Plan Your Perfect Kitchen Pantry With Our Top 10 Tips

A well-designed kitchen pantry gives intelligent yet practical storage, a feature that’s appreciated in every home. They can be key to hiding clutter, while letting us stock up after those larger grocery shops too.  If you are planning a new kitchen or in the throes of your own self-build, we’ve put together a few design tips to help you plan your kitchen pantry to suit your space and needs perfectly.

1) If space allows and you have more than one place you can put your kitchen pantry, you might want to think about what you are going to store within it to help you make the best decision. For example, for the perfect breakfast pantry designed to house cereals, coffee and breads, you may want to position it near your fridge where your milk, yoghurts and other items for making your breakfast are stored. If it will be mainly used for baking or spices, condiments, pastas, and regularly used appliances you might prefer to place it beside your main prep zone.  The client above opted to place their pantry between the fridge and prep zones.

2) When planning the design within your pantry, think about the items you want to store there. For instance clear containers with cereals and pastas, or jars with seeds and nuts can be lost in deep shelves yet much more accessible when stored on shallow depth shelves. Shelves also typically tend to reduce in depth the higher they go helping you see everything easily.

3) If you want your coffee machine or microwave to also be housed inside your pantry cabinet, plan those items to be at a height that’s easy for you to reach easily. Or if you’d like your mixer to take centre stage at worktop height, make sure the shelving over it is placed high enough to allow the perfect fit.

4) On the topic of worktops; allowing enough room for your counter means you will have somewhere to set your shopping bags while you store items away on the shelves, not to mention somewhere to put your cereal bowl when filling it every morning, or saucepan as you pour in your pasta etc so it’s always good to make sure you’ve left this area accessible.

5) If you’d like the top drawer to be shallow enough to house an organiser tray with your coffee pods and spices, a cutlery drawer depth would be well suited for this application. However if you don’t want to sacrifice the simplicity of the three drawer appearance, you could always opt for a hidden top drawer so it remains within the top deep drawer but is unseen when all drawers are closed.

6) If you don’t have much space to work with in your overall kitchen, a slim line pantry could be perfect, we are also noticing them gaining in popularity. Drawers on the bottom half with a mixture of medium and shallow shelves over your counter top can give a beautiful addition to any space. Pocket doors can even be incorporated to slide completely out of the way which also lets more light into your space.

7) Pantry style cabinets don’t always have to be full height, you can opt to have cupboards or drawers underneath with a top half pantry style doors opening to reveal shelves, a built-in wine rack, a microwave, or a mixture of shallow shelves for spices. Your doors can once again be bi-folding or even pocket doors to open up the space you are working in.

8) If you don’t need to fold or hide away your doors, they’re a great place to mount spice racks and items that would take up valuable shelf space otherwise. They come in many different depths so another tip is to measure your taller items to ensure they are made to fit the items you use the most.

9) Deep drawers can be very practical with handy wire baskets for vegetables or plastic trays to keep crisps or lunchbox snacks stored together.

10) As kitchen pantry cabinets make great use of space while incorporating extra specialised workspaces, it’s important to mention the options you also have with height. Some clients have opted for top level plain or reeded glass fronted display cupboards housing LED lights to open up the room. While others have opted to keep their shelves only to the height they can reach comfortably and have used the top space for deeper cupboards opening upwards to house bulky items used less frequently. We mention this to simply make you aware of ways to plan your space that suits your needs perfectly.

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