Cabinet Refacing vs Refinishing
Rated 4.9 out of 5from 121 customer reviews
They sound like the same job and they are not. One replaces the doors on your cabinets; the other re-coats the doors you already have. Which you need comes down to a single question — whether you want the style of your kitchen changed, or only its color.
- Made in North America
- Never outsourced
- Installed in 3–5 days
- Reuses your cabinet boxes
- Serving homeowners since 2006
- Free in-home estimates
Refacing replaces the doors
Refacing takes the doors and drawer fronts off your cabinets and replaces them with new ones, in whatever style you choose, then covers every exposed frame with a matching veneer so the finish is continuous. New hinges and handles go on at the same time. The cabinet boxes stay bolted to the wall, so your layout does not move and nothing is torn out.
The doors are made and finished in a shop and arrive ready to install, which is why most kitchens are done in three to five days and why there is no sanding dust in the house.
Refinishing re-coats the doors you have
Refinishing strips the existing finish off your doors — by sanding, or with chemical stripper — and re-applies a new stain or paint to the same doors. Nothing is replaced. Done well it can look excellent, and on solid wood cabinets in good condition it is a legitimate choice.
What it cannot do is change the shape of the door. A raised-panel door is still a raised-panel door afterwards, in a different color. And because the stripping and sanding happen where the cabinets are, the work is in your kitchen for its duration.
What Each One Can Actually Change
The differences that decide it, without the ones that do not. Color is not on this list because both can give you any color — everything else here, only one of them can do.
| Measure | Refacing | Refinishing |
|---|---|---|
| What is replaced | Doors, drawer fronts, hinges, handles, frame veneer | Nothing — the same doors are stripped and re-coated |
| Door style | Any style you choose | Stays exactly as it is |
| Color or finish | Any | Any |
| Works on laminate | Yes | No — needs a wood surface |
| Where the work happens | Doors made off-site, installed in a day | Stripping and sanding in your kitchen |
| Modern soft-close hinges | Installed as standard | Old screw holes complicate it |
We Do Not Offer Refinishing
We reface. We do not refinish, and we are not going to pretend the two are the same thing so that yours becomes a job we can take. People call us for refinishing often enough that it is worth saying here rather than on the phone.
Refinishing is the better answer when your cabinets are solid wood, the doors are in good condition, you like their shape, and you want a different color rather than a different kitchen. If that is your kitchen, a good refinisher will serve you better than we will, and we will tell you so at the estimate.
Refacing is the better answer when the door style is what has dated, when the cabinets are laminate or thermofoil and cannot be stripped at all, or when you want soft-close hinges and modern hardware installed properly rather than worked around. Refacing costs $250 to $450 per door and drawer front — see what refacing costs for how that adds up on a kitchen the size of yours.
What Each One Costs
Refacing is priced per door and drawer front — $250 to $450 each with us, so a kitchen with 40 of them lands in the low teens of thousands. Count yours and multiply; the arithmetic works before anyone visits.
We will not publish a number for refinishing, because we do not sell it and would be guessing. What we can tell you is where the money goes, because it is the opposite of refacing: almost none of it is materials and almost all of it is labor. Stripping, sanding, filling, priming and coating are hours, and hours in an occupied kitchen are slower than hours in a shop. That is why refinishing quotes vary so much more widely than refacing quotes do — you are buying somebody’s time, and time estimates differ.
The practical upshot: on a small kitchen of sound wood doors, refinishing usually comes in cheaper. On a large kitchen, or one where the doors need filling and prep before they will take a finish, the two get close enough that the question stops being price and starts being what you actually want the kitchen to look like.
How Long Each One Lasts
A refaced door is a new door. It arrives with a factory finish applied and cured under controlled conditions, on a substrate that has never been stripped, and it wears the way any new cabinet door wears.
A refinished door is an old door with a new coat on it. Done properly — stripped thoroughly, prepped, sealed, finished in thin even coats — it can last many years and look genuinely excellent. Done in a hurry, it fails where finishes always fail first: the edges people touch, the rail above the dishwasher that takes the steam, the cabinet by the sink.
That difference in variance matters more than the difference in average. Refacing outcomes cluster, because the doors are made the same way every time. Refinishing outcomes spread, because the result depends almost entirely on how carefully one person prepared one surface in your kitchen. If you refinish, the person you hire matters more than anything else about the job.
Refacing and Refinishing Questions
Refacing replaces the doors and drawer fronts with new ones and applies a matching veneer to the exposed frames, so the style changes. Refinishing keeps the doors you already have, strips them back by sanding or chemical stripper, and re-coats them in a new stain or paint — so the color changes and the style cannot. Both leave the cabinet boxes in place.
Let’s Talk About Your Kitchen
You deserve a kitchen you love to cook, dine and entertain in. Tell us a little about the space and we’ll bring the showroom to you — no deposit, no obligation.
Current Offers
Free Quartz Countertop — Worth up to $3,000
*An estimate must be scheduled with an installation within 6 months. Countertop max cost up to $3,000.
Keep Your Countertop — Take $3,000 off instead
*An estimate must be scheduled with an installation within 6 months.
Beat Your Best Quote — We go $1,500 lower
*Quote must be from another kitchen cabinet refacing company.