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Refacing vs replacing cabinets — what each actually costs
There are three jobs here, not two. New doors on your existing boxes costs least, from about $1,400 for a full kitchen. Refacing adds veneer to the box fronts too. A new kitchen starts around $15,000. If your boxes are sound, the first gets you most of the change.
| What changes | What it costs | |
|---|---|---|
| New doors and drawer fronts | Everything you see and touch. Boxes, layout and plumbing untouched | From about $1,400 to $8,000 for a full kitchen |
| Refacing | Doors and fronts, plus a veneer over the visible box edges | Between the two, and depends heavily on who does it |
| A new kitchen | Boxes, layout, sizes — anything is possible because nothing is kept | $15,000 and upward |
Is the choice really refacing or replacing?
Almost everyone searching this thinks the choice is between refacing and ripping the kitchen out. There is a third, it sits below both on cost, and for a lot of kitchens it is the right answer.
New doors and drawer fronts. The boxes stay where they are. You change every part of the kitchen you actually see and touch — the doors, the fronts, the colour, the style — and nothing structural moves.
Refacing. The same thing, plus a veneer or laminate applied over the visible edges of the boxes themselves.
A new kitchen. Everything out, everything new. The only option if the layout is wrong or the boxes have failed.
What does each one cost?
A full set of doors and drawer fronts for a kitchen through our store runs from about $1,400 at the lower end to around $8,000, depending on the size of the kitchen and what you build them from. A typical kitchen is around twenty-five doors and fronts, which is roughly a hundred square feet of material.
A brand-new kitchen, designed and built from scratch, starts at $15,000 and goes up from there.
Those are ranges rather than quotes, and the spread inside the first one is real: the same kitchen in paint-grade MDF and in rift-sawn white oak are different numbers. Doors are priced by the square foot, so your actual figure falls out of the sizes you give us.
Refacing sits between the two and is the hardest to put a number on, because what you are buying varies enormously by who is doing it.
So when is refacing the wrong answer?
This is the part the comparison articles tend to skip, so here it is plainly.
If your boxes are sound, you may be paying for work you do not need. Refacing adds a veneer to the box edges. If those edges are in good condition and you are not changing the colour of the interiors, new doors alone get you the same visible result. Open a few cabinets and look inside — most kitchens of the last thirty years have sound carcasses and dated fronts, which is exactly the case where doors alone are enough.
If your boxes have failed, refacing is money on a bad foundation. Veneer over a swollen, sagging or water-damaged box hides a problem rather than fixing it, and you will be doing the job again. That is the case for a new kitchen, not for a cheaper version of one.
If the layout is wrong, neither option helps. If the problem is that the dishwasher is in the wrong place or there is nowhere to stand, no amount of new surface fixes it.
How do I know if my boxes are sound?
Open a door and look at the inside corners and the bottom shelf. You are checking four things: whether the box is square, whether anything is swollen or soft, particularly under the sink where leaks live, whether the shelves sag, and whether the sides feel solid when you press them.
If the answer is yes to all four, the expensive part of your kitchen is fine and only the visible part is dated.
What actually changes how a kitchen looks?
Door style and colour do nearly all the work. An arched cathedral door in honey oak and a flat shaker door in a painted finish read as two different decades, on identical boxes.
That is why new doors deliver so much of the visual change for so little of the cost — you are replacing the part of the kitchen your eye is actually reading, and leaving the part it never sees.
How long does each take?
New doors are about two weeks from order to shipped, and fitting them is an afternoon with a screwdriver if you are reusing your hinges. Nothing is out of action while you wait, because the kitchen carries on working until the new fronts arrive.
A new kitchen takes months and the room is unusable for part of it.
That difference matters more than people expect when the kitchen in question is the only one in the house.
What about just painting them?
It sounds like the least expensive option, and it is the one most likely to disappoint, for a reason that has nothing to do with the paint.
Painting changes the colour and nothing else. The shape stays. If what dates your kitchen is an arched top rail or a heavy raised panel — and on most kitchens of a certain age, it is — a coat of paint leaves the dating feature in place and merely changes its colour. You also cannot paint a thermofoil door usefully, because the foil is the finish and paint does not bond to it reliably.
Where painting genuinely works is a shaker or flat-panel door in sound condition where the only problem is the colour. Then it is the right answer, it costs the least of anything here, and nobody should be selling you doors.
Which should I choose?
If your boxes are sound and your layout works, new doors and drawer fronts will get you most of the kitchen you want for a fraction of the cost of a new one, in two weeks rather than months.
If the boxes have gone or the layout is wrong, do not spend money on surfaces. Save it toward doing the job properly, because a refaced kitchen with a bad layout is a bad layout you now cannot justify changing.
Frequently asked questions
Is refacing cheaper than replacing cabinets?
Yes, usually by a wide margin. But new doors and drawer fronts alone are cheaper still, and on a kitchen with sound boxes they get you the same visible change. That is the comparison worth making before you commit to refacing.
How much does a full set of kitchen cabinet doors cost?
From about $1,400 to around $8,000 for a typical kitchen of twenty-five or so doors and fronts, depending on size and species. It is priced per square foot, so your figure comes from your own measurements rather than a package price.
Can I just replace the doors and keep my cabinets?
Yes, and it is the most common thing we make doors for. Every door is cut to your sizes, so they fit the boxes you already have rather than the other way round.
Will new doors fit my existing hinges?
They can. If you are keeping your hinges, measure the boring on a door you already have and send those numbers with your sizes, and the new doors are bored to match. If you are fitting new hinges, measure the cabinet openings instead.
Is it worth refacing a kitchen with damaged boxes?
No. Veneer over a swollen or sagging box hides the problem rather than solving it, and you will be doing the job twice. Damaged boxes are the case for a new kitchen.