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Cabinet Refacing Cost Calculator

A typical refacing project runs $150–$450 per linear foot with materials blended. Priced by material on its own, refacing runs $80–$125 a foot for laminate or rigid thermofoil, $100–$250 for wood veneer and $200–$500 for solid wood, before box repairs and add-ons. Measure your cabinet runs, pick a material, and see the total against what replacing the boxes outright would cost.

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2026 national range

$150–$450/ linear foot, typical project (all materials)

Professional refacing — new doors and drawer fronts and a matching skin on the boxes — priced per linear foot of cabinet run. Two different rates appear on this page and they are not on the same basis: the $150–$450 headline is a typical whole project with materials blended, the figure both cited sources publish, while each material band below is that one material's refacing rate on its own. The calculator prices from the material band, then adds box repairs and any of new hardware, soft-close hinges, crown molding and under-cabinet lighting as separate lines, because both sources list those as separate line items. Measure each wall end to end and double it where there are both upper and lower cabinets. National average estimate for 2026.

Laminate / rigid thermofoil (RTF)$80–$125
Wood veneer$100–$250
Solid wood$200–$500

Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.

Your cabinets

01Linear feet of cabinets

Measure each run wall-to-wall. Count uppers and lowers separately.

Tap to edit

860

02Refacing material

This is the single biggest driver — the spread runs roughly 6× end to end.

Roughly $100–$250 per linear foot. Real wood appearance at mid-range cost; the usual choice for an average kitchen.

03Cabinet box condition

Refacing only works over structurally sound boxes.

Frames are solid, doors hang square, no water damage. This is what a standard refacing quote assumes.

04Upgrades

Cheapest to add now, while the doors and hinges are already off.

Include new knobs and pulls

Upgrade to soft-close hinges

Add crown molding

Add under-cabinet lighting

Total Refacing Cost

$2,500 – $6,250

Wood veneer — 25 linear ft

Cost per linear foot$100 – $250

MaterialWood veneer

Replacing the cabinets outright runs $4,500–$15,000 — at this spec, get a replacement quote too before committing.

Where the money goes

Refacing — Wood veneer$2,500 – $6,250

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What you'll need

Linear feet of cabinets
Refacing material preference
Cabinet box condition

What you'll get

Total refacing cost — For your linear footage and material
Cost per linear foot — Your material's rate plus the repairs and add-ons you pick
Replacing instead — What new cabinets would cost, for comparison

What refacing actually includes

Refacing replaces every door and drawer front, covers the exposed cabinet box sides and face frames with a matching veneer or laminate skin, and fits new hinges. The boxes, the layout, the countertops and the plumbing all stay where they are — which is why it takes days rather than weeks and why the kitchen stays usable throughout.

It is priced by the linear foot of cabinet run rather than per door, because the skin and the labour scale with the length of the run. Measure each wall end to end, and count a wall twice where it has both upper and lower cabinets.

Refacing vs refinishing vs replacing

Option	What changes	Typical cost
Refinishing	Same doors and boxes, new colour or coating	$1,500–$5,000
Refacing	New doors and fronts, boxes re-skinned	$150–$450/linear ft
Replacing	Everything out, new boxes and layout possible	$4,500–$15,000+

If the boxes are sound and the layout works, refacing is usually the best value of the three. If you want to move the sink, change the footprint, or the boxes have water damage, refacing is the wrong tool — price a replacement. To keep the existing doors and only change the colour, see the cabinet refinishing calculator instead.

What moves the price

Material. The spread from laminate to solid wood is roughly 6×, and it is the biggest single lever on the quote.
Box condition. Refacing assumes sound boxes. Loose frames, sagging shelves or swelling under the sink have to be repaired first, and that is labour on top.
Door count per linear foot. A run of many narrow doors costs more to reface than the same length in a few wide ones, because each door is a separate item.
Add-ons. Crown molding, under-cabinet lighting and soft-close hinges are usually quoted separately — and are cheapest done now, while the fronts are off.

