How much to charge for cabinet painting
Cabinet work is priced per door and drawer front, not per square foot — and the prep is most of the labour, because a finish that fails on kitchen cabinets fails visibly and daily.
Below: the published wage for this work, why your billing rate has to be well above it, how this job is actually priced, and what moves the number. Put your own rate into the generator and you get a real itemized estimate built on it.
Generate this estimate now
Describe the job in plain words. No email needed to see your first estimate — about fifteen seconds for a small job, a little longer for a big one.
What you get — see the format first
A complete estimate you can send to the customer, built from the rate you enter:
| Description | Qty | Unit | Unit price | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labor — itemized by task | hrs | hour | your rate | — |
| Materials — with your markup applied | qty | ea / sq ft | cost + markup | — |
| Permits, disposal, access | — | — | — | — |
Plus a plain-English scope summary, assumptions (what had to be guessed), exclusions (what you are not doing — the section that prevents most change-order arguments), and a validity period. Printable, or send the link.
Every figure comes from the rate and markup you supply. We never fill in a market price for you.
How cabinet painting is priced
The standard unit is the door plus the drawer front, with the boxes and face frames priced separately since they are brushed or sprayed in place. Degreasing, sanding and priming are the bulk of the hours and belong in the estimate explicitly. Whether doors are sprayed off-site in a controlled space or finished on-site changes both the price and the quality, and customers should be told which they are buying.
What the labor actually costs
$23.75/hour — US median wage for painters, construction and maintenance, May 2025 ($49,400/year).
That is a wage, not your billing rate. It excludes payroll burden, insurance, the hours you spend driving and quoting, overhead and profit. Billing at or near it means working the job for free once those land — which is where underpricing starts. What your multiplier should be depends on your business, so put the rate you actually bill into the generator and every line prices from your number.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — national median, May 2025. Wages vary widely by metro.
What moves the number
- Door and drawer-front count — the single strongest predictor of labour
- Existing finish: raw wood, factory conversion varnish and laminate all behave differently
- Degreasing, which around a cooktop is real work before any sanding starts
- Spray off-site versus brush and roll on-site, and where the doors go to dry
- Number of coats and cure time; cabinets need a hard finish, not just a dry one
- Removal, labelling and rehanging of doors, plus new hardware or filled hinge holes
- Whether the kitchen must stay usable during the work
How cabinet painting gets underpriced
- Quoting by linear foot of cabinetry instead of counting doors and drawers
- Skipping degreasing on a kitchen and having the finish fail at the handles
- Treating removal, labelling and rehanging as free
- Promising a hard cured finish on a schedule the product cannot meet
- Not pricing the inside of the boxes separately when the customer expected it
Related guides
How much to charge
interior painting · exterior house painting · deck staining · bathroom remodel · window cleaning
Estimate templates by trade
painting · bathroom remodel · kitchen remodel · HVAC · plumbing · electrical · roofing · landscaping
How to estimate
How to write a contractor estimate · Estimate vs quote vs bid — and which one you should send · What to include in a contractor estimate · How to price a job as a contractor · Should you charge for estimates? · How to follow up on an estimate · How to handle change orders · Estimate vs invoice: what's the difference? · How to raise your prices as a contractor