How Much to Charge for Cabinet Painting, per Door and per Kitchen

October 21, 2026 · Pricing a service business

To work out how much to charge for cabinet painting, count the kitchen in door faces, time one coat on everything, add the prep hours, and price those hours at the floor rate your year needs, plus paint, sundries and driving. Then add your margin. In the illustrative example below, a kitchen of 22 doors, 8 drawer fronts and 14 cabinet boxes takes 71.72 hours, costs $5,106.75 at a $63.05 floor, and prices at $6,007.94 with a 15% margin: $85.22 per door face of work, or $200.26 per door or drawer front with the boxes spread in.

None of these are market prices. The income, costs, minutes per door and paint figures belong to one made-up owner-operator. Time a few doors yourself, read coverage off your own labels, and use your own figures.

The cabinet painting price formula

floor rate      = (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs)
                  / paid hours on site a year
painting hours  = minutes a coat on every piece / 60 x coats
job hours       = painting hours + prep hours
job cost        = job hours x floor rate + materials + driving
kitchen price   = job cost / (1 - margin)
per door face   = kitchen price / job size in door faces

Step 1: the hourly floor

The example painter wants $60,000 a year kept and books 32 hours a week on site, some of which cancel. Driving and estimates are real hours, but no customer pays for them directly.

Ignore the cancels and the answer is $59.90, short of the floor. Of the 2,016 hours worked in the year, 1,459.2 are paid, 72%, so the income works out to $29.76 for each hour actually worked. The same split is worked through in the freelance hourly rate calculator.

Step 2: count the kitchen in door faces

Doors are painted on both sides here, so 10 upper and 12 lower doors are 44 door faces. A cabinet box counts as one door face of work and an end panel as 1.5, weightings the example owner set by timing them against a door. Add 8 drawer fronts, 14 boxes and 3 end panels and the job is 70.5 door faces, with 30 pieces to take off, label and rehang.

Step 3: painting time

At 12 minutes per door face per coat:

3 coats, primer included, make 42.30 painting hours, or 7 painting days at 7 hours a day. Drying time between coats is not labor, but it adds days to the calendar; plan those from your product’s label.

Step 4: prep, the hours a per-door price forgets

Prep is 29.42 hours, so the job is 71.72 hours and 41% of them are prep. Follow the cleaner’s and the paint’s labels for surface preparation; this is time arithmetic, not a method.

Step 5: paint and primer

A 15 by 30 inch door face is 3.125 square feet, and the whole kitchen is 250.5 square feet a coat. The example’s label coverage is 350 square feet a gallon for topcoat and 300 for primer, and its own records say 30% of the paint never lands on the work. 2 topcoats need 2.04 gallons, so 3 to buy at $80.00; primer needs 1.19, so 2 at $50.00. Paint comes to $340.00, plus $120.00 of tape, plastic, sandpaper and labels: $460.00 of materials.

Step 6: how much to charge for kitchen cabinet painting

Margin here is profit as a share of the price, on top of a floor that already pays the owner and the business. Why a 15% margin is not a 15% markup on cost is covered in markup vs margin. The 40% deposit of $2,403.17 covers the $584.80 of materials and driving before the first door comes off.

How much to charge for painting cabinet doors

A price per door is the kitchen price divided up, not a separate number. In the example a door face of work is $85.22, so a door painted on both sides is $170.44. Quoting $200.26 per door or drawer front works only because the boxes and panels are spread into it; quote a per-door price without them and the boxes go unpaid.

The insight: price the prep, not just the painting

Build a price from painting minutes alone and the 42.30 painting hours, materials and driving give $3,825.66 at the same 15% margin, or $54.26 per door face. The prep hours are worth $1,854.93 at the floor before any margin. A painter who quotes from a timed door is quoting the part of the job that is easy to time and leaving out the 41% that is not.

Spraying or brushing: the cost on the same kitchen

The example times brushing and rolling at 14.10 hours a coat, and spraying at 8.00 hours a coat plus 8.00 hours of extra masking and 1.00 hour of gun cleanup each coat. Spraying takes 35.00 hours against 42.30, 7.30 fewer, but its own records lose 35% of the paint against 10%: $231.23 of paint against $167.00. With $55.00 of sprayer wear, tips and liners per job, spraying comes to $2,492.98 and brushing $2,834.02, a gap of $341.03. The kitchen price above uses the step 3 hours, which in this example are the brushing hours. Which finish each method gives is your call; the arithmetic only prices the time and the paint.

Did the job pay?

Say the kitchen was sold at $6,500 and took 78 hours, 6.28 more than estimated. After materials, driving and a 3% card fee it leaves $5,665.00, or $72.63 an hour against the $63.05 floor, so it clears. The price that pays exactly the floor on those hours was $5,729.79. Comparing actual hours with the estimate is how the minutes per door get better.

How these were calculated

The floor rate is income divided by (1 minus the tax set-aside share), plus business costs, divided by booked hours a week x (1 minus the cancel share) x working weeks. Painting hours are each piece’s count x its minutes a coat, summed, over 60, x coats. Prep is pieces x minutes per piece, plus boxes x minutes per box, plus masking, plus setup minutes a day x painting days. Gallons are square feet x coats / label coverage / (1 minus the share lost), bought in whole gallons. The price is (hours x floor + materials + trips x miles x vehicle cost a mile) / (1 minus the margin). Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that counts the doors run by run and sums the prep line by line, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs are illustrative, not market rates, measured painting speeds or product advice; handle every product as its label directs. None of this is financial, legal, tax or insurance advice.

To run this on your own year, kitchens and labels, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the floor rate to a check on whether a finished job paid.