Cabinet Refacing vs Replacing

Search for cabinet refacing vs replacing and nearly every result answers with money. Refacing is cheaper. Replacing costs more. Both statements are true, and both are the wrong place to start, because the choice is not always yours to make. Some kitchens cannot be refaced at all, and no price comparison will tell you whether yours is one of them.

Two questions decide it. What are your cabinet boxes made of, and what shape are they in. Is the layout staying exactly where it is. Answer those and the decision usually makes itself.

Refacing, refinishing and replacing are three different jobs

The words get used as though they were interchangeable. They are not, and the difference matters before you call anybody. Most of the confusion in cabinet refacing vs refinishing starts here.

Refinishing, which is what most people mean by painting cabinets

The boxes stay. The doors and drawer fronts stay. Everything gets cleaned, sanded, primed and sprayed in a new color. Hardware can change. Nothing else does.

Refinishing changes the color and only the color. A door style you dislike is still that door style when the paint dries, and a drawer that sticks still sticks. That is the honest version of cabinet refacing vs painting. Painting is the cheapest of the three because it is the least of the three.

Refacing

Kitchen cabinet refacing keeps the boxes where they are. The doors, drawer fronts and hinges come off and new ones go on. The exposed face frames and any visible box sides get covered with a veneer or laminate skin that matches the new doors. When it is done, everything you can see is new and everything holding the kitchen up is original.

Replacing

The boxes come out and new cabinetry goes in. Because the room is stripped at that point, the layout can change, the sizes can change, and the interior fittings become choices instead of whatever you inherited.

Open a drawer and look at the box

This is the test that decides whether refacing is even available to you, and you can run it yourself before anyone comes out to look.

Pull a drawer all the way out and look at the cabinet from the inside. Then open the sink base and look at the bottom.

Plywood boxes, tight joints, no soft spots. Refacing is on the table.
Particleboard that has swollen, crumbling edges under the sink, shelves that sag. Refacing is not on the table. New doors bolted to a failing box is money spent on the part that was not broken.
Boxes out of square, doors that will not stay aligned however the hinges are set. The carcass has moved. Adjustable hinges hide a little of that and not much.
Water anywhere near the sink base. Find out why before you spend anything on how the kitchen looks.

Refacing keeps the boxes. That is the whole idea and it is also the whole risk. Sound boxes mean you are keeping the structural part of the kitchen and renewing the part you actually see. Bad boxes mean you have wrapped a new face around a problem that comes back.

Refacing locks your layout in place

Here is the part that does not come up in most comparisons of kitchen cabinet refacing vs replacement.

Refaced cabinets sit exactly where the old ones sat. The sink stays where the sink is. The run of counter that is too narrow to work on stays too narrow. The corner nobody can reach into stays unreachable. The dead gap beside the refrigerator stays dead.

So if what bothers you is how the kitchen looks, refacing answers it. If what bothers you is how the kitchen works, refacing does not answer it, and no finish ever will. The people who regret refacing are almost all in that second group. They fixed the appearance of a room that was frustrating them for a different reason.

Work out what is actually wrong before you choose. Not enough storage, not enough counter, and dated doors are three different problems with three different answers. Settling that is the first thing we do in kitchen design, and it is worth doing whether or not the boxes come out.

What refacing does not touch

The interior. Wire shelves stay wire shelves. Deep drawers in place of a base cabinet with a door and a shelf means new cabinetry, not new doors.
The countertop. It stays. That is a benefit if you like it and a constraint if you do not. Replacing cabinets means the countertop comes off, and it rarely comes off intact. If yours is due anyway, work through how to choose a countertop first, because it changes the arithmetic.
Plumbing and electrical. Nothing moves, so no wall gets opened. An outlet in an awkward place stays in that awkward place.
The sizes. A filler strip in the old kitchen is a filler strip in the new one, wearing a new skin.

When refacing is the right call

The boxes are sound and the layout already works.
You like where everything sits and you are tired of looking at it.
The countertop is newer than the cabinets and it is staying.
You need the kitchen usable while the work happens. Refacing leaves you cooking through most of it, which matters when it is the only kitchen in the house.

Refacing done properly is not a consolation prize. A sound box with a good door on it is a good kitchen.

When replacing is the right call

The boxes are particleboard and failing, or they have been wet.
Anything about the layout has to change. The sink moves, a wall opens, the range wall gets rebuilt.
You want the interior to change. Drawers instead of doors, pull outs, a corner that finally gets used.
There is unused height above the cabinets and you want the run to reach the ceiling.
The countertop is coming off anyway.

Once the countertop is off and the boxes are out, refacing has nothing left to save. The question becomes which cabinetry goes back in, which is a separate decision worked through in custom, semi custom or stock, and after that it is ordinary cabinet work.

Is cabinet refacing worth it?

It is worth it when the boxes are sound and the layout is right. It is a waste when either of those is false. That is the whole answer, and it is why anyone who tells you before seeing the kitchen is guessing.

The trap is the middle case. The boxes are acceptable. The layout is mildly annoying. Refacing gets offered, you take it because it is the smaller number, and the annoyance is still there afterward with a new door standing in front of it. If you are in the middle, ask what refacing will not fix, get the list said out loud, and decide whether you can live with it.

Whichever way it goes, order still governs the job. Deciding this after the trades are booked is one of the more expensive kitchen remodel mistakes we watch people make.

What to ask before anyone quotes you

What are my boxes made of, and what did you see when you looked inside them?
What is the new door made of? Solid wood, wood veneer over an engineered core, laminate and thermofoil all wear differently and repair differently.
Are the new hinges concealed and adjustable? Adjustability is what keeps doors lined up after the house shifts.
What happens to the exposed ends of the run, and to the panels beside the dishwasher and the refrigerator?
Is anything inside the cabinet being touched at all?
What is covered on the doors, and what is covered on the veneer? They are often not the same.

An installer who welcomes those questions is the one to hire. More of what people ask us is on the questions page.

Deciding between refacing and replacing in Orange County and Bergen County

We design kitchens and run the whole renovation from Chester, New York, across Orange County and into northern Bergen County, New Jersey. The housing stock here splits this decision fairly cleanly. Older houses often have boxes built in place out of plywood, and when those are still square they reface well. Kitchens fitted with particleboard boxes and a laminate skin are the ones that tend to give way at the sink base first, and no door will rescue them.

If you are weighing whether to reface or replace kitchen cabinets and you want somebody to look inside the boxes before you commit money to either, book a consultation. We will measure the room, open the cabinets, and tell you which one it is, including when the answer is refacing and less work for us.

Refacing or Replacing Kitchen Cabinets: How to Decide