How do I paint kitchen cupboards so it lasts?

Painted kitchen cupboards fail in a predictable place — the door edges and around the handles, where hands and steam meet them daily. Everything here is aimed at that.

Safety

What you'll need

• Sugar soap or a proper degreaser
• Abrasive pads or 180 to 240 grit paper
• Adhesion primer suited to the door material
• Cupboard or trim paint, and a short-pile foam roller
• Screwdriver, labels, masking tape

Step by step

1. Find out what the doors are made of.Solid timber, veneered MDF, foil-wrapped MDF or laminate. Foil-wrapped and laminate are non-porous and need a proper adhesion primer; timber is far more forgiving. This decides the primer.
2. Check for lifting foil first.If a foil-wrapped door is already peeling at an edge or corner, paint will not stick it back. That door needs replacing or the foil removing entirely, and painting over it wastes the work.
3. Take the doors off and label everything.Number each door and its hinge position with masking tape inside the carcass. Painting doors flat gives a far better finish than painting them hanging, and reassembly is hopeless without labels.
4. Remove handles rather than masking them.Paint edges round a masked handle look exactly like paint edges round a masked handle. Take them off — it takes ten minutes and it is visible for years.
5. Degrease properly, twice.Kitchen doors carry years of cooking grease, especially above the hob and around handles. Sugar soap, rinse with clean water, let it dry. This is where most failures start.
6. Abrade every surface until the sheen has gone.180 to 240 grit or an abrasive pad. You are creating a key, not removing the finish. Any patch left shiny is exactly where the paint will lift first.
7. Degrease again after sanding.Methylated spirit on a lint-free cloth to remove dust and any grease the sanding smeared around. Water leaves residue.
8. Fill and sand any damage.Chips at edges, screw holes being moved. Two thin coats of filler, sanded flush, and prime the filled areas so they do not show through as dull patches.
9. Use the right primer for the surface.An adhesion or bonding primer for laminate and foil; a standard wood primer is fine on bare timber. This is not the place for a general-purpose primer on a slick surface.
10. Apply thin coats with a foam roller.A short-pile foam roller for the flats and a good brush for detail and mouldings. Two or three thin coats rather than one thick one — thick coats stay soft and mark for weeks.
11. Lay off in one direction.Finish each panel with light strokes in the same direction so the texture is consistent. On a shaker door, do the mouldings first and the flats last.
12. Sand lightly between coats.A very light pass with fine paper and a wipe down. It removes dust nibs and is most of the difference between a home job and a professional one.
13. Allow the full cure, not just the drying time.Touch dry in hours, fully hard in one to three weeks depending on the product. Rehanging is fine after a couple of days; treating them roughly before they cure is what causes early chips.
14. Do the carcasses and the visible edges.The front edges of the carcass show when doors are closed. Skipping them is obvious and cheap-looking.
15. Expect to maintain it.Painted kitchens are a finish with a service life, not a permanent change. Touch-ups around handles every couple of years keep it looking intentional.

Tips

• Degrease, abrade, degrease. Every failure traces back to one of those three, and the second degrease is the one people skip.
• Doors off, flat, handles removed. It is more work and it is the difference between looking painted and looking finished.
• Give it two to three weeks before treating it normally. Most early chipping is a cure-time problem.

Common mistakes

• Painting straight over greasy doors — Kitchen grease is invisible and everywhere, especially near the hob and handles. Paint over it lifts in sheets within months.
• Using a general-purpose primer on laminate or foil — Those surfaces are non-porous and need a proper adhesion primer to bond at all. Ordinary primer peels off at the edges almost immediately.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask