Cabinet painting is quoted per door and drawer front, not per square foot, because that is what the work tracks. A kitchen with 30 doors takes roughly twice as long as one with 15 regardless of how big the room is.
And almost none of the price is paint. Two gallons covers a typical kitchen. The money is in what happens before the paint.
What it costs
| Kitchen size | Doors + drawer fronts | Professional, sprayed |
|---|---|---|
| Small galley | 15 – 20 | $2,000 – 3,500 |
| Average | 25 – 35 | $3,000 – 5,500 |
| Large | 40 – 50 | $4,500 – 8,000 |
| Large with island and pantry | 55+ | $6,000 – 10,000 |
Per door and drawer front that is roughly $100 – 175 sprayed, or $75 – 120 brushed and rolled. Typical US contractor pricing at the time of writing, not quotes.
DIY materials — degreaser, sandpaper, bonding primer, two gallons of cabinet enamel, tape and plastic — run $200 – 450. The gap between that and $4,000 is labour, and on this job the labour is the product.
Where the money actually goes
| Stage | Share of the job |
|---|---|
| Degreasing, sanding, hardware removal, masking | ~45 – 55% |
| Priming | ~15% |
| Topcoats and cure handling | ~20% |
| Reassembly, touch-up, cleanup | ~10 – 15% |
| Materials | ~5 – 10% |
Kitchen cabinets carry years of cooking grease in a film you cannot see. Paint over it and the finish will lift at the edges within months — not because the paint was cheap, but because it never bonded. Degreasing with a proper cleaner, then scuff-sanding, then a bonding primer, is the entire job. Everything else is optional by comparison.
This is why the cheapest quote on a cabinet job is the one to look at hardest. The stage that gets cut is always prep, and the failure shows up after the crew has gone.
The substrate changes the job
Solid wood or wood veneer. The straightforward case. Clean, scuff, bonding primer, two coats. Open-grain woods like oak show grain through paint — filling it to get a smooth modern finish is extra work and extra money, and it is worth agreeing in advance whether you want the grain gone.
Thermofoil. A vinyl film over MDF. It peels rather than takes paint, and heat near the oven makes it worse. Painting thermofoil is possible only where the film is fully intact and bonded, and it needs a specific adhesion primer. Where it is lifting, refacing or replacing beats painting.
Laminate and melamine. Non-porous. Nothing sticks without the right primer. Doable, but the primer is not negotiable — see do I need primer before painting.
Previously painted, factory finish. Usually fine, but check whether the existing coat is sound. Painting over a failing finish inherits the failure.
Sprayed or brushed
Sprayed gives a factory-smooth finish with no brush marks and is what the higher prices buy. It requires the doors to come off and go somewhere — a garage, a shop, a rack — plus serious masking of the boxes in place. Most professional jobs spray the doors offsite and spray or brush the boxes in place.
Brushed and rolled costs less, takes less setup and leaves visible texture. On a painted-look kitchen with detailed doors that reads fine. On flat slab doors in a gloss it does not.
Expect the kitchen to be partly out of service for 3–7 days either way — cabinet enamels need time between coats and days to cure hard enough for daily use. That cure time is real and rushing it is the second most common way these jobs fail.
Getting the quote right
Ask for three things in writing:
- Door and drawer count, so the price has a unit behind it
- The prep sequence — degreaser named, sanding described, primer product named
- Sprayed or brushed, and whether doors leave the house
A quote that names the topcoat product and nothing about prep has priced the wrong half of the job. For how the finish choice affects durability in a kitchen, see paint sheen guide by room, and for the coverage arithmetic on the boxes, paint coverage per gallon by surface.
The short version
Budget $100 – 175 per door and drawer front sprayed, or $3,000–5,500 on an average kitchen. Buy prep, not paint — degrease, scuff, bond-prime — and refuse any quote that cannot describe those three steps.