With the development of kitchen pantry ideas, a pantry has become one of the top most wanted list for homeowners. It can be a spacious walk-in or just a little cabinet in the nook, but a kitchen pantry is a space that worth to invest in.
It makes your kitchen more organized and with a perfect system helps your cooking process become faster and easier.
Although its main function is as a storage space, we’ll have great kitchen pantry ideas that make your kitchen looks not only professional but also like it’s falling out of home decor magazines.
Contents
- 1. Effective Kitchen Pantry
- 2. Use Existing Spare Space
- 3. Upcycling Old Furniture
- 4. Uniformed Bins and Jars
- 5. Label or Colour Code
- 6. Bookshelf Style for Your Spice
- 7. Fully Open Shelving
- 8. Out of the Box Shelves
- 9. Pull-Out Cupboard
- 10. Corner Pantry Space
- 11. Back Panel Accent
- 12. Sliding Ladder as Statement Piece
- 13. Modern Flair Pantry
- 14. Classic Atmosphere Pantry
- 15. Bold Floor Pattern
- 16. Hanging Storage
- 17. Material Selection as Mood Creator
- 18. Make the Entrance Count
- 19. Channel Your Character through Your Decor
- 20. Fun Lighting
1. Effective Kitchen Pantry
Before we dive into the gorgeous look and styling for your kitchen pantry ideas, the first thing we need to carefully think about is how the pantry will work in your kitchen.
Although the look does not always need to follow the function, it is important that the design supports the pantry function rather than makes its system more complicated because of the decoration.
Convenient
As it is a place where you store your food stocks and probably your kitchen utensils, your kitchen pantry should be located near your food processing area. This way you will create an effective working flow inside your kitchen.
Visibility
You will probably more than 50 items stored in your pantry and you might need to use up to 5 of them each time you cook. It is crucial to display everything so that each item you store is visible at a glance. It is really helpful especially if other people using your kitchen.
Accessibility
It will save you a lot of time if you organize the items inside your pantry so that you don’t need to move things around to reach one item. You can arrange it by size and use so that you can get what you need easily.
2. Use Existing Spare Space
Not every kitchen blessed with spacious kitchen pantry. If yours is one of them, you can utilize the biggest cupboards in your kitchen as your pantry. Or, if your kitchen located near the entrance hallway, you can transform your coat closet into a kitchen pantry.
Coat closet can be a perfect space alternative for small kitchen pantry ideas. Although it’s located a little bit out of the kitchen, the workflow won’t clash with other activities since it’s located in the hallway. All you need is to install a few shelves, add some bins inside, and you get yourself a kitchen pantry.
3. Upcycling Old Furniture
Cabinets and Cupboards will keep your mess behind closed doors even if you don’t have a space for a walk-in pantry. But as we all know, having built-in kitchen cabinets cost a lot of money.
Repurposing your old existing cabinets and cupboards as your freestanding pantry can be on budget kitchen pantry ideas.
You can recycle old grandma’s cupboard that has been standing for years in the garage to give a vintage touch to your kitchen.
Challenge your woodcraft skills by installing a new system inside the old cupboard to be a suitable kitchen pantry for you.
Or, you can find an old locker cupboard on your nearby thrift store and paint it to match it with your retro kitchen.
4. Uniformed Bins and Jars
An easy way to make your cluttered pantry look neater than it actually is by using the same or similar container for all items you store.
The numerous jars and containers you have will look less messy if they all look similar or the same. All you need to do is to categorize them in size or content and you will have a well-ordered kitchen pantry
Using the same jars for your kitchen pantry ideas also a way for you to save up some money. When you are using a lot of the same jars, you can buy these jars at wholesale at a much cheaper price. The same goes for bins and any other container you need.
5. Label or Colour Code
A good pantry needs a good system so that it’ll easy to store your food and items. A good system in a pantry is like a clear direction on a GPS. It’ll help anyone find what they need easily and in no time. But, too many written information in your pantry will only make it looks messy and confusing.
My personal favourite for pantry organizing system is using cute labels or colour coding. If you want the information clear and bold you can choose labels in a design that match your container style.