By RealCost Editorial TeamReviewed by RealCost Editorial TeamLast updated September 5, 2026 with September 2026 data

Refacing is priced per linear foot of cabinet run — $150–$450 installed for a typical kitchen, the same headline both HomeGuide and Angi publish independently — because that is how the trade itself measures and quotes the job, not by counting individual doors. Material choice moves the rate the most: laminate runs $80–$125 per linear foot, wood veneer $100–$250, and solid wood $200–$500, a more than 4x spread within one project type.

Why this is priced by the linear foot, not the door

Refacing keeps the existing cabinet boxes and replaces only the doors, drawer fronts and exposed box surfaces with new veneer or laminate skins. Because the boxes stay, the job scales with how much cabinet run there is to re-skin — measured wall-to-wall, doubled where both upper and lower cabinets are present — rather than with a door count, which is why this calculator and both of its cited sources price it per linear foot rather than per piece.

Why box condition is a planning adjustment, not a published rate

Both cited sources price refacing on the assumption that the boxes underneath are structurally sound — that is the whole premise of refacing over replacement. This calculator adds a condition multiplier (1.0× sound, 1.12× minor repairs, 1.3× significant repairs) to account for the reality that many kitchens need some box repair before new skins go on, but that multiplier is a planning estimate, not a number either source publishes. At the same 20 linear feet of wood veneer, moving from sound to significant repairs raises the low end from $2,000 to $2,000 × 1.3 = $2,600 and the high end from $5,000 to $6,500 — repair alone can add as much as the hardware and hinge add-ons combined.

Refacing against the alternative it exists to avoid

This calculator's replacement comparison — $4,500 to $15,000+ for new boxes entirely — is the number refacing is competing against, and the two sourced totals show why refacing wins when the boxes are sound: HomeGuide's own whole-kitchen refacing range is $5,000–$13,000 and Angi's average project is $7,232, both well inside the replacement band's lower half. The math only works in refacing's favor when the boxes do not need the 1.3× significant-repair multiplier — past a certain amount of box damage, paying the multiplier on top of refacing rates can close the gap with outright replacement.

The trade behind the linear-foot rate

Refacing is carpentry work — rebuilding box faces, fitting new skins and doors precisely to existing openings — which is why the relevant wage data is carpenters, not painters or drywall installers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 670,090 Carpenters (SOC 47-2031) nationally as of May 2025, the largest of the trades covered on this site, at a mean hourly wage of $31.55 and a mean annual wage of $65,630 — above painters and drywall installers, and just above the $65,360 mean across all construction and extraction occupations. The 10th-to-90th percentile spread runs $19.43 to $48.03, wide enough that a refacing quote's per-linear-foot rate can vary substantially by which carpenter's crew is doing the fitting.

What this estimate excludes

·Significant structural rebuilding. If a box is failing rather than merely needing minor repair, replacement (see the replacement comparison above) may be the more honest option than stacking the significant-repair multiplier onto a refacing quote.
·Countertops. Refacing addresses only the cabinet faces and boxes.
·Crown molding and under-cabinet lighting beyond the listed add-ons. Custom trim work outside this calculator's percentage-based add-ons is priced separately.
·Interior box refinishing. Refacing re-skins exposed exterior surfaces; painting cabinet interiors is a separate scope — see the cabinet painting estimate calculator.

How to check a refacing quote against this estimate

Is the quote priced per linear foot, and does it state the linear footage measured? A quote with no stated linear footage cannot be checked against the published $150–$450 headline.
Does the material match what is quoted — laminate, wood veneer or solid wood? A laminate quote priced at solid-wood rates is worth questioning.
Is a condition adjustment itemized, or silently folded into a higher base rate? Significant box repair should appear as its own line, not disappear into an inflated per-foot number.

Methodology

The per-linear-foot headline and material variants are this calculator's own dataset (src/data/costs/cabinet-refacing.ts), sourced from HomeGuide and Angi. The condition multiplier and add-on percentages are the calculator module's own planning constants, not published rates, and are labeled as such above. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 for Carpenters (SOC 47-2031).

