Cabinet Refacing Cost: What It Runs, and When It Beats Replacing

A full reface in the Seattle area typically runs $8,000–$20,000 for an average kitchen, against $15,000–$40,000 for comparable semi-custom replacement. About half the cost — which is exactly why it gets recommended more often than it should.

Refacing is a good answer to a narrow question. Here is how to tell whether yours is that question.

What refacing actually is

Your existing cabinet boxes stay bolted to the wall. Everything you touch or see gets replaced: new doors, new drawer fronts, new hinges and hardware, and a wood veneer or laminate skin applied to the exposed sides and face frames so the old boxes disappear behind the new surfaces.

Done properly the result is indistinguishable from new cabinetry at arm’s length. Done cheaply — peel-and-stick veneer over a face frame that was never prepped — it telegraphs within a year at every edge.

The two questions that decide it

Before anything else, answer these honestly:

• Are the boxes sound? Open the sink base. Soft or swollen bottoms, delaminating particleboard, shelves that sag under crockery, or drawer boxes racking out of square all mean no. Plywood carcasses that still feel tight mean yes.
• Does the layout already work? Not “could you live with it” — does it genuinely work. If the fridge blocks a walkway, the range sits in a corner, or there is nowhere to set a hot pan down, refacing preserves all of that in a nicer finish.

Two yeses and refacing is the smartest money in a kitchen. One no and it is the most expensive way to stay unhappy.

What it costs here

• Doors and drawer fronts only ($4,000–$9,000). New fronts and hinges on boxes whose exposed sides still look acceptable. The cheapest real improvement available in a kitchen.
• Full reface ($8,000–$20,000). Doors, fronts, hardware and veneered box exteriors and face frames. This is what most people mean by refacing and what reads as a new kitchen.
• Reface plus function ($12,000–$25,000). The above with soft-close conversions, pull-outs, drawer organisers and a new sink base interior — the parts that change how the kitchen works day to day rather than how it looks.

Compare that with new cabinetry at $8k–$80k+ depending on tier. Refacing competes with the stock and semi-custom tiers. It does not compete with custom, and it never produces a layout change.

Where refacing quietly goes wrong

Three failure modes, in the order we meet them:

• The countertop. Refacing does not require replacing counters, which sounds like a saving until you are looking at new doors against a tired laminate top. Most refaces that land well include new counters, and that is a real line item — see quartz vs granite for those numbers.
• The boxes you did not open. A sink base that has been damp for years will not survive the new doors. We check every carcass before quoting, because finding it afterwards turns a reface into a partial replacement mid-job.
• Mixed vintages. If half the kitchen was added later, the boxes may differ in depth or face-frame width. Veneer hides colour, not geometry.

Refacing, painting, replacing

Three different answers to three different problems:

• Painting ($3,000–$8,000). You like the door style and dislike the colour. Cheapest by a distance, and on solid-wood shaker doors it is often the right call.
• Refacing ($8,000–$20,000). The doors themselves are the problem — dated profiles, worn edges, oak grain you are tired of — but the plan is fine.
• Replacing ($15,000–$80,000+). The layout needs to change, the boxes are failing, or you want to-the-ceiling uppers and deep drawers the old carcasses cannot give you.

What refacing cannot fix

It cannot move a wall, relocate plumbing, raise uppers to the ceiling, deepen a drawer bank, or change a cabinet’s footprint by an inch. If your frustration is spatial rather than visual, the layout moves are what you actually want, and opening a wall may be the honest conversation.

We will tell you which one you are in. Refacing a kitchen that needs replanning is the single most common regret we get called to undo.

Get a straight answer on your cabinets

We reface and replace cabinetry across Snohomish and King County, and part of a kitchen estimate is opening your boxes and telling you honestly which your kitchen deserves.

Get a cabinet estimate →