How much does cabinet painting cost per door?

Most cabinet painting companies charge between $80 and $160 per door or drawer front. Where a company lands in that range reflects the preparation included, the coatings used, and the warranty behind the work. Multiply your total door and drawer count by that range for a realistic ballpark before you talk to anyone.

Why are cabinet painting quotes for the same kitchen so different?

Two reasons. The first is scope — a lower price usually means fewer preparation hours, and prep is what determines whether the finish lasts. The second is scheduling: many contractors price dynamically, quoting high when their calendar is full and cutting when they need work. The same kitchen can get very different numbers from the same contractor in different months.

Does it cost more to paint oak cabinets?

Yes. Oak and hickory have deep, open pores, and spray alone will not fill them — the coating bridges across the surface and every pore stays as a dark speck. Finish a light color over unfilled oak and you get a white door with black dots across it. Filling means pushing filler material down into the pores by hand, then sanding our own marks back off before the finish coat is sprayed. That is real extra material and labor, which is why oak costs more than a smooth door. Worth knowing: we fill the pores, not the grain pattern — the direction and character of the wood still reads through, which is what most people actually want. Smooth surfaces like MDF, laminate, maple, and birch skip this step entirely.

Do drawers cost less than doors to paint?

Usually slightly. Drawer fronts are smaller than doors, so some companies weight them a little lower. Many keep it simple and charge one flat rate per unit regardless. The difference is small either way — total count is what actually drives your number.

What Actually Drives Cabinet Painting Cost

Updated August 24, 2026Premier Cabinet Painting

Almost every cabinet painting quote is built the same way: a price per door and drawer, multiplied by how many you have. Once you know that, you can estimate your own project and spot a quote that doesn't add up.

Almost every cabinet painting quote in the country is built the same way, and once you know the formula you can estimate your own project in about five minutes.

The short version: cabinet painting is priced per door and drawer front, typically $80 to $160 each. Count yours, multiply, and you have a realistic range before you speak to a single contractor.

A typical kitchen has 25 to 40 doors and drawer fronts, which is how most kitchens land somewhere between $3,500 and $6,500.

The number one cost driver: how many doors and drawers you have

This is not a minor factor. It is the factor. Nearly every company in this trade prices per unit, because that is what actually maps to labor — every door gets removed, tagged, cleaned, sanded, filled, primed, sprayed, cured, and rehung, whether your kitchen is large or small.

Where companies differ is in the details:

Doors versus drawers. Some weight doors slightly higher because they are larger and charge a little less for drawer fronts. Others use one flat rate per unit. The gap is small.
Size and paneling. Some companies also weight unusually large doors, and account for additional panels — end panels, islands, exposed cabinet sides — which are surface area that has to be finished but is not a door or a drawer.

To estimate your own project: open every cabinet and count every door and every drawer front. Include the pantry, the island, and any built-ins you want finished. That number times $80–$160 is your range.

Where a company falls in that range is not arbitrary. It reflects how much preparation is included, which coatings are used, and what the warranty actually covers.

Lesser driver: what your cabinets are made of

Material affects cost, but far less than count does.

Smooth surfaces cost less. MDF, laminate, maple, and birch have closed, even grain. They need cleaning, sanding, and priming, and then they are ready for finish.

Open-grain woods cost more. Oak and hickory have deep, open pores, and they have to be filled before any color goes on. Spraying does not fill them — the coating bridges the surface and leaves every pore sitting there as a dark speck.

Filling is hand work. Filler is pushed down into the pores, then the marks left doing it are sanded back off, and only then does the finish coat get sprayed. That is genuine extra material, extra labor, and extra cure time.

It is also the step most often skipped on a cheap quote, and the one you will notice immediately — especially going where most people want to go, which is a light modern color over a dark oak kitchen. Skip pore filling there and the result is a white door covered in black dots.

One thing worth being clear about: filling the pores is not the same as erasing the wood. The grain pattern and its direction still read through the finish, and that is deliberate — it is what makes a painted oak door still look like a real wood door. If your cabinets are oak, ask any contractor directly whether pore filling is included.