Sources

HomeGuide — How Much Does Cabinet Refacing Cost? (2026 Prices) — accessed 2026-08-06
Angi — How Much Does Resurfacing Kitchen Cabinets Cost? (2026 Data) — accessed 2026-08-06
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — OEWS Profile, Carpenters (47-2031), May 2025 — accessed 2026-09-05

About this calculator

How much does cabinet refacing cost?

A typical cabinet refacing project runs $150–$450 per linear foot with materials blended, which works out to roughly $5,000–$13,000 all-in for an average 100–200 sq ft kitchen. Priced by material on its own — before box repairs, hardware, hinges, crown molding or lighting — laminate or rigid thermofoil runs $80–$125 per linear foot, wood veneer $100–$250, and solid wood $200–$500.

What is the difference between refacing, refinishing and replacing cabinets?

Refinishing strips and re-coats the doors and boxes you already have, so the style stays the same. Refacing replaces the doors and drawer fronts and covers the boxes with a matching veneer or laminate, so the style changes but the boxes stay. Replacing removes everything including the boxes. Refinishing is cheapest, replacing costs $4,500–$15,000 or more, and refacing sits between them.

How do I measure linear feet for cabinet refacing?

Measure along the front of each cabinet run from one end to the other and add the runs together. Where a wall has both upper and lower cabinets, count that wall twice — once for the uppers and once for the lowers. A typical kitchen is 20 to 30 linear feet; a small galley kitchen can be 12 to 15, and a large kitchen with an island can exceed 40.

Is cabinet refacing worth it?

Refacing is worth it when the cabinet boxes are structurally sound and the layout already works — you get a new look for less than replacement and without demolition. It is not worth it if the boxes have water damage or frames out of square, if you want to change the layout, or if the kitchen is small enough that replacement quotes land close to the refacing price. Get both quotes before deciding.

How long does cabinet refacing take?

A professional reface of an average kitchen usually takes two to four days on site, against one to three weeks for a full cabinet replacement. The kitchen stays usable for most of that time because the boxes, countertops and plumbing are not removed.

Methodology & sources

The cost figures on this page are generated from a single, sourced cost-data file (Professional refacing — new doors and drawer fronts and a matching skin on the boxes — priced per linear foot of cabinet run. Two different rates appear on this page and they are not on the same basis: the $150–$450 headline is a typical whole project with materials blended, the figure both cited sources publish, while each material band below is that one material's refacing rate on its own. The calculator prices from the material band, then adds box repairs and any of new hardware, soft-close hinges, crown molding and under-cabinet lighting as separate lines, because both sources list those as separate line items. Measure each wall end to end and double it where there are both upper and lower cabinets. National average estimate for 2026.). The headline and the material bands answer different questions, so they do not multiply out to the same total. At the 25 linear feet this calculator treats as an average kitchen, the $150–$450 typical-project rate gives $3,750–$11,250 — which is where both published project totals land: $5,000–$13,000 all-in for a 100–200 sq ft kitchen (HomeGuide), and $4,483–$10,586 with an average of $7,232 (Angi). The same 25 feet at the wood-veneer band of $100–$250 gives $2,500–$6,250, roughly half, because that band is one material's refacing rate before box repairs and before hardware, hinges, crown molding or lighting. Use the material band when you know the material and want the line item; use the headline when you want the shape of the whole quote. Laminate starts near $80/linear ft and solid wood reaches $500/linear ft, so the headline sits inside a wider material spread. Refacing only makes sense when the boxes are structurally sound — replacing cabinets outright runs $4,500–$15,000+. Last verified August 2026.

HomeGuide — How Much Does Cabinet Refacing Cost? (2026 Prices) — retrieved 2026-08-06
Angi — How Much Does Resurfacing Kitchen Cabinets Cost? (2026 Data, updated 3 Aug 2026) — retrieved 2026-08-06

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