What each one actually is
Refacing replaces the doors, the drawer fronts and the visible skin of the face frames, while keeping the cabinet boxes and the layout exactly where they are. Replacement takes everything out and puts new cabinetry in, which means the layout can change.
Both produce a kitchen that looks new from across the room. Only one of them changes where anything is, and only one of them addresses a box that has failed. That is the whole decision, and everything below is how to work out which situation you are in.
| Element | Refacing | Replacing |
|---|---|---|
| Doors and drawer fronts | New | New |
| Face frame appearance | Skinned in matching veneer or laminate | New |
| Cabinet boxes | Kept | New |
| Layout and cabinet sizes | Unchanged | Can change completely |
| Drawer boxes | Usually replaced as an option | New |
| Interior fittings | Can be added while boxes are open | Designed in |
| Countertop | Usually stays in place | Usually removed and replaced |
| Plumbing and electrical | Usually untouched | Often involved if anything moves |
| Kitchen usable during works | Largely yes | No |
The row that decides most projects is the layout row, and the row that overrides it is the cabinet boxes row.
The four tests
All four have to pass for refacing to be the right answer. They are listed in the order of how often they fail.
Test one: press the sink base floor
Open the cabinet under the kitchen sink, empty it, and press the floor firmly with your thumb near both back corners. If it gives at all, if the surface is stained, lifted or swollen, or if the edge banding has separated, the box is particleboard and it has been wet.
This is the most common cabinet failure in coastal Mobile County and it fails more often here than inland. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory recommends an in-service moisture content of 11 percent for interior woodwork in the damp, warm coastal area against 8 percent across most of the United States, and NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals for Mobile Regional Airport record 66.15 inches of annual precipitation. In that environment a weeping compression fitting does its damage quietly for months.
The federal figures are published in Table 13-2 of the USDA Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook chapter on moisture content, and the climate normals at NOAA's US Climate Normals, station Mobile Regional Airport.
Test two: sight along the shelves
Look along each shelf from one end, at eye level. A permanent curve means the shelf material is particleboard or melamine and the span was too long from the day it was built. Sag is proportional to span cubed, so a 48 inch shelf sags eight times as much as a 24 inch one under the same load per foot.
On its own this is not fatal, because shelves are cheap to replace and a refacing job can include new ones. What it tells you is the construction standard of everything else in the cabinet, and it is a strong hint about what the box is made of.
Test three: check the box corners and the drawers
Look at the back corners inside each base cabinet and at the bottom edges of the visible end panels. Swelling, delamination, or a softened, fuzzy edge all say the same thing: moisture has been into the core. Then pull a drawer right out and look at how the corners are joined. Dovetails or dowels are good news. Stapled butt joints that have started to open are a reliable indicator of the rest.
Test four: the layout question
This is the test nobody wants to run and the one that produces the most regret when it is skipped. Ask yourself what actually irritates you about the kitchen. Is it what the cabinets look like, or is it where they are?
If the answer is the dead corner nothing reaches, the missing pantry, the 9 inch filler, the fact that two people cannot work in the room, or the refrigerator door that hits the island, then refacing cannot help. Refacing works within the existing openings, so every one of those survives the project intact, and you will have spent four figures making a layout you dislike look newer.
- Sink base floor firm at both back corners, with no staining, lifting or swelling.
- No permanent sag in any shelf.
- Box corners and end panel bottoms clean, with no swelling or delamination.
- Drawer boxes dovetailed or doweled rather than stapled and separating.
- The layout is one you would choose again if you were starting from scratch.
- No plans to move the sink, the range or a wall in the next few years.
Six ticks and refacing is excellent value. Any cross, and read the next section before committing to anything.
The cost comparison, honestly
No publisher produces a reliable separate national figure for cabinet refacing, and we are not going to invent one to make a page look more complete. What we can do is set out the scope difference precisely and give you the published replacement figures to measure against.
Refacing buys doors, drawer fronts, hinges, face frame veneer or laminate, preparation and labour. It does not buy carcasses, carcass installation, countertop removal and refitting, or plumbing and electrical work. Replacement at HomeAdvisor's national installed range is $500 to $1,200 per linear foot for custom, $150 to $650 for semi-custom and $100 to $300 for stock, updated 17 June 2026. Thumbtack's 8 July 2026 figures are $500 to $1,400 and up, $150 to $900 and up, and $75 to $400 and up respectively.
