Choosing the Perfect Finish for Your Kitchen Cabinets

Your cabinets’ finish makes or breaks your kitchen, but choosing the perfect finish for your kitchen cabinets doesn’t need to be complicated or difficult. To effectively select the right finish, familiarize yourself with some of the standard cabinet coatings and see which fits your needs.

Shellac

If you want an eco-friendlier kitchen, you can choose a shellac finish. Shellac is a natural resin secreted by female lac bugs, and it gives your kitchen cabinets a water-resistant, amber-tinted finish. It’s also perfect for coating and sealing over previous finishes, and you can quickly repair it if it chips.

Shellac dries quickly upon application, but it tends to cloud when exposed to water. You can find shellac in hardware stores or woodworking centers, but not in large home centers. Shellac tends to possess a short shelf life as soon as it’s dissolved in ethyl alcohol, losing its best quality past six months if unused.

Stain

If you’re looking for a unique kitchen cabinet finish, you can stain your cabinets. Going for a stained finish creates a crafted, individualized look since different areas of your cabinet’s wood will soak up different amounts of stain.

Staining also protects your cabinets from damage and enhances their grain. You’ll have limited color options compared to painted cabinets, but staining allows your kitchen cabinets to resemble natural wood using walnut, oak, pecan, or birch shades.

Varnish

Varnish finish works best on stained or natural dark kitchen cabinets. You can use it as a simple coat to give your cabinets better durability and heat resistance. Varnish comes from oil and resin as either natural or synthetic.

It gives your cabinets moisture and stain resistance but tends to turn yellow over time. It also dries slowly, which can either be good or bad, depending on your cabinets’ location. Slow drying time allows for ample time to set the varnish, but it causes issues when dust or bugs are present.

Paint

If you’re looking for color variations in your kitchen cabinets, you can choose a painted finish. Paint covers wood’s natural appearance but shouldn’t pose an issue when you use typical lumber. You can easily create a clean, color-matched kitchen using paint as your finish, but you should expect some eventual noticeable chips and dents.

Paint also tends to possess harmful chemicals, so ensure you check for low or non-toxic ingredients. One option for eco-friendly and non-toxic paint is milk paint. Milk paint features milk as its binder, and it gives your cabinets a vintage look. It’s also relatively affordable.

Waterborne

The waterborne ultra-violet finish offers you a hazard-free and scratch-resistant kitchen cabinet finish. It dries fast and gives you the appearance of varnished, stained, or painted wood. The waterborne finish also contains high water content, perfectly suiting people who want an environment-friendly kitchen.

Keep in mind that a waterborne finish needs UV light curing, making it a little harder to apply and slightly costlier than other kitchen cabinet finishes. On the bright side, it offers the best durability among different finishes.