Change the door style, keep the kitchen

The door is most of what you see

Stand in a kitchen and look at it honestly. Most of what is in front of you is cabinet doors, in a single repeating shape, twenty or thirty times over.

Which means the door profile does more to set the character of the room than the color does, and it is the change people are least able to picture. A shaker door and a flat door look almost the same in a catalogue photograph of one door. Across a whole run, in your light, they are two different kitchens.

This puts the profile you are considering onto the run you already own.

Refacing, in a picture

What this shows is what refacing gives you.

Refacing keeps the cabinet boxes and replaces the doors and drawer fronts. It costs a fraction of a full replacement, it takes days rather than weeks, and if the boxes are sound it gets you most of the visual change. What it cannot do is fix a layout, add storage, or rescue carcasses that are failing.

So the useful question is not "should I reface", it is "does refacing get me the kitchen I actually want". A picture of your own run with the new profile on it answers that in about a minute, before anyone comes to quote.

The profiles worth comparing

Shaker. A flat recessed panel with a square frame. The most requested door in the category, and forgiving in almost every room.

Flat, or slab. No frame, no panel, nothing. Very quiet across a long run, and unforgiving about the quality of the finish, because there is nowhere for an edge to hide.

Beaded or bead-board. A textured panel. Warmer, busier, and it dates faster than the other two.

Glass fronted, on some uppers. Depth in a flat wall, at the cost of having to keep the inside of those cabinets tidy forever.

Run them one at a time on the same photo and put the results next to each other. Two profiles in one generation tells you nothing, because you cannot tell which one you are reacting to.

Shape first, color second

There is a right order here and it saves you work.

Settle the door profile first, then test colors on the shape you chose. Do it the other way round and every color has to be tested twice, because a color that reads as calm on a flat door reads as busy on a beaded one.

The profile is also the more expensive decision and the harder one to change your mind about. Paint can be redone in a weekend. Doors cannot.

Photographing the run

• Get a full run of units in the frame, uppers and lowers together.
• Daylight. The shadow line along a panel edge is exactly what you are trying to judge, and a ceiling bulb flattens it.
• Straight on rather than at a sharp angle, so the panel proportions are readable.
• Do not tidy too hard. You are judging the doors, and the counter can stay as it is.