Four Hundred Dollars A Foot, And Other Half-Truths
You priced cabinets online, got a number, then got a quote from a remodeler that was four times higher.
Which one is real?
In this post, you’ll learn what the three cabinet lines actually cost, what a linear foot measures, how finish and hardware move the number, why we won’t reface what you already have, and how those pieces connect as you read.
How Much Do Kitchen Cabinets Cost?
Kitchen cabinets with us start around $400 per linear foot for our stock line, $650 for our semi-custom line, and over $1,000 per linear foot for our custom line.
All three are uninstalled.
That’s the cabinets arriving at your house, not cabinets hung level on a wall with fillers scribed to a plaster corner.
Cabinets are the single largest line in most kitchens, and our kitchens run $100,000 to $300,000, averaging north of $125,000, over 10 to 20 weeks of construction, with cabinets as only one part of that total.
Here at WISA Solutions, the lowest one we’ve built in the past two years landed in the $70,000s, and we don’t get those often.
The Three Cabinet Lines And What Separates Them
The gap between the three lines isn’t quality in the way most people assume.
It’s flexibility.
How much the boxes are allowed to change is what moves a $400 linear foot up to a $1,000 one.
Stock, Starting Around $400 A Linear Foot
Stock means the boxes come in fixed widths, usually in three-inch increments, with a set list of door styles and finishes.
You design according to what exists.
If your run measures 94 inches and the cabinets come in 24s and 36s, the leftover inches get covered with filler strips.
That’s not a flaw, it’s the trade you make for the price, and on a straightforward galley it’s often the right call.
What stock doesn’t do is solve an awkward wall.
White shaker shows up in more of our finished kitchens than any other door, and it’s available in every line, so the style itself isn’t what you’re paying for.
Semi-Custom, Starting At $650
Semi-custom starts with the same catalog and lets you modify it.
Different depths, reduced widths, more door styles, and a much longer finish list.
In a Vienna kitchen, we ran Waypoint 650F cabinets in Painted Linen around the perimeter, then carried the identical 650F door into the fireplace cabinets in the same family room.
Same door, two rooms.
The point of paying for past stock is usually to get one door style to work everywhere, instead of settling for whatever the catalog stocks in the size you need.
Custom, Past $1,000
Custom means the cabinet is built to your opening rather than your opening being built around the cabinet.
No fillers.
This is where you go when a wall is out of square, when you want a 41-inch run to actually be 41 inches of storage, or when the design calls for something the catalog has never made.
Past $1,000 a linear foot, you’re paying a shop to make one thing once.
What A Linear Foot Actually Measures
A linear foot is a foot of cabinet run measured along the wall, not a square foot of door, and not a single cabinet.
Ten feet of base cabinets plus ten feet of wall cabinets above them is twenty linear feet, which is why upper cabinets can quietly double the number of people budgeted once.
A real kitchen plan isn’t a shopping list; it’s a coded inventory.
Sink bases, drawer bases, wall cabinets, and fillers each get a code carrying the type and the dimension, and the count of those codes is what your linear footage adds up to.
Two kitchens with the same square footage can differ by six or eight linear feet, depending on whether the island carries cabinetry and whether the uppers run to the ceiling.
Fixtures force cabinet decisions.
That same kitchen used a Miseno 33-inch farmhouse sink with an apron front, and an apron sink doesn’t drop into a standard sink base; it needs the front of the box cut down to carry it.
Then there’s what attaches to the cabinets.
That Vienna kitchen carried up to 25 recessed lights plus under cabinet lighting, and under cabinet lighting is wired before the boxes go on the wall, not after.
That also means the electrician and the cabinet installer have to be sequenced tightly, which is a lot easier when both of them work for us.
Appliances aren’t in our number at all.
Our clients buy their own, which is worth keeping in mind when you’re comparing a cabinet quote to an all-in kitchen quote.
Finish, Hardware, And The Island That Doesn’t Match
Finish is priced per color, so a two-tone kitchen costs more than a single-color kitchen in the same line.
The Vienna kitchen used Painted Linen on the perimeter and Painted Sage on the island, which is two finishes on one order.
Hardware gets specified down to the millimeter.
That kitchen used Jeffrey Alexander Elara pulls in brushed oil rubbed bronze at 128 millimeters, while the fireplace cabinets, a room away, took Dominique pulls in matte black at the same 128.
Two finishes, one size.
Countertop and backsplash then have to answer to the doors, and that kitchen paired an MSI Calacatta Viraldi counter with a 3 by 12 Elon Opal Snow backsplash set in a half offset, grouted in Mapei Moonbeam.
None of that gets decided at the job site.
It’s all named on a selection sheet you approve at our design center before a single box is ordered, with the pulls coming through Hardware Resources, so the quote reflects the scope we defined.
There’s one more reason we don’t price cabinets off a walkthrough.
Before we sign, we come back and cut into your soffits to see what’s above the wall cabinets, because whether your uppers can run to the ceiling depends on what’s hiding up there.
Why We Won’t Reface What You Have
Cabinet refacing is on our do-not-offer list, next to tub reglazing and handyman work.
New doors on old boxes leave the layout exactly where it was.
Same walls.
If the reason your kitchen frustrates you is that the fridge blocks a walkway or there’s no landing space beside the range, a new door front changes the color of the problem.
We run a design process, then a build process, and it starts with the kitchen’s function and the floor plan, designed for how you’ll use it later, not just now.
Once the layout is settled, cabinets are specified in it.
We also lose most rip and replace bids in Northern Virginia, and we’re fine with that, because there are plenty of kitchen and bath shops here competing hard on exactly that work.
A basic kitchen with us lands under $100,000, and in McLean and Falls Church, our kitchens generally start at $150,000.
Our kitchens also have a habit of growing into the rest of the main floor, because once the wall between the kitchen and everything else is on the table, the floor plan question gets bigger than cabinetry.
Stock, Semi-Custom, Or Built To Your Wall? Ask WISA Solutions
The thing to hold onto is that a per-foot cabinet price only means something once the layout is decided, and that every tier price you see quoted is for cabinets before anyone installs them.
Get the plan right, and the cabinet number stops moving. Fill out our contact form or give us a call, and we’ll walk through your kitchen with you.
