Cabinet painting cost: paint, reface or new doors

Around Portland, having a kitchen's cabinets painted usually runs $451-$1,745 with materials, and about $1,089 is the middle of the market (market data, November 2026) . The number of doors and drawer fronts drives most of that. Painting the face frames, filling oak grain, covering a dark stain with white and fixing tired hinges first all add to it.

Already set on paint? Our cabinet painting page walks through the steps and the booking. Below is cost only: how a quote is put together, what raises it, and when new doors or new cabinets are the smarter spend. Written by me, Slava, after 7 years of doing this work myself.

What do Portland-area kitchens pay to have cabinets painted by a pro?

Two rows on our price sheet cover this. Both are market numbers we haven't quoted from yet, and each says what it includes.

Trim and walls appear as a separate line; they don't come free with the cabinets.

National articles print much bigger numbers, mostly from painting companies spraying every surface of large kitchens, often inside the boxes too. A Portland survey average mixes in plenty of simpler jobs. Our own figure may land above this range, and I'd rather say so up front .

Plenty of west-side homes still have their original kitchen. A galley or L-shaped layout in a ranch house sits at the small end of the table .

How do painters price cabinets: per door, per kitchen or by the hour?

You'll see three ways. Some painters give one flat number per kitchen, as our market row does. Others count doors and drawer fronts, then add lines for frames, visible end panels, an island and any tall pantry. Small jobs often go by the hour.

A per-door figure isn't something I'll print yet . What I can give you is the counting method, which works better than any online calculator. Count every door. Count every drawer front separately. Then note the open frame faces, the end panels you can see, the island and the pantry. Send that list with a few photos and you'll get a range back without anyone driving out.

On the market row, materials are only about a tenth of the price. The bill is mostly prep hours plus waiting time between coats, not the paint itself .

One bathroom vanity, a laundry wall or a few replacement doors are usually billed as time; the hourly handyman rates guide shows how hours become a bill. Driving from one edge of our zone to the other takes about 25 minutes, so a job that needs several short visits for separate coats doesn't pile up long drives.

Which part of a cabinet bill is prep, and which is paint?

Paint is the cheap part. The bill is mostly these steps, each one hours:

• taking off doors and drawer fronts and labelling each one;
• degreasing, which matters most around the range;
• scuff-sanding every surface that gets paint;
• filling dents and old hardware holes;
• a bonding primer;
• the finish coats;
• rehanging, then adjusting every door so the gaps line up.

How the paint goes on changes the price too. Spraying leaves a smooth surface, but the whole kitchen gets masked and the doors need somewhere to dry flat. Brush and roller skip most of the masking and take longer on the doors .

A cabinet-grade enamel or a two-part (2K) coating costs more per gallon than wall paint and cures harder on doors handled all day .

From about October to May, the air inside a house and in a garage here stays cool and damp. Coats take longer to cure, so the job stretches over more days, and those extra days show up in the price .

Is it cheaper to repaint cabinets, reface them or get new ones?

There are four real options:

1. Paint the boxes and doors you already have.
2. Order new doors and drawer fronts, and paint or keep the boxes.
3. Reface: fresh doors, with veneer glued over the box faces.
4. Tear out the old cabinets and put in new ones.

Our price sheet covers the ends of that list:

Refacing and new doors don't have a row on our sheet, so no figure for them here. They usually fall somewhere between paint and new cabinets .

Paint makes sense when the boxes are solid wood or plywood, square and dry, and the layout works. It doesn't when the particleboard under the sink has swollen, doors are cracked or warped, thermofoil is peeling off, or the layout has to change. A single damaged sink base can often be swapped on its own while the rest gets paint; that's on our cabinets page.

A sink base that leaked slowly for years is a common reason an older kitchen can't simply be painted . Once walls, plumbing or the range have to move, it's a remodel. See our kitchen remodel service and what a kitchen remodel costs. We don't connect gas lines or haul old cabinets away; the services we don't offer sit on one page.

What adds to a cabinet painting quote?

Each of these is its own line on a good quote:

• the frames around the openings and the side panels you can see;
• box interiors and shelves;
• an island, or a floor-to-ceiling pantry;
• open oak grain filled so the paint reads smooth;
• dark stain to white, which means extra primer and coats;
• cabinets painted once before and now peeling, which means more stripping and sanding;
• laminate or thermofoil faces, which need a special primer or can't be painted at all ;
• new pulls in a different size, so old holes get filled and new ones drilled.

Repairs and hardware fit in while the doors are off. Portland-area estimates, labour only:

Soft-close hinges can go on in the same visit. If your kitchen has oak cabinets from the '80s or '90s, which you might find in a Beaverton house of that era, expect the grain to show through paint unless it's filled first.

Can you paint over cabinets that were painted before, and does a pre-1978 house change the price?

Yes, over paint that's still sound, after cleaning and scuffing. Flaking paint must be removed before anything else, and that stripping is where the hours go.

Older houses add a rule. Oregon treats a home built before 1978 as having lead paint unless a test says it doesn't. Indoors, small repairs below 6 sq ft of paint per room are exempt; a kitchen's worth of doors goes past that fast.

Lead-safe work adds containment, cleanup and testing time, so that quote runs higher and should list those steps. Disturbing lead-based paint isn't a job we take.

What helps any painter quote you: when the house went up, and whether the cabinets are original or went in later . Cedar Hills was mostly built as tract housing in the 1950s-60s, and Cedar Mill filled in during the 1960s-70s, so original cabinets there may carry decades-old paint. Most Bethany homes went up in the 1990s-2000s, after the cutoff.

Is it worth paying a pro, or should you paint cabinets yourself?

Materials are a small slice of the bill, so DIY saves most of the money, at the cost of many evenings and a half-usable kitchen.

DIY cabinet jobs tend to fail in the same few places:

• skipping the degreaser, so paint peels near the stove;
• no bonding primer, so the topcoat scratches off glossy old finish;
• rehanging doors before the paint cures, so they stick and chip;
• brush marks that show on flat slab doors.

Damp months slow homeowners down too: doors stacked early in a cold garage can stick together.

There's a middle path: you paint, and a handyman takes the doors off, fixes hinges and slides, then rehangs and adjusts them . If a bathroom vanity isn't worth painting, swapping it falls under bathroom refresh; installation alone is a $400-$1,200 job, labour only, about $700 typical (Portland-area estimate) .

For sellers and landlords, fresh paint is often the cheapest way to make a dated kitchen look cared for; our pre-sale repairs page covers other fixes buyers notice.

What should a cabinet painting quote spell out, and when does Oregon require a written contract?

With two bids in hand, line up these items:

• the count of doors and drawer fronts;
• frames, end panels, island and interiors: in or out;
• degreasing and sanding;
• primer type and number of finish coats;
• spray or brush, and where doors are painted;
• hardware removal, new holes, and who buys new hardware;
• repairs, priced as separate lines;
• calendar days, and which days the kitchen is out of use;
• cleanup at the end.

Start under that figure and creep above it, and the contract has to be delivered inside five days. The paint-only range tops out at $1,745, so a plain job may stay under the line; frames, an island, hardware and repairs can push it over. The contract requirements guide covers what goes in it.

Oregon's Building Codes Division lists cabinet painting among finish jobs exempt from a building permit, so no permit fee belongs on the quote .