Painting Kitchen Cabinets: Is It Worth the Trouble?

I love HGTV. I think they do a great job of showing what can be done inside a home with a little imagination and hard work. One of their favorite techniques to update a kitchen on a budget is painting the kitchen cabinets. There is a time and place where it makes sense, but it’s not as durable or simple as you might think.

Is it worth it to paint your cabinets?

When does painting the kitchen cabinets make sense?

If you plan on staying in your home less than 3-5 years, it might be a good solution.

Even if you have the work professionally done and the cabinets are properly sanded, primed and several thin coats of a premium grade cabinet paint are applied, you’re still looking at a useful life of about 5 years – depending on how much wear and tear your kitchen receives.

If you’re going for a “shabby chic” look

If you paint the cabinets a base color, topcoat with a different color and sand and scrape the corners and edges to allow the base color to show through, you get achieve a worn, vintage . The advantage to this is when you get the inevitable scrapes and dings, it just looks better.

In a lake house or weekend cottage

The kitchen in a weekend getaway home doesn’t see the daily use that your main home does, so painted cabinets will hold up a lot longer than they will in your main home.

When is painting kitchen cabinets a bad idea?

If you’re a neat freak

It doesn’t matter if the paint can says it’s scrubbable. The kitchen cabinets get more use than any other woodwork in the house. Weekly wiping, cleaning and scrubbing will take a toll on repainted cabinets.

If you plan on being in your home more than a few years.

With a longer time frame, painting the cabinets is a chore you’ll have to repeat again and again.

Painting Cabinets: Factory finished vs. repainted.

After all this discussion about the pitfalls of painted cabinets, does the same hold true for factory-finished painted cabinets? In a word – no. The process that is used in a state-of-the-art cabinet manufacturing facility can’t be duplicated in a local shop or on site. One of my favorite cabinet component suppliers, Walzcraft Industries in LaCrosse, WI achieves their solid-color finish with a catalyzed coating with an integral pigment applied on a finishing line (think 2-part epoxy type mixes) and UV cured to a hardness and abrasion resistance that just can’t be done with a paint that cures by evaporation .

So if you’re putting the house on the market, have a weekend cottage or like that “shabby chic” look – painting the kitchen cabinets might be a good idea. But if you like neat and clean and plan on staying in your home for awhile, put down the paint brush.