How Much Kitchen Cabinet Painting Costs in Oakville
Most Oakville kitchens land between $3,500 and $9,500. The number is built from three things you can count from the doorway, and one you cannot.
What most Oakville kitchens land at
Kitchen cabinet painting in Oakville runs from about $3,500 to about $9,500 for a typical kitchen. The bottom of that band is a single run of uppers and lowers in sound condition; the top is a large kitchen with a pantry wall, an island and a finish that has to come back a long way before anything new will hold. Most of the kitchens we paint sit somewhere in the middle.
That is a premium price for cabinet painting, and it is meant to be. A brushed water-based enamel can be had for less, and it is not the same product. What you are paying for here is a booth-sprayed, catalysed two-component polyurethane, a five-year warranty on the finish, and a crew that has been doing this in Oakville since 2013. We compete on year five, not on the lowest number in the inbox.
A typical Oakville kitchen
- Painting a typical kitchen
- $3,500–$9,500
- Doors away in the booth
- About a fortnight
- Days on site at the end
- Five
- Warranty on the finish
- Five years
- Quote back from photographs
- Within 24 hours
The count is the price
Painting is quoted on the door and drawer count plus the days on site, not on the square footage of the room. Every door and every drawer front goes through the same sequence in the booth — degreased, sanded, primed, sanded, two topcoats, sanded between every one — so the number of fronts is the number of times that sequence runs. Two kitchens that look the same size from the doorway can differ by a dozen fronts once the pantry is in the frame.
This is why we ask for wide photographs of every run rather than close-ups. A wide shot shows the count, the condition of the finish and the layout, and those three things are the whole price. The quote comes back inside 24 hours, and it is the price you pay — not a starting figure that moves after a visit.
What moves the days on site
The second part of the quote is the on-site work, the days at the end when the frames, the boxes and the exposed end panels are sprayed in place. Three things set that number, in a fixed order.
The first is the box count, and it is nearly the whole story. More boxes to spray is more days, in proportion. The second is condition — a kitchen that has been waxed and polished for fifteen years needs the solvent degreaser to work harder, and a finish that is already lifting has to be taken back further than one that is simply dated. The third is layout: a tight galley with poor access takes longer to contain and spray than an open L with room to move.
Colour makes a small difference too. A dark kitchen going to white, or a saturated red or yellow, can need a third or fourth topcoat for full coverage. That is worked out at quoting from the photographs and the colour you are leaning towards, not discovered on site.
What sits outside the base price
Interiors, new hardware and mouldings are itemised, never assumed.
The base price covers everything you see with the doors shut: the door and drawer faces, the frames, the exposed end panels. Cabinet interiors and shelving are not in it. They can be, but spraying the insides roughly doubles the surface area, so they are quoted as a separate line and most people decide against them once they see it.
Hardware is the other common question. Your existing handles and hinges go back on at no charge — they come off with the doors, you can clean them during the fortnight, and they are refitted to the same holes. New handles, knobs or soft-close hinges are an add-on, itemised so you can see exactly what they add. So are crown moulding, new drawer boxes and any cabinet modifications. You build the project up from the base price, rather than paying for things you did not ask for.
How the money is paid, and what it buys
Half the price is paid after you have walked through the finished kitchen.
Ten per cent is paid when the contract is signed, forty per cent on the day the doors come off, and the remaining fifty after you have walked through the finished kitchen and approved it. Half the price arrives after the work is done, which is the opposite way round from most of the trade.
Against the alternatives, painting is the lowest-cost way to change the look of a kitchen whose doors are worth keeping. Refacing — new doors on the existing boxes — runs $8,000 to $15,000. Full replacement runs $25,000 to $40,000 before the countertop comes into it. Refinishing to a stain rather than a colour costs 50 to 100 per cent more than painting, because the old finish has to come off entirely. Painting keeps the door profile you already have; if you like it, that is the saving, and if you do not, it is the wrong service and we will say so.
The service this price belongs to
A price only means something beside the work it buys, and the page above is where that work is set out — the doors away in the booth for a fortnight, the frames sprayed in place on site, and the catalysed two-component finish that is the reason the number sits where it does. Reading how a painting quote is built on this service puts the figures on this page against the process behind them, which is the only honest way to compare one cabinet painting quote with another in Oakville.
The other half of the price
What a kitchen costs to paint is half a question. The other half is how many years the money buys, because a cheaper finish that lets go around the handles in eighteen months is not cheaper at all once it is done twice. The next page takes up how long a painted kitchen actually lasts in Oakville — the warranty, what wears a finish against what damages it, and why the catalysed system is priced the way it is rather than the way most painted kitchens are.
Questions
Common questions
- How much does it cost to paint kitchen cabinets in Oakville?
- Most kitchens we paint in Oakville land between $3,500 and $9,500. The quote is built from the door and drawer count plus the days on site, so a kitchen with a pantry and an island sits higher than one wall of cabinets, whatever the floor area.
- What is the average cost to paint kitchen cabinets in Ontario?
- Figures quoted for the province cover everything from a brushed enamel to a sprayed catalysed finish, which is why they range so widely. For a sprayed two-component finish in the Oakville area, $3,500 to $9,500 is the realistic band for a typical kitchen.
- How do you price a kitchen without seeing it?
- From wide photographs of every cabinet run. They show the door and drawer count, the condition of the existing finish and the layout, which is everything the price depends on. The quote comes back inside 24 hours and it is the price you pay.
- Is it cheaper to repaint kitchen cabinets or replace them?
- Painting, by a wide margin, because you are buying labour and finish rather than new cabinetry. Refacing runs $8,000 to $15,000 and full replacement $25,000 to $40,000, so painting is the lowest-cost route when the doors are ones you want to keep.
- Why is one painting quote so much cheaper than another?
- Usually the finish and the preparation. A water-based enamel brushed on site costs less to apply than a catalysed polyurethane sprayed in a booth, and a quote that skips degreasing is cheaper still — until the coating lets go and the job is done twice.
- Are cabinet interiors included?
- Not as standard. Spraying the insides and the shelving roughly doubles the surface area, so it is quoted as a separate line, and most people leave it out once they see the number. Everything visible with the doors shut is included.
- When is the money paid?
- Ten per cent when the contract is signed, forty when the doors come off, and the remaining fifty after you have walked through the finished kitchen and approved it. Half the price is paid after the work is done.
Want a number for your kitchen?
Send wide photographs of every cabinet run, with the pantry and the island in frame. The quote comes back inside 24 hours, and it is the price you pay.
Free in-home consultation · no obligation
Refaced. Repainted. Refinished.