Why Cabinets Are Priced Per Linear Foot

Cabinets are priced per foot measured along the wall they occupy. Twelve feet of base cabinets is twelve linear feet, whether that run is made up of four three foot cabinets or six two foot ones, and whether the doors are plain or elaborate.

The unit exists because cabinets vary in width and a per cabinet price therefore carries almost no information. Two kitchens can each contain twelve cabinets and be fourteen and twenty six linear feet respectively. Priced per cabinet, they look identical. Priced per linear foot, they are what they are: one is nearly twice the kitchen.

It also matches how the work actually scales. A cabinet maker's time, the material, the countertop above it and the fitting below it all scale with the length of the run, not with how many vertical dividers happen to be in it. The unit is not an industry convention invented to confuse people; it is the unit the work is done in.

You need a tape measure and a piece of paper. Not a laser, not an app, and not a drawing.

Two conventions are worth confirming rather than assuming, because quotes genuinely differ on them. The first is whether wall cabinets above a base run are counted within the same linear footage or added separately. Most published figures assume the former. The second is how an island is counted, particularly a double sided one. Neither convention is wrong; they just have to be the same on both quotes you are comparing.

A band running from $500 to $1,400 and up per linear foot looks unhelpfully vague until you look at what sits inside it. The published material figures for the cabinets across a standard kitchen explain most of the spread on their own.

The same twenty feet of custom cabinetry can be paint grade doors on composite boxes or solid hardwood on plywood. Those are both legitimately custom, both built to your walls, and an order of magnitude apart in material. The band is wide because the specification inside it is wide, not because nobody knows the price.

That is also why a per linear foot figure on its own is only half a quote. The other half is the specification: box material named by location, door style and construction, finish system and hardware. A per foot number without those is a number without a thing attached to it.

Installer labour is published separately at $50 to $70 per linear foot nationally, which is a useful sanity check on any quote that itemises fitting. The published worked example separates the two halves cleanly: a professional charging $70 per linear foot to remove existing cabinets and assemble and install new ones drops to $55 per linear foot when the old boxes are already out.

For Riverside specifically, a cost page written for the city publishes $150 to $380 for each linear foot of cabinets installed, with a typical whole job range of $1,308 to $11,993. That is installation, not supply, which is the distinction this whole guide exists to make.

A published whole installation averages $1,044, within a typical range of $482 to $2,167. A worked example totalling about $5,000 breaks down as about $900 for installation and about $4,000 for the cabinets, which is the usual proportion: the boxes are the large number and the fitting is the smaller one.

Per linear foot is the dominant unit but it is not the only one, and a quote can legitimately use any of the following. Problems arise only when two quotes use different units and nobody converts them.

Per cabinet, supplied. The cost of a box with its door, before anybody fits it. Published figures exist: stock cabinets are quoted at $55 to $600 per cabinet, cabinet only and semi-custom at $140 to $800 and up per cabinet, cabinet only. This unit is most common in retail, where you are buying boxes off a shelf and arranging fitting separately. It tells you nothing about the size of your kitchen.

Per cabinet, installed. Assembly and setting of a box, as labour. A cost page written for Riverside quotes $150 to $500 per cabinet, before installation costs for this. It describes fitting work rather than the finished cabinet, and confusing it with the supplied cost is one of the commonest misreadings in this trade.

Per project. One number for the whole kitchen. Convenient, and impossible to compare with anything until you divide it by your footage. This is the unit most likely to appear on a quote that does not want to be compared.

Per square foot. Not used for cabinets, but it is the unit countertops are quoted in, which is why countertop and cabinet quotes cannot be added together until you know which is which. A countertop is also quoted by a different trade and templated off installed cabinets rather than from a drawing.

Four units, one kitchen. Writing your linear footage at the top of every document and converting everything to dollars per linear foot is the only reliable way through it, and it takes less time than reading the quote does.

The unit is the best available, and it is not perfect. Three situations distort it, and knowing them stops you drawing the wrong conclusion from a number that is technically correct.

Tall units. A twenty four inch wide pantry that runs floor to ceiling is two feet of linear footage carrying three times the material of two feet of base cabinet. A kitchen with several tall units will look expensive per linear foot and be perfectly fairly priced.

Ceiling height. Running wall cabinets to a nine foot ceiling rather than stopping at eighty four inches adds material and considerably more fitting labour, because the top of the run has to be scribed to a ceiling that is not level. Again, the footage does not change and the price does.

Open runs with no cabinets. A long wall with a window over the sink and nothing above it is linear footage with no wall cabinets in it. That kitchen will look inexpensive per linear foot, which is accurate, but it is not comparable with a kitchen of the same length that is fully fitted top and bottom.

None of those break the unit. They are reasons to look at the cabinet schedule alongside the per foot number rather than instead of it, which is the same conclusion this guide reaches everywhere else: the unit makes quotes comparable, and the specification tells you what you are comparing.

Once you have your footage, every quote becomes checkable in about fifteen seconds. Divide the total by the footage and see which published band the answer lands in.

Twenty linear feet quoted at $9,000 is $450 per linear foot, which sits at the top of semi-custom and the bottom of custom, and is unremarkable. The same twenty feet at $60,000 is $3,000 per linear foot, well outside every published band, which does not make it wrong but does make it a number that deserves an explanation: exotic species, an unusual finish system, significant structural work folded into the same quote, or something else specific.

And a quote that cannot be converted at all, because it never states a footage and never itemises anything, is telling you something more useful than its price.

The per linear foot figure prices cabinets. Two things that almost always travel with a cabinet job are priced in different units, and both are regularly discovered after a budget has been set.

The first is the countertop, which is priced per square foot of slab rather than per linear foot of run. That is not a trivial difference: a long shallow run and a short run with a deep island can have the same linear footage and very different square footage. The City of Riverside treats the two as separate items for permit purposes as well, listing “Cabinet refacing or replacement without changing walls, plumbing, or electrical configurations” and “Counter top replacement” as two different numbered exemptions in its work exempt from building permits handout→. Price them as two line items in their own units and the comparison between bids stays honest.

The second is the electrical work, and it is the one that catches people out. The City of Redlands states the mechanism in its own kitchen handout: “Removal and replacement of the base cabinets and counter top will require compliance with the electrical outlet location requirements of the code.” In other words, taking the base run and the countertop off a wall brings the outlet layout up to current rules, and in a kitchen untouched since the nineteen seventies that can mean several new receptacles, possibly a new circuit, and in some scopes a permit. None of that appears in a per linear foot cabinet rate, so a quote that does not mention it is not cheaper, it is less complete.