How to Paint Laminate Kitchen Cabinets!

Cabinets AFTER being painted Dulux Misty Moore

Cream Laminate Cabinets BEFORE

We recently did a mini renovation on our kitchen, and as part of that we painted our cream laminate kitchen cabinets and drawers. The cabinets were in pretty good condition, but the colour was just dated and wasn't our style, so this was a relatively cheap update that made a massive difference to our kitchen. Its not hard to paint over laminate, but it is a bit tedious and if you want it to look good, you have to take your time and do it right! I was worried that I would really stuff them up! Its the worst when you have a vision in your head and your DIY goes totally pear shaped! Thankfully, it worked our great! So here are my tips for painting laminate cabinets:

First, its good to remove the cupboards from their hinges, remove the drawer faces from the drawer, and remove any handles

Then, you need to make sure its clean, so clean (scrub in some cases, ha) them all down both sides with a clean cloth and Sugar Soap and dry them off.

Then they need to be Primed, as regular paint will just peel and scratch off laminate. We did our research and the best Primer for the job was Dulux Precision Maximum Strength Adhesion Primer, that is recommended to use on laminate. It goes on really smoothly, and I found the best results when I used a roller (I used the Monarch Razorback Foam roller and found the results were really smooth and even)

Top Cabinets are Dulux White on White, bottom Dulux Misty Moore.

After one coat of primer, then its time to paint with the chosen colour. We did Dulux White on White for the high cabinets and Dulux Misty Moore for the bottom cabinets and drawers, plus any of the other laminate cabinetry that can be seen around the kitchen was also cleaned/primed and then painted for a uniform look. For the white cabinets we tried Dulux Aquanamel in 'Low Gloss', because I didn't want to have a glossy looking kitchen, but wanted the durability of Aquanamel. I actually didn't love using it, it was more difficult to mix all the colour in than I'm used to and no matter how much I stirred I still had specks of blue coming through, thankfully none of them showed up on the final coat, but it was a pain to have to continue stirring even in the mixing tray. We couldn't get the darker colour Misty Moore in the low gloss, and I'm actually so glad now, we opted for Dulux Semi-Gloss Aquanamel and it went on great! Really smooth, and doesn't have an overly glossy look when applied with a roller. I used the same Monarch Roller as mentioned above.

I used saw-horses to lay out the cupboards and carefully rolled each cupboard, one side at a time, starting with the back side, leaving ample drying time in between sides, and then did 2 coats of the top colour.

I recommend labeling or putting the cupboards/drawers in order so you know exactly where they need to go back because it can get confusing. We didn't paint the bottom edge for the lower cabinets and top edge for the higher ones, so that's where we wrote which position each cabinet or drawer was!

It takes about a week for the paint to really cure and harden, so you have to be a bit more careful with the cabinets during that time to prevent the paint from scratching or chipping off.