How Is the Cost of Cabinet Doors Figured at Cutting Edge?
Updated November 21, 2024
Learn how to calculate the cost of cabinet doors using square footage prices and understand factors that affect pricing to ensure accurate budgets.
Looking for pricing details online can be super frustrating, right? You want straightforward numbers, but often, all you find are vague figures. Take our pricing articles, for instance. You’ll see square foot costs and minimum prices, but all you need is the dollar value of your cabinet doors. So, how do you make sense of these numbers? And why does Cutting Edge present prices this way? How can you avoid costly budgeting mistakes and the ensuing customer frustration when you don’t understand the pricing?
Over our 20 years in business, our product line has grown exponentially. In addition, we produce custom-sized doors for custom cabinets. Thus, if we listed prices for every possible door size in a product catalogue, it would be enormous! Instead, we use a combination of square foot and minimum prices to get you the pricing information you need.
Keep reading to find out:
How to Price Your Cabinet Doors Using a Square Foot Price
First, let’s look at how the square foot pricing works. You can think of the square footage as the overall area of your cabinet door.
To calculate the square footage, use this simple formula:
Width (in inches) multiplied by height (in inches) divided by 144
Once you have the square footage, you can quickly figure out how much a cabinet door costs. Use the minimum price per piece if your answer is less than 1.5 (more about this number later!) Otherwise, multiply the square footage by the square foot price to get the cost of your cabinet door.
Here’s how this would work if you had a 12” by 36” door that costs $24 per square foot:
12” multiplied by 36” = 432
432 divided by 144 = 3
3 is greater than the 1.5 minimum square footage.
So, take 3 and multiply it by your door cost ($24) = $72
Your cabinet door would cost $72
But why does Cutting Edge provide a square foot price? And where does the minimum price per piece come into play?
Keep reading!
Why Cutting Edge Uses Square Foot Pricing for Cabinet Doors
At Cutting Edge, we produce custom cabinet doors. In other words, you can order any door style in almost any size – and we will make it for you.
However, this means our product line is massive. When you consider the sheer number of door style combinations you could choose from, plus the infinite number of cabinet door sizes, you will quickly realize why we don’t have a pricing catalogue.
It really isn’t possible to provide a specific price for every single option out there in a traditional method. So, we use square foot pricing instead. Using square foot pricing allows us to provide one price per door style. You can then use that one price to calculate the pricing for all your cabinet doors.
But we still haven’t talked about the minimum price per piece; let’s look at that now.
Why Cutting Edge Has a Minimum Price per Piece
Over the years, we have found that cabinet doors under a certain size still take the same amount of labour and materials as other cabinet doors. In most cases, that threshold is approximately 1.5 square feet.
Thus, we have a minimum price per piece based on 1.5 square feet.
You will notice this minimum price taking effect on items like small drawer fronts, which are almost always less than 1.5 square feet.
Frames, Slabs and Drawer Boxes Are Priced Differently
We don’t price all products using this same method, and there are good reasons for this. Let’s look at the three exceptions and how you can find pricing for these options.
1. Open Frames (Excluding 1-Piece and 2-Piece MDF)
First is open frames. Open frames don’t have a centre panel; instead, we leave that central section open so you can insert glass.
If we used the same pricing formula for open frames as we do for cabinet doors, you would pay for a centre panel, which doesn’t exist.
Instead, we price open frames by calculating exactly how much material we use in the outer frame.
This formula is much more complex, so we recommend you quote open frames using our online ordering system.
You may have noticed that we excluded 1-piece and 2-piece MDF from this. We exclude these two products because of how we produce them. To make an open frame in 1-piece or 2-piece MDF, we have to cut out the centre portion, which leaves that material unusable. So, for these two types of open frames, use the same square footage formula as you do for cabinet doors.
2. MDF Slabs
Next is MDF slabs. MDF slabs require very little labour; we don’t have to cut or glue pieces of solid wood. We only have to cut out the correct size from our sheet of MDF and sand it smooth.
Thus, we base your minimum price per piece for MDF slabs on 1 square foot instead of 1.5 square feet.
3. Drawer Boxes
The third and final exception is drawer boxes. Drawer boxes are a complex product that requires an equally complex pricing formula because we only account for the material we use. Instead of providing a price per cubic foot (which would account for too much material), we recommend you price drawer boxes using our online ordering system.
This way, you can get accurate pricing without having to run calculations.
Other Factors Affect the Cost of Cabinet Doors
Now, you should always remember that other factors affect the cost of cabinet doors. If your cabinet door has any custom features, like a wide bottom rail or decorative moulding, we add extra fees to cover the extra labour and material expenses.
You should ask our team to calculate the pricing if you’re ordering a completely custom product, like a feature door or a range hood, to ensure you don’t have any unexpected fees.
Finally, you should contact our team if you can’t find pricing for the wood type or door style you want instead of taking a stab at the price. Some wood types have unexpectedly high prices due to rarity or product limitations, like not having a plywood option.
Our team is here to assist you and prevent you from underquoting an order, so contact us if you have questions.
Price Out Your Cabinet Doors
It is frustrating when you can’t find the exact number you need right away or don’t understand how to use the information you can find. Plus, when your profit margin and reputation is on the line, you really can’t afford to make a mistake. If you can’t use the pricing you find online, it may as well not exist.
At Cutting Edge, we make it our mission to make ordering cabinet doors easy for you, which is why we have written this article.
However, manually calculating the cost of your cabinet doors isn’t for everyone. So, there’s another option – request an account so you can price out your cabinet doors online.
