New kitchen cabinets are usually the single largest line item in a remodel, often eating 30–40% of the total budget. Yet ask three homeowners what they paid and you'll hear three wildly different numbers — because "cabinets" can mean anything from flat-pack boxes to hand-built inset hardwood. The honest answer is that price depends on three variables: what the boxes and doors are made of, what style you choose, and how many linear feet your kitchen needs. Below is a plain-English breakdown of each, plus the hidden costs most estimates miss. When you're ready for real numbers on your layout, request a quote.
The Three Numbers That Drive Cabinet Pricing
Before comparing brands, understand how cabinets are quoted. Most suppliers express kitchen cabinet cost by linear foot (a running foot of wall or base cabinetry) or per cabinet box. A "10x10 kitchen" — an industry benchmark of roughly 20 linear feet of combined base and wall cabinets — is the standard yardstick used to compare apples to apples, which is why 10x10 kitchen cabinet cost shows up in almost every quote you'll collect.
Three factors move that number more than anything else:
- Box construction — particleboard vs. plywood vs. solid wood frames
- Door material and finish — thermofoil, MDF paint-grade, veneer, or solid hardwood
- Order type — stock, semi-custom, or full custom
Everything else (crown molding, soft-close hardware, organizers) adds on top. And if you're weighing stock vs semi-custom cabinets, know that the jump usually buys you sizing flexibility and finish options rather than better construction on its own.
Cost by Material
Particleboard and Thermofoil — Budget Tier
Expect roughly $70–$150 per linear foot. These are the ready-to-assemble boxes you find at big-box stores. They work in rentals, laundry rooms, or garages, but thermofoil can peel near heat sources and particleboard swells if water gets in.
MDF Paint-Grade Doors — Value Tier
Roughly $150–$300 per linear foot. MDF is dimensionally stable and takes paint beautifully with no wood grain telegraphing through — which is why most painted Shaker doors today are MDF, not solid maple. This is the sweet spot for a clean, durable painted kitchen.
Plywood Box with Solid Wood Frames — Mid to Upper Tier
Roughly $250–$500 per linear foot. A 1/2" or 3/4" plywood box with solid maple, oak, or birch face frames is the quality standard most designers recommend. It holds screws better, resists moisture, and survives being moved during a remodel. In any plywood vs particleboard cabinets comparison, this durability gap — not the door — is what you're actually paying for.
Solid Hardwood and Exotic Veneers — Premium Tier
$500–$1,200+ per linear foot. Walnut, white oak rift-cut veneer, and hand-applied finishes live here, usually paired with custom fabrication.
Read together, these four tiers explain most of the spread in the cost of kitchen cabinets per linear foot from one showroom to the next.
Cost by Style
Door style affects labor more than material. A general hierarchy, cheapest to priciest:
- Slab / flat-panel: the least expensive to produce; popular in modern and European kitchens.
- Shaker: five pieces instead of one, so slightly more; still the most-requested style in North America and reasonably priced due to volume.
- Raised panel: more machining and more surface area to finish; add 10–20%.
- Inset: doors sit flush inside the frame, demanding tight tolerances and precise installation. The inset cabinet door price typically runs 15–30% over a comparable overlay door.
- Glass-front, mullion, or curved fronts: custom glass and curved rails can double the cost of an individual door.
Specialty furniture shapes — a curved demilune cabinet used as a hall piece, for example — are priced as custom millwork rather than by linear foot, because the radius work can't be batch-produced.
Cost by Kitchen Size
Using a plywood-box, painted Shaker cabinet as the baseline:
| Kitchen size | Approx. linear feet | Typical cabinet-only range | |---|---|---| | Small (galley / 10x10) | 18–22 | $4,000–$9,000 | | Medium (L-shape, ~150 sq ft) | 25–30 | $7,000–$15,000 | | Large (U-shape + island, 200+ sq ft) | 35–45 | $12,000–$30,000+ |
Those middle rows are the most common painted Shaker cabinet cost outcomes we see in real quotes. Islands are the usual budget surprise: a single island with seating overhang, panel ends, and a trash pullout can add $2,000–$6,000 by itself.
The Costs People Forget
- Installation: commonly 25–50% of the cabinet price, more for inset or heavily modified layouts.
- Hardware: knobs and pulls at $4–$25 each add up fast across 40 openings.
- Fillers, panels, and molding: the finishing pieces that make cabinets look built-in, not bolted-on.
- Surfaces: cabinets and counters are bought together for a reason — templating happens after install, and material choice affects base cabinet reinforcement. Browse countertops while you're pricing boxes.
- Demo, disposal, plumbing and electrical relocation.
"Cabinet" Searches That Aren't Kitchen Cabinets
Because "cabinet" is such a broad word, shoppers often land on kitchen pages while researching something else entirely. Quick disambiguation so you can refine your search:
- Besta cabinet — IKEA's modular media and storage system, not kitchen cabinetry.
- Victrola cabinet — an antique phonograph console; value depends on the machine inside.
- Janome cabinet — a sewing machine cabinet with a drop-down lift platform.
- Jofran cabinet and Alba cabinet — furniture and office-storage brands, respectively.
- AC Delco cabinet — branded garage and tool storage.
- Cabinet tolex and cabinet IR — guitar world terms: tolex is the vinyl covering on a speaker cabinet, and an IR (impulse response) is a digital profile of that cabinet's sound.
- IO cabinet — typically an input/output or network equipment enclosure.
- Cabinet SA — in French-speaking markets, cabinet means a professional firm (a cabinet d'avocats), often followed by a company designation.
- Citi Prestige, Citi M&A, Citi M&A WSO, and Citi TotalComp — these are Citigroup topics: the Prestige credit card, investment-banking mergers-and-acquisitions careers (frequently discussed on the Wall Street Oasis forums), and Citi's employee total-compensation portal. Similar spelling, entirely different industry from kitchen cabinetry.
How to Keep the Budget Under Control
- Keep the plumbing where it is. Moving a sink wall is one of the fastest ways to blow a budget.
- Mix tiers. Splurge on perimeter cabinets and specify a simpler door on the island, or vice versa.
- Skip the extras you won't use. Spice pullouts and appliance garages are lovely, but each is a custom-priced add-on.
- Order door samples first. Seeing a finish in your own light prevents expensive second-guessing after delivery.
- Measure honestly. A rough linear-foot count gets you a usable ballpark in minutes.
The Bottom Line
For most homeowners, a realistic cabinet-only budget lands between $7,000 and $15,000 for a mid-size kitchen with plywood boxes and painted Shaker doors, with installation and countertops on top. Going to stock RTA can cut that in half; going full custom inset hardwood can triple it. The smartest move is to settle on material and door style first, then let your linear footage do the math — that's how you turn a vague kitchen cabinet cost estimate into a number you can actually plan around. When you're ready to compare options against your actual measurements, start at citicabinet and work from a real layout rather than a national average.