One question decides it. Do you like the shape of your doors? If the style still works and only the colour is dated, paint them. If the doors themselves look wrong for the room, no colour will fix that and refacing is the honest answer.
Painting changes one thing: the colour. Your raised panel doors stay raised panel doors, your overlay stays the same, and the reveals between doors stay exactly where they were. For a kitchen whose only problem is that honey oak went out of fashion, that is the whole fix.
Refacing replaces the doors and drawer fronts outright and veneers the frames to match, so the door style itself can change. A dated profile becomes a flat slab or a clean shaker, and the kitchen stops reading as its original decade.
Price follows scope. Painting is commonly 40 to 60 percent below refacing on the same kitchen, roughly $30 to $100 a foot against $125 to $300, which on a twenty-four foot kitchen is a gap of several thousand dollars. Example ranges, not quotes. What the two share is that both leave the boxes, the plumbing and the layout exactly where they are. See cabinet painting, refacing and the cost page.
Recent work
How to decide
Four Questions That Settle It
Do you like the door shape?
Stand back and ignore the colour. If the profile itself looks dated to you, painting will produce a freshly coloured dated kitchen, which is not what anyone wants from the spend.
What are the doors made of?
Wood and painted MDF take paint. Thermofoil does not, because paint sits on vinyl rather than bonding into it. That single answer rules painting out of a lot of kitchens.
How long are you staying?
Painted cabinetry gives eight to ten years, refaced doors far longer because they are new. Over a short hold painting wins on cost; over a long one the gap closes.
Is anything actually broken?
Neither route fixes a swollen box or a failed hinge bore. If we find those, they are quoted separately and the finish decision comes after, not before.
Where paint fails
The Kitchens Where Painting Disappoints
Thermofoil is the clearest case. Paint will go on and will look fine for a season, then chip at every handle and edge where hands touch it. Anyone quoting to paint filmed doors without mentioning that is selling you a job you will redo.
Open-grain oak is the subtler one. The grain telegraphs through paint and reads as texture unless it is filled first, which adds cost. Some people like the effect. The ones who do not usually discover it after the kitchen is finished.
And painting cannot change overlay or reveals, so a kitchen whose doors sit with uneven gaps keeps every one of them, because nothing about the door sizes has moved. That is a redooring or refacing job. Where the wood is good but tired, refinishing is the third route worth pricing.
Honest limits
Both routes
Painting and Refacing in Detail
The two compared here, each in full, plus the cheaper option below both of them.
Cost, timing, durability, and when neither is the right call.
Painting, usually by 40 to 60 percent on the same kitchen. Roughly $30 to $100 per linear foot against $125 to $300 for refacing. Example ranges, not quotes, and the gap narrows on heavily moulded doors.
Refacing, because the doors are new rather than recoated. Painted cabinetry gives eight to ten years before wanting a refresh. Both leave the boxes untouched, so neither extends the life of the carcass.
No. Painting changes the colour and nothing else. The profile, the overlay and the gaps between doors all stay exactly as they are. Changing the style means new doors.
Painting is five to seven days plus curing, with the doors away and open shelving in the meantime. Refacing is three to five days on site, after a three to five week wait while your doors are built.
Then painting is off the table and refacing or new doors is the route. Paint does not bond into vinyl film and starts chipping at the handles within a year or two.
Yes, and it is common. Uppers refaced in a new style with the island painted a contrasting colour is a normal request, and it is priced as two jobs on one visit.
Neither. Both keep the boxes where they are. Moving a sink or widening a run needs new cabinetry, which is a different conversation and a different budget.
I asked for a painting quote and they asked whether I actually liked the door shape. I did not, and I would have spent the money finding that out the slow way.
Sandra K.
Edmonton
★★★★★
Doors were fine, colour was dated, so painting was the answer and they said so. No attempt to sell me the bigger job.
Emeka O.
st. Albert
★★★★★
We refaced the uppers and painted the island a different colour. They quoted it as one visit and it came in below a full reface.
Lucy H.
Sherwood Park
★★★★
Clear advice and a fair price. The oak grain showing through paint was explained before we started, which is the sort of thing you want to know early.
Bill R.
Edmonton
From the blog
Edmonton cabinet guides
Paint, reface or replace, written for people trying to compare quotes fairly.
We measure once and quote painting and refacing side by side on the same kitchen, itemised by the linear foot, so you can see the actual gap rather than guess at it.
