Can you paint kitchen cupboards yourself?

Which cupboards can actually be painted?

More than people assume. Dulux lists its Renovation Range Primer for ceramic and porcelain tiles, vinyl, laminate and plastic-wrapped cabinet doors, drawers and benchtops, along with PVC and vacuum-formed surfaces. That covers the flat-fronted kitchens in most houses built or updated in the last forty years.

What paint will not fix is damage. A door that has swollen at the bottom from a leaking dishwasher, or one where the wrap has lifted and bubbled away from the board underneath, is a door to replace. Paint sits on top of the problem and the problem keeps moving.

One limit worth noting before you start: the whole system is interior only.

Why cleaning matters more in a kitchen than anywhere else

Every kitchen has a fine film of cooking grease on it, heaviest around the cooktop and the bin drawer, and it is invisible until paint refuses to stick to it. Dulux does not hedge on this: all grease and dirt contamination must be removed, or the paint will not adhere and will peel or flake off.

Bunnings uses sugar soap wipes over the laminate, then a damp cloth twice to take off the residue, and that is a sensible routine. Do the edges and the inside faces of the doors as well, not just the fronts you can see.

Getting the doors off and ready

Take every door and drawer front off. Painting them hanging is how you get runs down the face and paint in the hinges, and it makes the frames harder to reach rather than easier.

Number the backs and bag the hinges and screws for each one as you go, because cabinet doors are rarely as identical as they look. If new handles have a different screw spacing, fill the old holes now and let the filler harden fully before sanding.

Bunnings then sands the surfaces with 400 grit and wipes down with a microfibre cloth. The sanding is not there to take the shine off through to the board, only to give the primer a key. With the primer doing the adhesion work, heavy sanding on a wrapped door does more harm than good.

The drying times that decide your week

This is where most people misjudge the job. The coats themselves take minutes; the waiting takes days. These are the figures Dulux publishes for its cabinet system.

• Primer: two parts mixed together, with a pot life of 3 days once the additive goes in.
• Primer: one coat only, touch dry in 30 minutes, recoat in 4 hours.
• Topcoat: 12 square metres a litre, and the instruction is not to stretch it past that.
• Topcoat: touch dry in 1 hour, recoat in 8 hours.
• At least two topcoats, and Dulux notes some colours need more, especially over a dark colour.
• Primer first, always: Dulux says its Renovation Range Primer must be applied before the topcoat, or the finish will peel and flake.

Where kitchen cupboard jobs come unstuck

Almost every disappointing result traces back to one of a handful of things, and all of them are avoidable.

• Coats laid on thick to save time, which run on a vertical door and stay soft for weeks.
• Rehanging too early. Touch dry is not hard, and a door that goes back on its hinges the same evening will print the moment it closes.
• Doors left to dry in a dusty garage. Sweep it out and let it settle before you start, or you will be sanding grit out of the finish.
• Painting the frames as an afterthought, so the boxes and the doors never quite match.
• Handles refitted before the paint has hardened, which chips the holes on the first tighten.

Keeping the kitchen usable while you do it

Set up a bench in the garage or carport with the doors laid flat on blocks, and do the frames in the kitchen itself. Flat doors are far less likely to run, and you can do both faces on alternate days without losing time.

With eight hours between topcoats, one coat a day is the realistic pace, so plan on the kitchen being open-fronted for most of a week. Do the drawer fronts last so the drawers stay usable, and leave the handles off until the final coat has had at least a night to harden.

When is it worth handing over?

A brushed and rolled finish, done carefully, looks good from a metre away and always looks hand-painted up close. If what you want is the flat, even surface of a factory door, that comes from spraying, and spraying cabinet doors properly means a dust-free space, masking and gear that is not worth buying for one kitchen.

It is also worth pricing new doors from a cabinet maker before you commit a fortnight of evenings, especially if the carcasses are sound and only the fronts are dated. Painting is the better answer for a kitchen you like the shape of; it is not a way to turn a broken kitchen into a new one.

• You want a sprayed, factory-flat finish.
• There are a lot of doors, or the kitchen has to stay working.
• The benchtops are part of the plan, which is a different product and a different risk.
• The doors are damaged rather than dated.

Asking us about it

Cupboards sit at the edge of house painting, so ask us directly and we will tell you whether it is a job for us or one for a cabinet sprayer. If the walls, ceilings and trims are the real problem, that is a straightforward interior repaint and we quote it in writing. While you are choosing finishes, our guides on sheen room by room and on painting over old oil-based trims cover the rest of the kitchen.

Quick questions

Sources

What this guide relies on. Product advice changes, so check the maker's current instructions for the exact paint you're using.

1. Renovation Range Primer: surfaces, coats and recoat time — Dulux
2. Renovation Range Cabinet Doors Satin: spread rate and drying times — Dulux
3. How to paint laminate kitchen cabinetry — Bunnings Warehouse