Most shops sell three finish families, whatever they call them. Melamine and thermally fused laminate. Painted, usually on MDF or on maple. Stained or clear-coated wood, where the species is the point.
A client almost never asks which family they want. They ask which one is better. That question has no answer, so you end up answering a different one, usually with a number you made up on the spot to close the conversation.
This post is the published evidence on the three, and a way to put the choice in front of a client as ranges instead of one figure.
The prices that are actually public
Lumber prices are public. Finished cabinet prices mostly are not.
One US hardwood dealer publishes a full list, last updated September 2026. At 4/4 thickness, per board foot, it shows red oak at $6.10, soft maple at $8.25, hard maple at $8.35, white oak at $10.00 and walnut at $16.50 (The Wood Yard, read 2026-09-19). At 8/4 the same list shows hard maple at $9.20 and walnut at $17.00. That is one retailer's list price in one country, not a national index, and you should read it as an illustration of the gaps rather than as the market.
The gaps are the useful part. On that list walnut runs almost exactly twice hard maple at 4/4, and about 2.7 times red oak.
A second source, an aggregator of dealer listings, puts black walnut boards at a median of $19 per board foot across 46 dealers in September 2026, and red oak boards on the same basis at a median of $10 across 29 dealers (ForestSource, read 2026-09-19; red oak, read 2026-09-19). That is 1.9 times, from a completely different collection method, which is close enough to the dealer list to believe the shape.
The door doubles. The project does not.
Here is the mistake that gap causes.
If walnut costs twice what maple costs, it is tempting to price a walnut job at twice a maple job. That is wrong, and it is wrong by a lot. The species premium lands on the doors and the exposed fronts. It does not land on the boxes, the interiors, the hardware, the finishing labour, the delivery or the install.
So the correct move is to apply species to the component it touches and leave the rest of the take-off alone. A shop that multiplies the whole line total by a species factor produces a number so high it will not send it, and then discounts its way back down by instinct. That round trip is worse than not applying the factor at all.
Painted costs more than stained, and the reason is steps
The clean published statement of this comes from a Canadian cabinet manufacturer, which puts painted cabinets at roughly 10 to 15 percent more than stained on the same job, and gives the reason as process: three stages for stain (stain, sealer, topcoat) against an eight-step painted process with multiple coats of primer, base, paint and topcoat (Deslaurier Custom Cabinets, published 11 April 2022, read 2026-09-19).
Two honest caveats. That is one manufacturer's own published figure, not a survey of the trade. And it is from April 2022, which is dated by any standard, so treat the 10 to 15 percent as a direction rather than a rate you can quote.
What is not in doubt is the mechanism. Paint is more passes through the booth and more cure time between them, and cure time is shop time.
The commonly repeated second half of the explanation, that paint grade uses cheaper wood so it nets out, has no named technical source that I could verify. If you believe it in your own shop, believe it from your own costing, not from the internet.
Melamine is the cheap one, and the published delta is one company's
The same manufacturer publishes a like-for-like comparison: a custom kitchen at $25,000 in maple would come in roughly $7,000 to $12,000 cheaper in a faux maple grain melamine (Deslaurier Custom Cabinets, published 1 November 2022, read 2026-09-19). That is 28 to 48 percent, in 2022 dollars, from one shop's own book.
I could not find a survey figure for this. Treat it the way you would treat a competitor's price list: useful for the shape, not for your quote.
How melamine actually wears
This is where real test data exists.
One major producer publishes NEMA test results for its thermally fused laminate panels. Surface wear resistance is rated at 400 cycles for solid colours but only 125 cycles for woodgrains and abstracts. Boiling water resistance is listed as no effect, high temperature resistance as slight effect, impact resistance at 15 inches, radiant heat at 60 seconds (Wilsonart technical data, revised February 2025, read 2026-09-19). That document is just past eighteen months old at the time of writing, so check for a newer revision before quoting it to a client.
The same document is candid about the limits: the product is interior use only, and should not be subjected to humidity extremes, to temperatures above 275F for substantial periods, or to intense continuous direct sunlight. It also carries a one year limited warranty against material defects.
The industry body agrees on the headline without publishing a number, stating that thermally fused laminate panels offer excellent scratch and wear resistance (Composite Panel Association, undated, read 2026-09-19).
The failure mode you should describe to a client is not scratching. It is edge and corner chipping, after which the exposed core takes water and the damage spreads, because a chip cannot be touched up the way a finish can.
How painted actually wears
Painted doors crack at the joints, and the trade has said so in writing for a long time.