For the cheapest route of all, Thumbtack's national average for repainting existing cabinets is $1,200 to $7,000, also updated 8 July 2026. That gives you the floor of the range and a sense of the labour content in any process that keeps the boxes.
| Route | What changes | Layout can change? | Published figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Painting | Colour and sheen only | No | $1,200 to $7,000 national average, Thumbtack 8 Jul 2026 |
| New doors and fronts | Fronts only, frames kept | No | No reliable published figure |
| Refacing | Fronts plus face frame surface | No | No reliable published figure |
| Replacing | Everything | Yes | $500 to $1,200 per linear ft installed, custom, HomeAdvisor 17 Jun 2026 |
We do not print invented figures for the two middle routes. What is reliably true is the ordering, and that the gap between the third and fourth rows is the largest step.
Full detail on every published figure, with publisher and date, is in the cost guide.
Disruption, which is often the real deciding factor
Refacing leaves the boxes, the countertop, the sink and the appliances in place. There is no demolition, no countertop template and no plumbing disconnection, which means the kitchen stays broadly usable throughout and the work is measured in days rather than weeks.
Replacement takes the kitchen out of action. Demolition, installation, countertop templating and then countertop fitting all have to happen in sequence, and the countertop cannot be templated until the cabinets are installed and levelled. That sequencing is set out in the timeline guide.
For a household that cannot easily manage several weeks without a kitchen, and for a coastal rental with a booking calendar, that difference is frequently worth more than the money.
Getting most of the benefit either way
If the boxes pass and you reface, this is the cheapest moment in the kitchen's life to fix the interiors, because every door is off and every box is accessible.
- Roll-out shelves in every base cabinet deeper than about 18 inches.
- New dovetailed drawer boxes on full extension undermount slides, replacing stapled boxes.
- A pull-out waste unit beside the sink, the single most used fitting in any kitchen.
- A corner mechanism in any blind corner, which is where the dead volume is.
- Soft close hinges throughout, which is hardware rather than a door upgrade.
- Drilling for adjustable shelving where the existing shelves are fixed.
- Under-cabinet lighting, since the undersides are accessible with the doors off.
The fittings guide sorts which of those get used three years later and which quietly do not.
The two middle options people forget
Refacing and replacing are not the only choices, and two intermediate routes suit specific situations well.
New doors and drawer fronts only replaces the fronts without skinning the face frames. It suits a kitchen where the frames are sound and either already match the new doors or are going to be painted. It costs less than refacing because there is no veneer work.
Painting and refinishing keeps everything and changes the colour. It is the cheapest route by a distance and the one most often done badly, because preparation is most of the work and it is invisible when it is skipped.
What the age of the kitchen tells you
Construction standards changed over time, so the decade a kitchen was built is a reasonable first guess at what you will find when you run the four tests. It is only a guess, and the sink base test overrides it in every case.
| Era | What is usually found | Likely answer |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-1960 | Site-built cabinets, often solid wood, small closed kitchens | Layout is usually the problem, so replacement |
| 1960s and 1970s | Factory boxes, particleboard common, dated layouts | Check the sink base; layout often decides it |
| 1980s and 1990s | Solid oak face frames, mixed box quality, open-plan layouts | Frequently the best refacing candidates in the region |
| 2000s | Better boxes, often plywood, layouts that still work | Refacing or new doors, unless water has been in |
| 2010 onward | Sound boxes, current layouts | Usually painting or new fronts rather than either |
A pattern rather than a rule. Particleboard sink bases appear across every era from the 1960s onward, which is why the first test is physical rather than historical.
In practice the 1980s and 1990s kitchens across Saraland, Daphne and Spanish Fort are the strongest refacing candidates in this market, because that era combined solid oak face frames with layouts that are already open enough to live with. The doors have dated badly and the frames have not.
The four mistakes people make with this decision
- Deciding on price before checking the boxes. The condition of the sink base is not a budget question, and refacing a failed cabinet costs more than replacing it eventually will.
- Refacing a layout they dislike. Every existing frustration survives the project intact, and the money is spent making it look newer.
- Assuming refacing cannot improve function. It can, substantially, through roll-outs, new drawer boxes, a corner mechanism and soft close, all fitted while the boxes are open.
- Getting a refacing quote and a replacement quote from two different firms and comparing the numbers rather than the scopes. They are answering different questions, and the cheaper number is not automatically the better decision.
The honest summary
Refacing is right when the boxes are sound, the layout works, and what you want is a different look plus better hardware and interiors. It is the wrong answer when the sink base has been wet, when the shelves sag, when the drawer boxes are failing, or when the layout is the actual problem. In coastal Mobile County, the sink base decides it more often than anything else on the list, and it is the test you can run before anybody visits.
If the answer is refacing, the refacing page sets out the process. If it is replacement, start at custom cabinets or kitchen cabinets. Either way the assessment is free, and it starts at contact.