Painted vs. Stained Kitchen Cabinets

This is the first finish decision in most kitchens and the one people change their minds about most. It is partly taste. It is also a choice between two surfaces that age in different ways, and knowing how each one wears makes the decision easier to live with.

What is different underneath

Paint is an opaque film that sits on the surface and hides the material below. Stain is a transparent color that soaks into the wood, with a clear protective topcoat over it. Everything else follows from that. With paint you are looking at the coating, so any break in the coating shows. With stain you are looking at the wood through the coating, so the wood's own variation is part of the look and small damage blends in.

Honest pros and cons

Why painted doors show lines at the joints

The overview of kitchen cabinets mentions this; here is the mechanism. The USDA Wood Handbook explains that wood swells as it gains moisture and shrinks as it loses it. It does so almost entirely across the grain and hardly at all along it. In a five-piece door the stiles run vertically and the rails horizontally, so at each corner a piece that is moving across its width meets a piece that is not moving in that direction. The paint film bridging the joint is rigid, and a fine line appears.

What reduces it:

• An MDF center panel in a wood frame removes the largest moving part.
• A one-piece MDF door, routed to look like a Shaker or raised-panel door, has no joints at all and is the most stable painted door. Its machined inner corners are slightly rounded where a jointed door's are sharp.
• Square frame joints show less than mitered ones.
• Steady indoor humidity through the year limits the movement.

Door constructions are compared in cabinet door styles compared.

The wood matters differently for each

For paint you want a smooth, close-grained base, and color is irrelevant: maple, birch, yellow-poplar or MDF. For stain you are choosing the wood itself. Oak and hickory give strong grain, cherry and walnut give color, alder gives a quiet warm tone at a lower cost. Maple and cherry can blotch under dark stain. The species are set out one by one in cabinet wood species compared.

This also explains the cost picture. Paint needs more finishing labor, and stain needs better-looking lumber. In most cabinet lines the painted version of a door costs more than the stained version in a standard species, and a stained door in a premium species or cut can cost more than either.

Factory finish or painted on site

New cabinets are finished in a factory or shop with sprayed coatings that are cured hard before the cabinets ship. That is true of both paint and stain. Paint applied in your kitchen with a brush, roller or portable sprayer is a softer coating that cures slowly, and it is the realistic option only when you are repainting cabinets you already own. The coatings themselves are compared in cabinet finishes explained.

If you are thinking of painting existing cabinets, our article on whether kitchen cabinets can be repainted covers which materials take paint. In a house built before 1978, sanding old painted cabinets falls under the lead paint rules.

Using both in one kitchen

You do not have to choose one. The most common pairings:

• Painted perimeter, stained island. The island takes the most kicks, stools and bags, and stain hides that wear. It also gives the room one warm element.
• Stained base cabinets, painted uppers. Wear-prone lowers get the forgiving finish, and lighter uppers keep the room bright.
• Painted kitchen with stained accents: a hood surround, floating shelves or a single hutch section in wood.

Keep to one paint color and one wood tone, and repeat the wood somewhere else in the room so it looks intended. The rules for combining colors are in two-tone kitchens, and color families are covered in kitchen cabinet colors.

What to check before you decide

• See a full sample door in each finish, and look at its joints and edges closely.
• For paint, ask whether the center panel is MDF and whether the line offers a one-piece door.
• Read the warranty wording on joint lines and color change.
• Ask for a touch-up kit with the order, and ask how touch-ups are meant to be done.
• For stain, ask how much color variation between doors the line allows and whether you can see several doors together.
• Ask whether matching paint or stain will be available later for an added cabinet or a replacement door.

Who should choose which

• Choose paint if you want a specific color or a white kitchen, you like a crisp uniform look, and you accept that the busiest doors will show wear and need the odd touch-up.
• Choose stain if you want the least visible wear, you have children or large dogs, you like wood, or the rest of the house has wood trim and floors you want the kitchen to relate to.
• Choose both if you want color without giving up a forgiving surface where the kitchen takes the most abuse.
• If joint lines would bother you and you want paint, specify one-piece MDF doors or a slab door.

Where to go next

Once you know the direction, the next decisions are the exact color and the sheen. JDI Construction reviews finish samples with you during design, and nothing is ordered until the selections are final. To start, visit our Vancouver kitchen remodeling page.