Custom Built-Ins & Cabinetry in Richardson, TX

Custom built-ins in the DFW market run $250-$450 per linear foot for paint-grade work (the white-painted classic) and $400-$600+ per linear foot for stain-grade hardwood. A fireplace flanked by two 4-foot bookcase towers lands around $4,000-$8,000; a full 14-foot media wall with a fireplace surround, closed bases and open shelving runs $8,000-$16,000.

The most-requested projects in Richardson homes: living room bookcase walls and fireplace surrounds, media walls that hide equipment and wires, window seats with storage drawers under bay and playroom windows, dining room buffet walls, and drop-zone or desk built-ins covered on our mudroom and home office pages.

What you're paying for versus furniture: built-ins are scribed to your actual walls (no gaps, no tipping hazards), run to the ceiling for maximum storage, integrate lighting and outlets invisibly, and read as architecture rather than furniture. In 1970s-1990s DFW homes with off-square walls, that scribing is genuine craft.

Design choices drive cost more than size. Adjustable open shelving is the value zone; closed doors and drawers add hardware and shop time; integrated lighting (puck or LED strip with hidden wiring) adds $500-$1,500 per wall; and specialty touches — library ladders, arched openings, fluted trim — move a project into custom-furniture pricing.

Built-ins are one of the few upgrades that photograph well, appraise as finish quality, and remove a furniture cost at the same time. They anchor the rooms buyers remember — which is why staging companies fake them and why real ones consistently earn their cost back in showing impact.