Add-ons that move the number

These are incremental rather than transformative, but they are worth knowing before you compare quotes:

Soft-close hinges and drawer slides — a common upgrade while everything is already disassembled, and the cheapest time to do it
Crown molding — added trim above the upper cabinets
Drilling for new hardware — if you are changing to handles or pulls that do not match your existing holes

The part nobody tells you: many contractors price by how busy they are

This is the single most common reason homeowners see wildly different numbers for what looks like the same job.

A large share of contractors price dynamically. When the schedule is full, they quote high — if you say yes at an inflated number, the job is worth squeezing in. When work is thin, they quote aggressively to fill the calendar. The identical kitchen can get quotes hundreds or thousands of dollars apart from the same company in different months.

This is worth understanding for what it means about a low bid. A quote well under the range usually means one of two things: preparation steps are missing, or the contractor needs work right now. From the outside you cannot tell which — and only one of those is your problem to worry about.

What a bad paint job actually costs you

There is a number missing from every cheap quote, and it is the one that matters most.

Your cabinets are among the most expensive fixtures in your house. The $12,000 to $25,000 you would spend replacing them is not hypothetical — it is what the thing already sitting in your kitchen is worth. A finish that fails does not just leave you with a kitchen you dislike. It takes value out of an asset you already own.

Fixing it is expensive. A finish that peels has to be stripped back to a surface that will hold before anything new can go on, and that costs more than doing it properly the first time — you pay for the bad job, and then you pay a premium to undo it.

And the repair is not always the end of it. A bad enough finish can leave doors and drawer fronts in a condition where stripping and refinishing them is no longer the sensible answer, and replacing them becomes part of the fix. That is the outcome worth avoiding: you set out to skip the cost of new cabinetry and ended up paying for some of it anyway, on top of what you already spent.

So the arithmetic on a low bid is not the one it appears to be. You are not choosing between $3,500 and $2,000 and pocketing the difference. You are deciding whether to put a fixture worth four times either number at risk in order to save $1,500 — on work whose quality you cannot assess until well after the crew has gone.

Cabinets are worth doing once, and doing right.

How we price

Premier uses standard pricing. Our number does not move because our schedule is full, and it does not move because of your ZIP code. The same kitchen gets the same price in January and in June, in one neighborhood and in the next one over.

We are generally not the lowest bid. Our pricing reflects the full preparation sequence, KCMA-certified cabinet coatings, our crew doing the work to our standards, and a five-year warranty we honor ourselves. What you will not get is a number that depends on how much we happen to need the job that week.

If you want a real number for your kitchen, start with your ZIP code and a few short questions — no measuring, and no salesperson in your kitchen.

Common questions

How much does cabinet painting cost per door?: Most cabinet painting companies charge between $80 and $160 per door or drawer front. Where a company lands in that range reflects the preparation included, the coatings used, and the warranty behind the work. Multiply your total door and drawer count by that range for a realistic ballpark before you talk to anyone.
Why are cabinet painting quotes for the same kitchen so different?: Two reasons. The first is scope — a lower price usually means fewer preparation hours, and prep is what determines whether the finish lasts. The second is scheduling: many contractors price dynamically, quoting high when their calendar is full and cutting when they need work. The same kitchen can get very different numbers from the same contractor in different months.
Does it cost more to paint oak cabinets?: Yes. Oak and hickory have deep, open pores, and spray alone will not fill them — the coating bridges across the surface and every pore stays as a dark speck. Finish a light color over unfilled oak and you get a white door with black dots across it. Filling means pushing filler material down into the pores by hand, then sanding our own marks back off before the finish coat is sprayed. That is real extra material and labor, which is why oak costs more than a smooth door. Worth knowing: we fill the pores, not the grain pattern — the direction and character of the wood still reads through, which is what most people actually want. Smooth surfaces like MDF, laminate, maple, and birch skip this step entirely.
Do drawers cost less than doors to paint?: Usually slightly. Drawer fronts are smaller than doors, so some companies weight them a little lower. Many keep it simple and charge one flat rate per unit regardless. The difference is small either way — total count is what actually drives your number.