Painting Kitchen Cabinets
We’ve all stumbled across photos on the internet of beautiful kitchens, with giant marble countertops and beautiful vintage carpentry throughout. Updating your kitchen can be a daunting task, but one of the quickest, easiest and most practical changes can be to simply repaint your kitchen cabinets to add some subtle elegance to the hub of your home.
We’ve already covered painting walls, which you can find here. Remember we always recommend using a hardwearing eggshell or diamond matt, it will stand the test of time in a cooking environment while also been scrub-able, meaning you can easily give it a wipe and clean.
Transforming your kitchen cabinets is as simple as Pick, Prep & Paint.
Kit needed:
- Dust Sheet
- Foam Roller Kit
- Primer
- Masking tape
- Filler
- Sanding paper
- Sugar Soap or Wipes
- Paint (this is up to you, but satinwood is an ideal product.)
Picking the colour & paint
This is probably the hardest part, and 100% down to your personal choice. Luckily here at Dulux Decorator Centre, we offer a few different services that can make this part a bit easier.
- We offer a colour matching service, simply bring in a suitable colour on a surface that we’re able to scan and we can match it to the nearest colour Dulux Trade version. (find your local store)
- We also offer the wonderful new Colour Sensor, meaning you can scan the colours you’d like to consider in the comfort of your own home, and view how they may look in a room setting on the app. (you don’t need the sensor to browse colours on the app, so feel free to use this tool to browse some of our colour collections.)
- You can browse all our colours here. This is a full list of all our colour cards, sectioned by colour and allows you to view all shades, like a traditional colour card. Personally, we think our Heritage colour collection is a wonderful starting point, as it combines classic luxury colours that are available in professional quality finishes.
For paint, we could recommend Dulux Trade Quick Dry Satinwood, it’s a water-based satin finish formulation that is tough, hardwearing and dirt resistant. Does not require an undercoat except where a strong colour change is required. Perfect for interior woods & furniture.
If your cabinets get a lot of traffic and are prone to scuffs and marks, using our Dulux Trade Diamond Satinwood is a smart choice, similar in specs to our normal Satinwood but is better in a high traffic environment and provides a better finish for longer.
If you are going over a dark colour to a light colour, then a coat of Dulux Trade Quick Dry Undercoat may be required.
Prep & Painting
- Put down a dust sheet to allow you to place the cabinets on for painting while protecting your floor or carpet. You may also want to lean them against something sturdy so you can paint both sides in one go.
- Remove the cabinet doors, hinges and doorknobs or cover them with masking tape. It will allow you to paint the entirety of the cupboards and provide a much more consistent finish.
- Wash the cabinets and doors with sugar soap to remove any grease or dirt, something that is sure to have coated to your cupboards in an environment like a kitchen. You can also use wipes, such as these Big Wipes if you find it more convenient.
- Once dry, we recommend using filling in any cracks or dents that may have marked your cabinets, this will allow a smooth flat finish and really help make the cabinets look as good as new. We recommend Polycell Multi Purpose Polyfilla as it’s great for filling in gaps on kitchen cabinets and cupboards as it's easy to sand, dries white, and it won't shrink or crack.
- Apply a wood or melamine primer depending on the surface, especially if your doors have a dark colour currently, or an oak/texture finish which could potentially show through the paint. We have a whole range of primers, but for wood, we would recommend Dulux Trade Quick Dry Undercoat.
- Apply the first coat of your paint, making sure to take your time on cutting in and getting a smooth consistent finish across the cabinet and the cabinet doors. You might want to use a small roller on doors for a smooth finish, we have a great mini roller kit that is ideal for the task. After this coat has dried, use fine sandpaper to go over any bobbles raises in the paint, this will allow a better final coat.
- Avoid using a synthetic brush for this, as it could leave brush marks, always try to stick to a roller or natural brush in these conditions.)
After applying your second coat, and making sure it’s completely dry. You can remove the masking tapes and put on the handles/doorknobs, and fix them back to the cabinets.