Cabinet guide
Custom cabinets get priced by the linear foot, and the range is wide enough that two kitchens of the same size can come back twenty thousand dollars apart.
Nationally, full custom cabinetry runs about $500 to $1,200 per linear foot installed, which puts the cabinets alone in a standard kitchen somewhere between $12,000 and $20,000. Semi-custom sits well below that at roughly $150 to $650 per linear foot. Take a forty foot kitchen and look across every tier and the installed number lands anywhere from $4,000 to $32,000 depending on which tier you buy.
Those are national figures. We are not going to quote you a Louisville average we have not verified, and anyone who gives you one off the top of their head is guessing. What we can tell you is what moves your number inside that range, because that part is the same everywhere.
Spec, almost always. Wood species, door style and finish move the price more than the size of the room does, which surprises people who assume a bigger kitchen automatically means a bigger bill.
A painted finish costs more than a stain on the same box, because paint shows every joint and needs more prep to look right. Glass fronts, integrated lighting, shelves at varied heights and a proper crown detail each add real money. Stack four of those choices onto a mid-sized kitchen and it can price higher than a large plain one.
Choosing a simpler door. A shaker in a paint grade costs less than a raised panel in walnut and reads as current rather than dated.
Keeping the run straightforward also helps. Every corner, every change of height and every custom insert is more labour and more parts. If a section of the kitchen is going to sit behind a door most of the time, spec it plainly and put the budget where the room actually gets looked at.
It depends on the walls. Stock comes in three inch increments, so a wall that measures 142 inches gets filled with 138 inches of cabinet and a pair of filler strips, and those strips are floor space you paid to own and cannot use.
In a lot of Louisville that gap matters. Older housing in the Highlands, St. Matthews and parts of Anchorage has walls that are out of square and openings nothing standard covers, so stock leaves visible gaps and awkward scribes. Mid-1980s and newer stock in Middletown or Jeffersontown is squarer, and there the cheaper tiers fit properly and full custom is harder to justify.
The honest version is that custom earns its price when the room fights you. When the room is square and your layout works, semi-custom usually gets you there. If you want the full comparison of buying off a catalog against having cabinets built, we go through it in is it cheaper to buy cabinets or have them built.
Eight to sixteen weeks from sign-off to install for full custom, four to eight for semi-custom.
That is the part buyers are least prepared for. People budget for the money and not for the calendar, then find out in March that the kitchen they wanted for a summer party is a fortnight of demolition plus three months of waiting. If your date is fixed, work backwards from it before you settle on a tier.
Most of a kitchen quote is the run of base and wall cabinets, and the rest is the pieces people add once they see the drawing. An island is usually the biggest single line after the run itself, and kitchen island cabinetry is where storage and seating get decided together. Tall storage is the other one, since custom pantry cabinets built floor to ceiling hold what three wall units cannot.
If the number is higher than you expected and your boxes are sound, the cheaper path is worth pricing before you commit. Cabinet refacing in Louisville typically runs a third to a half of a full replacement, and we work through when that trade makes sense in should you reface or replace your kitchen cabinets.
For the full scope of what built-to-fit involves, see custom kitchen cabinets in Louisville. We work across the metro, including cabinets in St. Matthews, and every quote is broken down by stage so you can see what each part costs. Get a free written estimate and we will measure the room before putting a number on it.
Tell us the room and what you want out of it. You get a written estimate broken down by stage, free, with nothing to sign.
