Best Paint Sprayers for Kitchen Cabinets in 2023
When it comes to house upgrades that can pack a big punch on a friendly budget, painting your kitchen cabinets can drastically improve the resale value of your home. To efficiently paint your cabinets and provide that smooth gloss-like finish, spraying is by far the best way to go. When it comes to painting kitchen cabinets with a paint sprayer, you have to choose between HVLP, Air Assist, or airless-type paint sprayers. We'll go into all of those below, and then provide our recommendations for the best paint sprayers for kitchen cabinets in 2023.
HVLP Versus Airless for Kitchen Cabinet Painting
HVLP and airless offer different benefits compared to each other. HVLP will give you the maximum control of your spraying as well as the potential for the smoothest finish possible. However, achieving that finish can require thinning the paint to allow for easy spraying. HVLP is a little bit more of a learning curve to be able to get great finishes compared to using an airless, especially if you're going to use an airless with a fine finish tip. HVLP, however, will create less overspray, so while you'll still have to mask off your home in order to use the HVLP, it'll be more efficient and waste less paint.
If you are a beginner, an airless paint sprayer, especially when paired with a fine finish tip, can provide smooth gloss-like finishes that you would see from a professional paint contractor. Airless will create more overspray than an HVLP. Airless does require you to spray faster, and so if you have a lot of detailed, and corners, and small areas, it can be a little bit harder to get proper control of the sprayer. Unlike an HVLP, an airless can only adjust the pattern by changing the tip. While an HVLP, you could change the pattern and the amount of material by changing the needle or the air pattern on the back of your spray gun. Overall, if you're looking for ease of use and user friendliness for a beginner, an airless with a fine finish tip will give you great results without much hassle or need to understand thinning and getting your paint setup right to spray.
Air Assist Airless
Air assist airless is similar to airless except it also has a compressed air line connected to the spray gun which tends to give it a slightly finer pattern than a pure airless sprayer. Air assist will have limited control of your pattern like the airless but will be about as transfer efficient as an HVLP. Air assist are more expensive than airless or HVLP are and are usually best if you’re a professional painting cabinets in a shop environment all the time.
Our Favorite HVL Paint Sprayers for Kitchen Cabinets in 2023
Best Budget-Friendly HVLP sprayers for Kitchen Cabinets
The Fuji Mini-Mite 4 or 5 series HVLP Turbine Sprayer
Fuji's mini mite turbine series offers portability and allows you to use an HVLP sprayer without the need for a heavy compressor to be lugged around. We prefer the 4 and stage Mini Mite over the 3 stage or smaller semi-pro 2 models, because the 4 and 5-stage turbine will provide greater pressure at the tip. The higher pressure will breakup thicker paint better . The Fuji Mini-Mite 4 and 5 come with three different options for the spray gun as well. The T-70 is a bottom feed-type spray gun. The T-75 is a gravity feed-type spray gum with the cup on top, and the GXPC spray gun is a touch-up-size spray gun with a smaller cup that angles off to the side of the spray gun.
Earlex Sprayport 6003
The Earlex Sprayport is a smaller turbine stage alternative to Fuji Mini-Mite series. However, it still can deliver pretty strong performance, especially if you're shooting or spraying thinner, lacquer-type or solvent based cabinet finishes. The Earlex will easily handle those. It comes with a bottom feed-type spray gun and a 1.3 tip. If you're going to spray cabinet latex or trim-type enamel products, you'll want to consider getting a slightly larger 1.8 tip.
Best Paint Sprayer for Kitchen Cabinets for High-Performance and Top of the Line Results
Apollo POWER-5 Kit
The Apollo POWER-5 features a variety of features that other turbines on the market don't include. The POWER-5 includes an adjustable pressure output so you can control how much pressure you're spraying, which will allow you to minimize overspray but also ensure you're atomizing the paint properly. The kit includes three tips that are ideal for the thickest and heaviest cabinet paints on the market today. It can easily atomize all of the common popular cabinet paints made by main major manufacturers by using the variety of tips and air caps included in the kit. Apollo also has a three-year warranty on the turbine, which is a leading in-class warranty compared to other brands.
Apollo Precision-5 HVLP Turbine Kit
The Precision-5 by Apollo is similar to the POWER-5, but has a digital readout to show you the exact pressure you're spraying at. It also features an auto-turnoff on the turbine, so if you've been spraying a while and release your trigger to go reposition a product, or work on something next to the spray area, your turbine will turn off. This will prevent heat and over buildup of heat in the turbine. The Precision-5 also comes with a five-year warranty. This is the longest warranty of any turbine in the market. The gun comes with the same multiple tips as the POWER-5 series, so whether spraying waterborne base coat or solvent borne top coats, the Precision-5 can provide great finishes.
