Custom kitchen cabinets in Vancouver start at about $15,000 at DADO. That is the cabinetry-only floor: boxes, doors, drawer fronts, and hardware for a smaller kitchen in a standard finish, designed, built, and installed. As a whole project with a finish tier and appliances, a smaller kitchen plans at about $18,000 to $28,000, most kitchens land between $30,000 and $50,000, and a large high-end build starts past $100,000. Five things move the cabinetry number: box construction, door style, finish, interior systems, and hardware.
The $15,000 floor is a smaller kitchen in a standard finish with standard interiors. As the room grows and the finish climbs, the cabinetry number climbs with it, and the whole-project bands above wrap that cabinetry with the appliance package and the finish tier. For a real reference point, the cabinetry for our Camelot Rd project in West Vancouver, a medium kitchen in walnut veneer and painted slab MDF with integrated handles and plywood boxes, came to $25,000. All of these are planning ranges, confirmed in person once we have measured. Our post on what a custom kitchen costs in Vancouver covers the whole project. This one stays on the cabinets.
The box is what you do not see and what you live with longest. Plywood boxes cost more than particleboard and they hold screws, stay flat around the sink, and shrug off the humidity that swells cheaper carcasses. We build on plywood boxes, pre-assembled before they reach your home, so the money in this line buys the part of the kitchen that outlasts the doors. How cabinet construction changes the quote goes through the differences one at a time.
A flat slab door is the least work to make and the least expensive. A shaker door, with a border around a recessed centre panel, takes more machining and costs more. Integrated handles, where the door edge or a channel above it does the job of a pull, add work to every door and every drawer front and sit above both. Style is the second lever, and the difference between the least and most expensive door on the same box is meaningful but not the largest one on this list.
Finish is the biggest lever after size. In rough order from least to most: laminate and melamine, painted MDF, wood veneer such as rift white oak or walnut, then solid wood. A factory-sprayed painted slab MDF door is the most common choice in the medium band because it is durable, easy to touch up, and available in any colour. Rift white oak veneer brings straight, calm grain that suits a modern room and costs more per door. Walnut veneer generally sits above white oak. Colour itself is not a cost driver, and a second finish in a two-tone kitchen changes the quote a little and the room a lot.
What goes inside the boxes is where custom cabinetry earns its price. Deep drawers for pots and pans instead of doors. A space tower with pull-out shelves that brings the back of a tall cabinet to your hands. A runner system that lets a pantry shelf glide out fully. A spice and bottle pull-out beside the range. Each one adds to the quote and each one changes how the kitchen works every day. The honest advice is to spend here before spending on a more expensive door, because you will use a drawer a thousand times before you notice a door profile.
Soft-close hinges and drawer slides carry the daily use of the kitchen, and they come standard on DADO cabinets. They are the smallest of the five lines, and the one we would never cut, because they are the part that fails first on a cheap kitchen. Our hardware and every mechanical part, hinges, slides, and soft-close, carry a lifetime warranty. Wood and laminate finishes typically carry a one-year manufacturer warranty.
Colour, within a finish. Handle style, once you have decided between pulls and integrated. Moving from three drawers to four in a base cabinet. The small choices that feel expensive usually are not, and the large ones, size, finish, and interiors, are the three to settle first.
The Vancouver Kitchen Cost Calculator gives you a planning range in three inputs. When you want the cabinetry number for your actual room, book a free consultation at the Kitsilano showroom and we will measure, draw it, and price it plainly.