Cabinet Painting Cost Calculator
Painting 20 kitchen cabinet doors and 8 drawer fronts runs about $4,170 in Atlanta — $3,569 to $4,770, or $149 a piece — sprayed in the house with the cabinet sides painted too. Against the two alternatives priced on this same site at the same wages, that is 53% of the cost of new units and 54% of refacing. It is the cheapest way to change how a kitchen looks.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost of painting the cabinets
$4,230
typical · range $3,628 to $4,833 · 20 doors and 8 drawer fronts · $151 a piece · 36 trade hours
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 25% of this figure comes from modelled material prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced
The one input that changes the answer for you.
The straightforward case and the one this page is priced around. Takes paint well once it is clean and keyed. ⚠️ Open-grain woods like oak show their grain through paint however many coats go on: if you want a smooth modern finish on oak doors, the grain has to be filled, which is real extra work and is worth agreeing before rather than discovering after.
A much finer finish, and the masking is the job: everything within reach of the overspray gets covered, and the kitchen is out of use while it happens. ⚠️ Ask what they do about extraction. Spraying solvent finishes in an occupied house without it is the part of this trade that gets done badly.
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The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
Paint them, reface them, or replace them
| What you do | Against painting | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Paint the doors you have | — | $4,230 |
| Reface — new doors on the same boxes | ×2.0 | $8,272 |
| New cabinets throughout | ×2.0 | $8,295 |
Painting is 51% of new cabinets and 51% of refacing. All three figures come from models on this site at the same BLS wage for your area, which is the only reason the three are comparable at all — three numbers from three websites are not. ⚠️ And look at the two bottom rows before reading past them: on our own models, refacing this kitchen costs about the same as replacing it outright. Refacing is usually sold as the middle option and here it is not the middle of anything, which makes it the row worth questioning hardest — a refacing quote has to beat a new-cabinet quote on something other than price. Two honest caveats. The new-cabinet figure is for a reference ten-by-ten kitchen rather than for your exact one, because that model is indexed by linear feet and this one by doors, so treat the last two rows as close rather than as identical. And only the last row changes the layout: if what you dislike is where the cabinets are, painting them is not the answer at any price.
Three finishes, and what each one asks of you
| Method | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Brushed and rolled, in the house | brush marks visible in raking light | $3,829 |
| Sprayed in the house | smooth, with a day of the kitchen sealed off | $4,230 |
| Doors sprayed in a workshop | closest to a factory finish | $4,690 |
Only $861 separates the cheapest from the best on this kitchen, which means this is not really a price decision. It is a decision about what you want to look at and what you can live through. A brushed finish is honest hand-painted work and it shows brush marks in side light. A workshop spray is the only one that gets near how the doors looked new, and it means a week or two of a kitchen with no doors on it — which people underestimate every time. ⚠️ Whatever the method, a painted cabinet takes weeks to harden fully: doors shut hard in the first fortnight print the frame into the paint permanently.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Degreasing, sanding and keying every faceequivalent doors × material factor × lead factor | 24each | $498–$535 | sourced |
| Taking the doors off and hanging them backequivalent doors | 24each | $407–$437 | sourced |
| Bonding primerequivalent doors | 24each | $168–$456 | estimated±46% |
| Cabinet-grade finish paintequivalent doors | 24each | $312–$816 | estimated±45% |
| Priming and finishingequivalent doors × hours per door for the method × lead factor | 36hour | $1,660–$1,784 | sourced |
| Painting the cabinet boxes and visible framesdoors, when the boxes and frames are painted too | 20each | $507–$545 | sourced |
| Masking the kitchen and protecting worktops1 per job | 1each | $75–$260 | estimated±55% |
| Total | $3,628–$4,833 | ±14% |
Where these numbers come from
- Paint, reface or replace — three models, one set of wages
- This is the question the search results are full of, and it is normally answered with three figures copied from three different places, which cannot be compared with each other because they share neither wages nor assumptions. Here all three come from models on this site, on the same BLS wages for the same metro area: painting $4,170, our cabinet refacing cost calculator $7,793, and our kitchen cabinet installation cost calculator $7,821. Painting is 53% of replacing. ⚠️ And the result worth pausing on is the other two: on our own models, refacing this kitchen lands within a few percent of replacing it outright. Refacing is normally sold as the middle option, and here it is not the middle of anything — which makes it the quote to question hardest, because it then has to win on something other than price, such as keeping a layout that works or avoiding a fortnight without a kitchen. One caveat we would rather state than hide: the replacement model is indexed by linear feet of run, so its figure is a 10 by 10 reference kitchen rather than your exact door count. Treat those two rows as close, not identical. What separates the three is not really price anyway — painting keeps the boxes, the runners and the layout exactly as they are, which is a bargain when they are sound and a waste when they are not.
- Paid by the door, which is why linear feet mislead
- A kitchen is measured in linear feet of worktop and this job is paid by the door and the drawer front, because each one comes off, gets numbered, degreased, keyed, primed and painted on both faces. This model counts a drawer front as 0.5 of a door, so the 20 doors and 8 fronts here are 24 equivalents and 36 trade hours. Scale barely helps: $155 a piece on a 10-door galley against $147 on a 30-door kitchen with an island, because there is no economy of scale in a job that is the same operation repeated. ⚠️ The one line worth asking about is the cabinet boxes: painting only the doors and leaving the visible sides and face frames is $3,642 against $4,170, and it looks like what it is. New handles and hinges add $384 on top, and are the cheapest visible change on this page.
