reading

• Kitchen Remodel Cost - where cabinets fit in the full kitchen scope, by tier
• Cost to Paint a Room - the same prep drives finish logic applied to walls and trim
• Countertop Calculator - square footage for the counters that come next
• Contractor Red Flags - how to verify an installer before you sign