Graco FinishPro 9.5 HVLP Turbine
Graco's five-stage HVLP turbine offers a five-stage experience and the auto-off turbine feature that will allow it to shut off when it's not being used. Unlike the Apollos, Graco has a unique disposable cup liner set that is specific to their brand. While you can use other turbine guns on the turbine, the gun that it comes with will have a plastic-type liner that has disposable bags. The advantage to this system is that you can invert your spray and spray with your gun turned completely upside down. If you're spraying in cabinet boxes, this will make it easy and convenient to be able to get material into the corners. It'll also make cleanup a bit easier.
Other brands mentioned before, like Apollo and Fuji, can work with a similar system that is made by 3M called PPS Cup System. Graco's system is specific to Graco, and so if you use their gun, you'll need to use their consumable liners and bags. The five-stage kit by Graco comes with three different tips, but only one air cap for the gun. Apollo matches guns and tips to yield maximum result, though we found Graco does a great job as well by using the single cap it comes with and the three tips that are provided with it.
Titan Capspray 115
Titan is the only turbine brand on the market to offer a six stage HVLP turbine. The six stage turbine provides the highest pressure at the cap of any brand which can yield the highest atomization and material of any paint needed. Realistically, we've found though, even with the thickest waterborne cap paint finishes on the market today, a five stage is plenty sufficient to do any atomization that you need. Titan offers the Capspray series with either the Maxim II or Maxim Elite gun. Maxim II is only available in either gravity or siphon, while the Elite gun can convert between gravity or siphon, making it quite flexible. The Capspray 115 kit includes the three tips and is completely ready to spray as well.
Our Favorite Airless Paint Sprayers for Kitchen Cabinets in 2023
If you've decided that an airless spray is going be more appropriate for your kitchen cabinet needs, look no further than the recommendations below. A lot of our favorite kitchen cabinet paint sprayers offer hopper kits included to make portability easier and clean up simpler. Hoppers can be important because you don't often need a lot of paint to spray cabinets, so by not requiring you to use a traditional bucket of paint, you can save material and reduce your cleanup cost.
Titan ED655
The Titan ED655 is an aero sprayer that has included hopper and is designed to fine finish painting. It comes with a fine finish tip on the end of the spray gun and has a maximum potential pressure of 2,800 PSI. The ED655 can support up to a seventeen thousands tip. For most cabinet finishes, you only need a 13 or 15 thousands tip at most.
Graco GX 19
Graco GX 19 is offered in both a cordless and corded version. It includes a 1.5 gallon hopper, which makes it convenient to spray kitchen cabinets on, and if needed in portable locations where you may not have electric power you can go with the cordless version of the GX 19. The GX 19 includes a Graco fine finish tip. The GX 19 is suitable both with solvent and water based paints. It can support up to a 19 thousands tip as well, so while it only holds up to 1.5 gallons of paint at a time, you could even use the GX 19 for general wall painting projects. It has a maximum pressure of 3,300 PSI, which makes it flexible and easy to use on any project that you may want to use it for.
TriTech T4 Hopper Airless Sprayer Kit
TriTech is a newer brand on the market. It offers some of the most precision-machined components on its airless sprayers. This tends to give the TriTech’s even more precise control and longevity between the repacking of pumps on the market. TriTech’s on finished tips have been some of our favorites for fine finish painting. They yield some of the best atomization of fine finish tips on the market and are highly popular among professional, seasoned paint contractors who focus on kitchen cabinets.
Graco's 390 Cordless or Corded Airless Sprayer
You already have a Graco 390 then consider just adding a hopper kit onto your 390, which will give it the portability and convenience of being able to spray at smaller quantities without producing as much waste. It'll also make cleanup quite a bit easier. The 390 is able to support up to 21 thousands, and so you can use this sprayer to spray anything from your kitchen to the exterior of your home. For painting kitchen cabinets, we would recommend a fine finish tip.
The Graco UltraMAX Handheld
This final sprayer recommendation for painting kitchen cabinets will come with one small caveat. This small, handheld, airless sprayer can do a good job, however it is not designed for high-volume painting needs. If you're only going to spray a cabinet box or two and need something that will make clean up quick, this can be a great option. The Ultramax is not much different than a full-fledged airless sprayer, but doesn't give you the flexibility of painting larger projects.. This unit is capable of spraying waterborne or solvent based paints, and can use up to a 17 thousands tip. The unit comes with a fine finish tip included.
Graco Magnum X5
If you plan on using a water-based paint on your kitchen cabinet paint project, then the Magnum X5 will be perfectly suitable for your project. If your spraying lacquers the Magnum X5 has parts that are not ideal for lacquer type solvents. You'll want to upgrade the tip to a fine finish tip to maximize results when using the Magnum X5
Overview and Final Thoughts
If we would have to recommend a HVLP unit on a budget we like the Fuji Mini mite 4 and 5 series. For those looking for an airless with high performance and ease of use, we would suggest the smaller, hopper-style airless sprayers like the GX19 or ED655.