- The one door that should not be painted
- Thermofoil doors are a vinyl film heat-formed over MDF, and no domestic primer bonds to that film reliably. It peels from the edges in sheets, usually inside a year, and it peels taking the paint with it — so the result is worse than the doors you started with, and it cannot be undone. ⚠️ This calculator will price that work at $4,481 because refusing to show a number is not the same as being useful, but the honest options are new doors on the existing boxes or new units. How to tell: thermofoil has a seamless, slightly plasticky face with no grain running over the edges, and any door that has been near a kettle or an oven usually shows a lifted corner. Laminate, by contrast, can be painted with a bonding primer — $4,377 here — and factory-painted MDF is the easiest of the lot at $4,092.
- Spraying in an occupied kitchen, dust, and pre-1978 paint
- The three methods buy three different finishes: brush marks visible in raking light for $3,767, smooth, with a day of the kitchen sealed off for $4,170, and closest to a factory finish for $4,630 — the last one meaning a week or two of a kitchen with no doors on it, which people underestimate. ⚠️ If it is being sprayed in the house, ask what they do about extraction and ventilation before agreeing: EPA, Volatile Organic Compounds’ Impact on Indoor Air Quality (retrieved 2026-08-24) sets out why indoor concentrations during and after painting are the part of this work that affects the people living there. Sanding raises its own issue — OSHA, Wood Dust (retrieved 2026-08-24) — and in a house built before 1978, sanding painted cabinet doors disturbs painted surface, which brings EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program (retrieved 2026-08-24) into it: certified firm, containment and cleaning verification, and $5,296 instead of $4,170 on this kitchen. Wages from BLS OEWS, May 2025, for painters and carpenters, retrieved 2026-08-20, benefit-loaded from BLS ECEC.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-24.
What this figure does not include
- New doors
- Keeping the boxes and fitting new doors and drawer fronts is refacing, and it is priced on its own page here. It is the honest answer where the doors are thermofoil, water-damaged, or a style you will still dislike in a different colour.
- New cabinets
- Ripping the units out and starting again is a different order of project, priced on our cabinet installation and kitchen remodel pages. It is also the only one of the three that changes the layout.
- Repairing the units themselves
- Sagging shelves, broken drawer runners, doors that no longer close and swollen MDF under the sink are repairs, and paint does not fix any of them. They come before painting or they stay.
- Worktops, splashbacks and appliances
- Painting the doors changes how a kitchen looks more than anything else for the money, and it does not change any of those. If they are what you dislike, this page is not the answer.
- Interior doors, trim and walls
- Different job, different paint, different page — our interior painting calculator. It is worth pricing together though, because the crew and the masking are already there.
- Living without a kitchen
- A sprayed-in-place job takes the kitchen out of use for a day or more, and a workshop job means a week or two with no doors on the units. Neither is a line on an invoice and both are real.
Questions people actually ask
How much does it cost to have a cabinet painted?
About $149 a piece on this model in Atlanta, counting doors and drawer fronts alike — $4,170 for the 20 doors and 8 drawer fronts this page defaults to, sprayed in the house with the cabinet sides painted too. ⚠️ The unit matters more than the rate. This work is paid by the door, not by the linear foot of kitchen and not by the square foot, because every door is taken off, numbered, degreased, keyed, primed and painted on both faces whether it is a big one or a small one. Two kitchens with identical worktop runs can have twelve doors or twenty-eight, and they are not the same job or the same price.
Is it cheaper to paint or replace cabinets?
Cheaper, and by about half. On three models from this same site, at the same Atlanta wages: painting $4,170, refacing $7,793, new units $7,821 — so painting is 53% of replacing and 54% of refacing. ⚠️ One honest caveat on that comparison: our new-cabinet model is indexed by linear feet, so the replacement figure is a 10 by 10 reference kitchen rather than your exact door count. The number to trust is the order of magnitude, not the last dollar. And the decision is not only money — painting keeps the layout, the boxes and the drawer runners exactly as they are, which is a saving when they are sound and a mistake when they are not.
Is professional cabinet painting worth it?
The materials for this are cheap and the labour is nearly all of it — 36 trade hours on this kitchen — so the question is really whether you want to spend those hours. What you are paying for is the part that decides whether it lasts: degreasing kitchen doors properly, keying the existing finish, priming for the substrate you actually have, and leaving each coat to harden before the doors go back on. ⚠️ Cabinet paint reaches full hardness over days rather than hours, and doors rehung early stick to the frames and print. Finish is where the methods separate: $3,767 brushed in the house, $4,170 sprayed in the house, $4,630 sprayed flat in a workshop, which is the only one that gets close to how the doors looked new.
What is the downside to painting kitchen cabinets?
Four, and one of them is a stop sign. ⚠️ Thermofoil doors — a vinyl film heat-formed over MDF — cannot be reliably painted at all: no domestic primer bonds to that film, and it peels from the edges in sheets within a year, taking the paint with it. This model will price that work at $4,481 if you insist, and says plainly it should not be bought. The other three: paint wears at the edges and around the handles where fingernails and rings catch it, and it is a repaint rather than a repair; painting changes nothing about a layout you dislike or a drawer that no longer runs; and open-grain woods like oak show their grain through paint however many coats go on, so a smooth modern finish means filling the grain first — $4,803 instead of $4,170 here.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 2026-08-24, not invented.
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- How we calculate
The formula, the sources, and an honest account of which parts of the model are weak.