Walnut Kitchen Cabinets: Doors, Tops and What They Cost

Walnut is the wood most people picture when they picture a solid wood kitchen: chocolate browns that run from milk to bitter in one board, a figure that moves, and a warmth under oil that no stain on another wood quite reaches. Here is how a walnut kitchen comes together when the doors and the tops come from one shop, what it costs, and the two or three things worth deciding before you order.

Doors and tops from one lot

The reason to buy the doors where you buy the countertop is the wood itself. Walnut varies more board to board than any other kitchen hardwood, so a countertop from one source and doors from another are two walnuts in one room. We cut every front in an order from one bundle of boards in hanging order, and when the countertop is ours too, the island and the doors come from the same lumber. If you already have a Hardtwood walnut countertop, table or shelves, give the Builder your order number and it fills in the wood and the color so the doors match.

The six colors

Most walnut kitchens are finished clear, in our hardwax oil, which deepens the browns and leaves the sapwood streaks pale. Walnut also takes six stains for a darker, more even read: Black and Charcoal for the moody kitchen, Chocolate and English to pull the color together, Sepia for a greyer, drier look, and Pure, which is the clear coat. Unfinished walnut doors are available for your own finisher at a small discount.

How walnut ages

Unlike cherry, which darkens, walnut lightens a little in the first years in a bright room, the deepest chocolate settling toward a warmer brown. The sapwood streaks stay pale. Finish both faces, which we do, and keep the doors out of direct sun where you can, and the change is gentle and even across a run that was cut from one bundle. Walnut is a medium-hard wood at 1,010 lbf on the Janka scale, hard enough for a kitchen, and a scratch in a hardwax oil finish is repaired in place with a wipe of the same oil.

What a walnut kitchen costs

A typical frameless kitchen has about fifteen fronts. Take ten 15 × 30 base and wall doors and five 30 × 10 drawer fronts, all slab at 7/8 in: at today's walnut board foot that is about $275 a door and about $160 a drawer front, call it $3,550 for the fronts, finished. The same list in one-piece shaker is about $4,150, and a textured run on the island adds a few hundred more. A 96 × 25 walnut countertop at 1 1/2 in is about $1,700 beside it. The Builder prices your exact list as you type it; the figures here are the shape of the number, not a quote.

Pairing walnut

Walnut doors over white oak floors is the pairing of the moment, and it works because the two woods sit on opposite sides of warm: the oak reads honey, the walnut reads chocolate, and neither fights the other. Walnut over walnut floors is heavier and wants a pale countertop or a stone to breathe. A walnut island with white oak perimeter fronts, both from us, puts the drama where the room looks and keeps the rest quiet.

Grain direction

Vertical grain is the default on a door and the right call for tall doors. Horizontal grain is the modern read on a drawer stack, and when it runs continuous, cut in sequence from one board so the figure continues across the reveals, a stack of four drawers reads as one plank. Walnut's figure makes continuous grain worth its small premium more than any other wood we cut.

Lead time on doors is 4-6 weeks today. See the walnut cabinet doors, or every wood we make them in.

Two ways to order. Price your doors in the Builder, front by front with a live price, or send us your plans and we build the door list for you, at the same prices, within one business day.