Paint while your doors are sound and the style still works. Spraying a kitchen runs $2,000 to $6,500 against $5,000 to $13,000 to reface. Reface once the doors are the problem themselves: a peeling film, a dated profile, or damage no finish will hide.
By the time you call Custom Cabinets Lynn about painting, you have usually decided the kitchen looks tired, and the question underneath that is whether the tiredness sits in the color or in the doors. Paint changes one of those. Refacing changes the other.
Take one door off and put it on a table. A five-piece door with a panel floating in a solid frame, joints still tight, takes paint well and holds it. A slab with a vinyl film wrapped over fiberboard does not, because your finish would be bonding to that film rather than to wood, and the film is usually already lifting at the edge nearest the range.
What you pay for on a painting job is prep rather than paint. Your doors carry a cooking film that scuffing alone will not lift, so we degrease, then scuff, then lay a bonding primer, and only then spray. Skip any of that and the finish peels at the handle and along the top rail inside a season. Doors already peeling or under old brittle varnish add 20% to 45%, because stripping is time and we show it rather than absorb it.
The two routes disturb different amounts of old paint. Painting sands every door, frame and box edge you own. Refacing takes your doors away intact and veneers over the frames, so the surface being worked is much smaller. Both clear the 6 square feet that puts a pre-1978 kitchen under 454 CMR 22.00, but containment is the bigger line on your painting quote.
Refacing buys you new doors and drawer fronts with the visible faces of your boxes veneered to match, so the profile changes as well as the color. It is also the cheapest moment to put soft-close on, at $30 to $80 per door or drawer, because your hardware is off the boxes anyway.
Neither route moves a single dimension in your kitchen. Our cabinet cost guide puts both against a full replacement so you can read the gap, and the reface or replace question covers the boxes underneath.
Related questions
Will paint hide joints that have opened on old doors?
No, and it should not. Paint fills nothing, so a corner joint that has opened on a five-piece door still reads as a line under a new finish. That is a refacing job at $150 to $450 per linear foot rather than a painting one at $30 to $70.
How long is my kitchen out of use either way?
Days on both. A sprayed finish recoats at 16 hours, we ask you to keep the shelves light for 3 to 5 days, and it reaches full hardness at 30 days. Refacing waits on made-to-order doors that arrive in 1 to 2 weeks, then a fitting of a day or two.
Can I paint now and reface later?
Yes, and on a rental turnaround that is often the right order. Spraying at $2,000 to $6,500 buys you several years, and nothing about it makes a later reface at $5,000 to $13,000 harder or more expensive than it would have been.