We had our oak kitchen cabinets painted a light cream color. We debated about this for four years. My husband was really against painting wood, but finally we just went for it. Now we wish we'd done it sooner. They look amazing. We cannot see the grain underneath. We did have them professionally done. It updated our kitchen...looks great. Go for it, but do it right.

Just to be clear, I am a BIG fan of spraying. I am not always a fan of spraying commercial products in a home. When you start getting into commercial products that you plan on spraying in someone's home I would prefer a water based product but waterborne will sometimes give you a lot of the advantages with significantly fewer dangers. There are many good water based and waterborne products out there. BM Advance is good and durable but pretty thick and relatively hard to spray if you are not experienced. Kem Aqua Plus from Sherwin Williams is a good waterborne paint that sprays easier as it is much thinner. Both are going to be comparable in durability to a Lacquer but will have less yellowing problems and are safer. There are several waterborne alkyd systems that will give you a decent durable finish that can be applied in your home with relative safety. ----- I am just going to assume that your painter wants to use Zinser BIN as a primer and paint over it (BIN sticks to everything and everything sticks to BIN). It is hard to give you definite solutions on cabinets I haven't seen and touched, but lots of people will clean cabinets thoroughly with TSP and a scotch-brite pad and skip the sanding step. How well that works depends on your cabinets and what they are painted with now. It is certainly not unheard of for quality refinishers to not put a thorough sand on a detailed cabinet. If your current product has good adhesion and you can get some tooth to it without sanding, then the marginal benefit vs. marginal cost of sanding can be a legitimate issue. Prep is absolutely the reason most cabinets repaints fail, but there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to prep. Zinser BIN can be a bit brittle. It is a great product and usually performs pretty well but it is a refinish and not a factory finish. It will not be as good as a factory finish, but at some point you have to face the fact that there is a reason you didn't replace your cabinets in the first place... So work on getting a great quality finish that will last, but don't spend a dollar chasing a dime.

I agree with Bry and most of the pros on here. Here’s my thoughts. BM Aura is NOT a cabinet-grade paint. This is just a fact. It’s a fully water-based, thin paint. It’s meant for drywall. Our company does over a mil a year, and I study the chemical science behind this stuff and study these products 24-7. I would suggest alternatives to a client, and if they insisted on BM Aura I’d literally walk away from the job rather than use this product because the danger of taking that job would be very high (the product won’t last, will scratch easily, and client will be unhappy). BM Advance is an ok product, but the long cure time and lack of durability compared to other similarly priced products makes it not worth it, IMO. TL/DR = There’s better options but this is still decent. Way better than BM Aura. The BEST “reasonably priced and readily available” product for cabinets is SW Emerald Urethane Enamel. It’s much better than the BM Advance in terms of A) durability and abrasion resistance, B) cure/dry time, C) chemical and mar resistance. Some prefer the look of either but they both look great but SW Emerald Urethane is way more durable long term and IMO at least I love the fact Emerald Urethane is brighter and dries harder. It looks a lot better to me. Advance looks/feels kinda soft and subdued. https://youtu.be/-TVrtJwLqgA Milesi, Fine Paints of Europe, and Renner have the “best overall” products but they’re way more expensive and harder to purchase. Milesi and Renner especially, often need to be shipped in. FPE is usually in our local stores. They’re all expensive though. Milesi also requires a 2-step process which is more complicated, so we need our project manager to oversee it. Milesi comes out super smooth and glassy, FPE Hollandlac comes out in a brilliant lacquer finish which some people want. My general thoughts, weighing all the pros and cons, is to either go with Emerald Urethane, OR, pick one of the very expensive European brands that meets your exact desire in a paint and go with them. But don’t do BM Aura on cabinets. Seriously. Don’t do that. That’s Magoo

Doing a kitchen remodel and going from dark colors to light. I need help with a cabinet refinishing paint color to go with my white quartz and rustic gold hardware I plan on using. Please help. I have sampled white dove, alabaster, snowbound and I can’t decide what will match the counters and floors. I want to add glaze to the cabinets as well. Any suggestions would be forever grateful