Painted vs. Stained Kitchen Cabinets: Help for Deciding

One of the biggest decisions you will make when choosing cabinets is whether they should be painted or stained wood. The choice you make will have a huge bearing on how the cabinets will look and how they will hold up.

I went to two cabinet shops —the larger Canyon Creek Cabinet in Monroe, Washington, and the smaller O.B. Williams custom shop in Seattle — to get expert perspectives on the choices, which don’t end once you’ve settled the stain-versus-paint debate.

Painted Cabinets

When you choose painted cabinets, they will usually be assembled with materials that accept and hold paint well, such as poplar, veneered plywood or MDF. The key is having a nice, flat surface, free of knots and heavy grain patterns.


Some cabinet manufacturers perform all the finishing work on their cabinets in-house. At Canyon Creek, an elaborate system of spray booths, ovens and an overhead drying line make it possible to finish hundreds of cabinets a day. Cabinets leave the plant boxed and ready for installation.


Many custom cabinet shops don’t do any finishing, or else they finish with just a stain and a conversion varnish, which is a typical finish for cabinet interiors and for the finished surfaces of stain-grade cabinets. Thus, when painted cabinets are ordered from a custom shop, they often need to be sent to a separate finisher, who preps the cabinets for paint and sprays or brushes on the finish coats.

While you might assume that a painted cabinet would be the least expensive option, when you order one through a custom shop, the cost of the cabinet plus the painting is often more than a stain-grade cabinet finished with a clear coat.

Custom-painted cabinets are beautiful, but they are generally not the lower-priced option.


Paint types. The kind of paint used on your cabinets will impact how they look, how they wear, how much they chip and whether they are resistant to water. When purchasing a stock or semicustom cabinet, ask what kind of paint is used and if there are other options.

There are many paint options: oil- or water-based paints that may or may not include alkyd resins to help with curing, and even solid-body conversion varnishes. Having an extended conversation about the options and their impacts (off-gassing, longevity etc.) might be helpful.

Earlier this year I looked into using a zero-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint on some custom cabinets, but received less-than-positive feedback from the paint shop about using it. Using a low-VOC paint instead yielded good results. Paint companies are constantly working on formulating coatings with fewer VOCs, and as time goes on, they will only get better, so look at all of your options.


Paint application methods. One additional consideration is how the paint is applied. It can be sprayed or back-brushed. While a sprayed finish is the best way to get a consistent, smooth surface, it is also extremely difficult to touch up with a brush. If you think you may want to touch up the cabinets over time, make sure to get the paint formulation and details, and consider asking for a brushed finish so that your future touch-ups improve the situation instead of making it worse.

Keep in mind that even with these steps, the paint color may change subtly over time, so you may need to do a new color match for touch-ups.


Wood Finishes

When a stain-grade wood is selected for cabinets, it can mean wildly different things, depending upon the shop and what your desires are. It’s essential to understand what will be delivered before it’s ordered so that everyone has the same expectations.

Consider cherry cabinets, like the ones in this photo. They could be Shaker style, with consistent grain and color on the rails and stiles (the frames of the cabinet faces), and with a center panel that has a grain pattern nearly identical to all of the adjacent panels …


… or they could be flat doors and drawers with a nearly identical grain pattern from floor to ceiling, repeated every 6 to 12 inches or so (called slip matching), as shown here.


They could also be book matched, where the grain pattern is consecutive but flipped two at a time to mirror the grain, like pages in a book.

They could also be much less expensive and exponentially less planned out than any of these, with the potential for variations in color and grain.


Stain-grade-cabinet samples. The key with stain-grade cabinets is to understand what you are actually getting. Some larger companies, like Canyon Creek, let you order and approve a sample door face before they build an entire kitchen’s worth of cabinets. This gives clients the opportunity to see a finished door and know generally what will arrive and be installed in their kitchen — though there is still likely to be an acceptable range of color and grain variations.


A custom shop may be able to make a sample door front as well, or even provide a complete piece of the very thin wood veneer that will be applied to the plywood face, so that the wood grain and color can be approved ahead of time.


An added step, if applicable, would be to provide stain and finish samples. Clear finishes often come in glossy, semigloss and matte, which presents an additional decision. Some even have UV protection.


When our clients are making decisions about the finished surfaces of their cabinets, we urge them to make the decision with samples of their countertops and backsplashes in hand. Having all of those pieces in the same place, with their varying colors and textures, is the best way to make sure everything looks great together.

Tell us: Do you prefer painted or stained wood kitchen cabinets?

More: Choosing New Cabinets? Here’s What to Know Before You ShopLearn the Lingo of Kitchen Cabinet Door Styles

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