A third of your total price, or what the material ordered in for your house really costs, whichever is more. On a $10,000 to $26,500 kitchen built to your openings, that material figure is real. On $3,000 to $11,000 of catalog boxes it usually is not.
Massachusetts sets this ceiling, not shop policy, so you can hold any quote to it including one from Custom Cabinets Lynn. A home job can ask for a third of the price up front, or the real cost of the material ordered in for your house, whichever of the two is more. The law is MGL c.142A and every shop quoting you sits under it.
The material half is the part worth knowing, because your cabinets lean on it fairly. A kitchen drawn to your openings fits nobody else's house. We buy the panels against your drawing and cut the doors to your sizes, so we are out of pocket weeks before anything reaches you. On a job like that the material can cost more than a third of the price, and asking for it is allowed.
Your catalog boxes are a different story. Stock and semi-custom lines sit in a warehouse until you order them, so that exception does not stretch far. If a shop wants half up front for boxes anybody could sell to anybody, ask them why.
You have a second protection, and using it costs you nothing. Your job has to be written down and signed before work starts once the price passes $1,000. That paper names your work, the materials, the total price, when each payment falls due, and both dates. Almost every cabinet job clears $1,000, so a number you were given over the phone is not a contract.
We write ours that way as a matter of course. Our cabinet cost guide gives you the totals to measure a deposit against, and what an estimate should itemize covers the rest of the sheet.
Related questions
What is a normal deposit on refacing?
Your doors and fronts are made to order, so they count as material bought for your house and the same exception applies. On a $5,000 to $13,000 job the figure should still track what that material costs, not a round number somebody liked.
Should the deposit be paid before or after the drawing?
After. The drawing is what fixes your order. We take your measurements, set out the run and put the figures in writing before you are asked for anything, so what you pay against is a real order rather than an idea.
What if the job changes halfway through?
Then we put the change on paper the same way we did your first price. A swollen sink base at $400 to $1,400 is a new line with its own number, not a quiet bump to a total you already agreed.