One cabinet supplier publishes a customer-facing disclosure about this in plain language: the paint is not elastic enough to keep up with the wood moving underneath it, so it splits in a hairline right at the corner joint, and the supplier states that such a crack is not covered under warranty even if the door arrives that way (The Cabinet Joint, undated, read 2026-09-19). Trade discussion says the same and adds the part clients find surprising: you do not see these cracks in stain work, only in paint (WoodWeb Knowledge Base, 19 August 2008, read 2026-09-19). That thread is a practitioner forum from 2008, not a tested standard, and it is very old. Cite it as what it is.
Then there is yellowing. A major coatings manufacturer names the mechanism and the causes: alkyd and oil-based paints yellow because of how they cure, and the contributing conditions include heat, moisture, environmental contaminants and, counterintuitively, lack of light (Sherwin-Williams, undated, read 2026-09-19). Lack of light is the line worth repeating, because it explains why the inside of a pantry goes first.
What the finish system contributes
Wood family or paint family, the coating is a separate decision, and there is lab data on it.
The Architectural Woodwork Standards published a comparison of thirteen finish systems tested in an ISO 9000 certified laboratory against named ASTM methods, with a total score per system. Conversion varnish scores 129, catalyzed polyurethane 133, post-catalyzed lacquer 124, pre-catalyzed lacquer 99, latex acrylic 94, nitrocellulose lacquer 77 and penetrating oil 57 (AWI, AWMAC and WI, Architectural Woodwork Standards Section 5, 2nd Edition, 1 October 2014, read 2026-09-19). That edition is from 2014, it is heavily dated, and AWI has since moved to a duty-level model, so treat the numbers as the last public ranking rather than current guidance.
The most useful line in the whole document is not a score. It is the rule the standard states about its own scores: differences of ten points or fewer are not generally considered significant enough to justify the typical added expense of a higher-rated system. By that rule, conversion varnish and catalyzed polyurethane are four points apart and you can tell a client the cheaper of the two is genuinely fine here, with a standards body behind you.
The same document rates yellowing over time on a five point scale, and the spread is real: waterborne latex acrylic scores 5, catalyzed polyurethane 4, conversion varnish 4, pre-catalyzed lacquer 2 and nitrocellulose lacquer 1.
What the certification actually tests
If a client asks what "certified" means, the trade association publishes the tests in plain terms: a door held at 120F and 70 percent relative humidity for 24 hours; a cold check cycling a door from that hotbox to a coldbox at minus 5F; and a household substances test exposing fronts to vinegar, citrus juices, ketchup, coffee, olive oil and 100 proof alcohol for 24 hours, and mustard for one (KCMA, published 17 January 2023, read 2026-09-19).
Those are good sentences to have ready. They are concrete, they are not yours, and they change the conversation from opinion to procedure.
How to present the choice
Present each family as its own range with its own line items, side by side, and do not rank them.
Put one number on the page and you have made the decision for the client, without the information you needed to make it. Put a recommendation beside the ranges and you have done the same thing more politely. Let the ranges carry it.
A script that works, in your own words:
"There are three ways we can build this. Melamine is the least expensive and it is genuinely durable, but a chipped edge cannot be touched up. Paint is the most expensive of the three because it is more coats and more cure time, and the joints on a solid wood painted door will show hairline cracks eventually, which is the wood moving and not a defect. Stained wood is priced by the species, and the species premium lands on the doors rather than on the whole job. Here is what each one costs on your take-off. Tell me which one you want to look at properly."
Nothing in that is a sales line. Every sentence is something you can source.
What this means for a two-person shop
You do not need a new spreadsheet. You need three habits.
Price the species on the component it touches, not on the project total. Your quote stops being a number you flinch at, which means you stop discounting yourself before the client ever sees it.
Say the failure mode out loud, in the estimate, for whichever family the client is drifting toward. Hairline cracks on painted joints and chipped edges on melamine are the two warranty conversations you will otherwise have in year two, for free, in someone's kitchen.
Send more than one range when the client genuinely has a choice, and send one when they do not. Two ranges side by side take no longer to produce than one if the take-off drives both.
What is not public
Several figures a post like this would normally reach for do not survive checking, so they are not here.
There is no verified survey number for how many cabinet jobs are painted versus stained versus laminated. Figures circulating from trend coverage could not be confirmed on the pages themselves.
There is no verified per linear foot cost by material from a source with a published methodology. The aggregator estimates that dominate search results were not obtainable.
No named source confirms that painted MDF costs less than painted maple on the same door, and none supports the "paint grade uses cheaper wood" explanation. The well-known claim that walnut lightens and cherry darkens under UV has no citable source here either, so it is left out rather than asserted.
Where a number is not public, say so.