The Simple Swap You Need To Upgrade Wood Cabinets Without Using Paint

Painting your kitchen cabinets might seem like an inexpensive way to upgrade the room, but it's a time-consuming task to get professional-quality results. Even with tools that make painting your kitchen cabinets much easier, the project still takes time and energy. Professional crews often take three to five days to complete the job, and you could spend up to two hours per door or drawer on top of the time it takes to paint the cabinet boxes. An alternative to refresh the cabinets is to install new door fronts.

Swapping out the doors is more cost effective than getting all new cabinets. On average, homeowners spend $6,385 for new cabinets. You can replace just the cabinet doors for an average of $2,100. It's also an opportunity to modernize an outdated kitchen or make it more your style. Even with the perfect shade of paint, outdated cathedral-style cabinet fronts make your kitchen look old. Plus, if you're DIYing the update, changing the doors is easier than removing all of the cabinets and getting the installation of new cabinets just right.

This is how it works. You leave the bases of your cabinets in place. The old doors come off and you put new ones in their place. To remove the old doors, detach the hinges and unscrew any hardware. Your new doors should be the same size. You may be able to reuse your existing hinges, or you can replace them if you want to upgrade your hardware.

Choosing the right kitchen cabinet style for your space depends on your design preferences and current kitchen features. You may also choose to mix and match cabinet door styles. To get the right color, match your doors to the existing finish on the cabinet boxes or restain the boxes. Another option is to choose a complementary or contrasting color. 

Shaker cabinet doors are popular and fit most styles of kitchens. They feature four straight wood pieces forming a frame around a flat panel. If you're going for a contemporary or midcentury modern look, slab cabinet doors use a single flat panel, showing one smooth surface. Glass-front doors offer a timeless kitchen cabinet upgrade and come with clear, frosted, textured, or patterned glass. For a cottagecore kitchen, beadboard doors feature vertically grooved panels in the center with an outer frame.

Mixing and matching cabinet doors works best when you maintain a common characteristic, such as the style or color, across all doors. You usually get the best results when you only choose two different types of doors. So, you might use all shaker-style doors but choose two different colors for them. One common mix-and-match option is to install glass fronts for some doors and solid fronts for others, but you can get more creative. For example, use some shaker doors and some slab doors, have painted doors on lower cabinets and wood tones on upper, or pick a common frame with a mix of grooved and flat panels.