New doors and cabinets that sit next to your existing ones without announcing themselves. We take one of your doors back to the shop, match it in the spray booth, and you approve a sprayed sample before we build anything.
The eye is far better at catching a bad match than a bad design. A door that's two shades off doesn't read as "new" — it reads as a repair, and you notice it every morning for the next fifteen years.
You added a cabinet three years ago and it still doesn't quite belong to the rest of the kitchen.
Twenty-five years of sunlight have ambered your oak, and nothing off a shelf is that color anymore.
You ordered a replacement door online in "honey oak" and discovered it wasn't your honey oak.
You want an island or a pantry added, and it has to look like it was always there.
One door got damaged, and replacing it means matching a finish nobody makes anymore.
Most people think a match is about color. Color is maybe half of it. Sheen, grain and the way a finish has aged do the rest — and getting the color right while missing the sheen still reads as wrong.
The most forgiving. Paint is opaque, so there's no grain to reconcile — we spray to a sample and, for practical purposes, it's exact.
Harder and more interesting. Species has to match, because stain sits differently in oak than it does in maple — the color can be right and the grain still give it away.
Twenty years of UV turns a finish warmer and deeper. We match what's on your wall today, not what the can said in 1998.
Gloss level is half of what your eye reads as "match." A perfect color at the wrong sheen looks wrong from across the room and right up close.
The hardest to match, because it was applied by hand in the first place. We match it by hand too, panel by panel, and we're honest about the variation.
Matching one run while deliberately contrasting another. The matched half has to be right or the contrast just looks like a mistake.
Most shops answer this with "perfect match, guaranteed." That's not a real answer, so here's ours, situation by situation.
There's no machine that reads a cabinet door and prints a formula. It's sample, look, adjust, repeat — which is why we won't quote a match we haven't sprayed.
Usually from the cabinet that gets the most daylight, because that's the one that's aged furthest. Match the worst case and the rest falls into line.
Twenty years of cooking film reads as color. Matching a dirty door means matching the dirt, and then your new doors look wrong the day after you wipe the old ones down.
Two to four attempts is normal. Always on the same wood we'll build with, because the same stain on a different species is a different color.
We bring the sample to you and hold it against the real cabinets — in daylight, and again under your own bulbs at night. Showroom light lies.
The sample stays in the booth as the reference for the whole run, so door forty matches door one.
The real test is hung, next to the old ones, in your light. Raymond walks it with you before we call it done.
A match that looks right in our shop can look wrong in your kitchen, because your kitchen has different light, different walls and a different floor bouncing color up at it. The only test that counts is the one done where the doors will live.
Color matching isn't a product we sell on its own — it's how we do the work. For most projects it's simply part of the quote. A few situations take enough extra shop time that they show up in the number.
Matching an existing painted finish, or spraying everything one new color. Sampled and approved the same as any match — no separate charge.
Your existing wood, matched on new stock of the same species. The everyday case for adding doors or an island to a kitchen you're keeping.
Glazed and antiqued finishes, unusual or discontinued species, or a badly aged finish that needs more sample rounds than usual. More booth time, so it can affect the quote.
We'll tell you at the measure which of the three you're in, before you've spent anything.
Not sure whether your finish can be matched? Request a free estimate — we'll look at the actual cabinets and tell you honestly, including when the answer is no.
It depends on what you're matching. A painted finish we can match to the point where the difference isn't findable — paint is opaque, so there's no grain to reconcile. A stained finish on the same wood species gets very close; most people can't pick out the new door once it's hung.
Where it gets harder is a different species, or a hand-applied glaze. We'll tell you which of those you're in before you commit to anything, and you'll see a sprayed sample either way.
Always. We bring a sprayed sample to your kitchen and hold it against the real cabinets — in daylight and again under your own bulbs, because a match that looks right in a showroom can look wrong at your sink.
Nothing gets built until you've said yes to that sample. That step isn't a formality — it's the only way either of us can know the match is right.
Yes, and that's most of what we do. Twenty or thirty years of sunlight turns a finish warmer and deeper, which is exactly why an off-the-shelf replacement door in the "same" color never looks right.
We match what's on your wall today rather than what the original finish was. We usually take the door from the cabinet that gets the most daylight, because matching the furthest-aged door brings the rest into line.
Not with stain. Stain goes the same shade or darker, never lighter — there's no way to pull color back out of wood that already has it.
If you want a lighter kitchen, the honest routes are new doors in a lighter finish, or painting, where the coating is opaque and the old color underneath stops mattering. We'd rather tell you that at the measure than sell you a match that can't exist.
We can usually get close on color using a species with a similar grain, but we'll be straight that the grain itself will read differently up close. Oak looks like oak.
In that situation there are often better options — using the new work as a deliberate contrast, or painting everything one color so the species question disappears. We'll lay out all three and let you pick.
Not identically, and it's fair to know that up front. Your existing cabinets have already done most of their ambering — the big color shift happens in the early years. New wood and a new finish still have that ahead of them.
In practice, a good match stays a good match: the drift is slow, and modern finishes hold their color far better than what was on cabinets in the nineties. But anyone promising the two will stay identical forever hasn't watched a kitchen for twenty years.
For a painted color, a chip or a manufacturer's code works fine — that's a known formula.
For matching your existing cabinets, no. A photo carries your camera's white balance and your kitchen's lighting baked into it, and neither has much to do with the actual finish. We need the real door.
Raymond will look at the actual cabinets and give you a straight answer — including when the answer is no.
Request a Free Quote →Colors that hold up in a real kitchen, and the ones that date fastest.
What to do with honey oak, including when matching it is the wrong move.
Which one your kitchen actually needs, and what each can and can't do.
Free quote, sprayed sample, and an honest answer about how close we can get before you spend anything.