A plain label and messy handwriting will make your cool jars and bins look dull, so put some effort in choosing your label.
If you want an easier way, you can choose colour coding. Make your own colour palette then assign a colour for each category and you have an organizing system for your pantry.
6. Bookshelf Style for Your Spice
Not everything you store needs to be concealed inside a cupboard or a storage room. Some of them actually can be displayed and add fun visual decoration on top of your kitchen counter.
Choosing what to display and what store inside a cabinet can be a space-saving kitchen pantry ideas for you while saving you a budget on kitchen accessories.
My personal favourite category to display is spice. Spices tend to have a lot of different vibrant colours and you use it every single time you cook.
So, not only it gives you colourful ornament in your kitchen it also saves you time from digging it out of your pantry. Other things you can use to lively decor your kitchen in this style are grains, kinds of pasta, or herbs.
7. Fully Open Shelving
If you want to save some on kitchen decoration and are confident at keeping your things organized, this is the perfect kitchen pantry ideas for you.
Fully open shelves will need you to be fully committed at keeping your things organized or it will make your kitchen looks cluttered in an instance.
But, if you can do it, your kitchen will have a complex and one of a kind accessories that will make it unique.
Keep your kitchen surface clean from any decoration, pattern or ornamentation will be my uppermost advice. This way, the hard work you put in organizing your stuff and turn it into a wonderful display will be the main focus in your kitchen.
8. Out of the Box Shelves
For you who don’t really have much to store, open shelving also a choice you can have for your kitchen pantry ideas.
But, you have to balance the emptiness of the shelf space with decoration so that the shelves don’t look bland.
Combine your items with cooking book or flowers in a vase to make achieve a pleasant finishing look. Or, if you want the shelves to stand out, you can choose a unique design for your pantry shelves. This way, the low amount of stuff will be a modest complement to the extraordinary design.
9. Pull-Out Cupboard
While kitchen cupboard is a good alternative for your kitchen pantry ideas, it usually has a deep dimension since it follows the thickness of the fridge to make your kitchen set has a sleek and clean visual line.
This makes it a little bit hard to utilize it as your kitchen pantry because the things you put at the back will be difficult to reach.
You can do a little upgrade installation to make this situation work and gives you a smart and sophisticated kitchen pantry system.
Install a pull-out system to your shelves so that the shelves will have a drawer-like system inside the cabinet. This way you can always reach things easily, even the ones you put at the very back.
10. Corner Pantry Space
Corner space of your kitchen is a tricky yet smart space for a pantry. It is smart because it will be more difficult to utilize the space as a working space, but tricky since the angle of other furniture surrounding it.
Optimize the Space with Turntable. Put a turntable on the intersection point inside your corner kitchen pantry ideas will be a space optimizing solution. The revolving system of a turntable will make it easier for you to utilize every inch of the corner as a storage space.
Hidden Breakfast Nook. if the corner space that created from the two sides kitchen set is quite big, you can use this space as your breakfast pantry. This corner will be perfect in storing your coffee maker, toaster and your other essentials to start your morning meals.
11. Back Panel Accent
All white pantry has been a really popular trend since the minimalist and neutral colour dominate market demand. One styling decoration to all white pantry to give it a unique touch is back panel accent on the shelving area.
You can add a bold pattern, vibrant colour, or even natural texture to create this accent for easy yet attractive kitchen pantry ideas.
Back panel accent can be both bold and modest at the same time. Since its surrounding is all white, the back panel accent will absolutely stand out.
But, since it’s located at the back of the shelves, the “peeking” presence of the accent won’t overthrow the harmonious colour palette. The accent will only visible from a certain angle gives the pantry a dynamic feel to its design.
12. Sliding Ladder as Statement Piece
For functionality perspective, having a ladder in your kitchen pantry will help you reach and store items in a higher location.
But, you can also use a ladder as a statement piece in your kitchen pantry ideas. A sliding ladder will be a marvellous finishing touch, especially for your more traditional design style.
A sliding ladder goes along with many traditional design styles, such as Victorian, farmhouse, or even nautical.
It can be dark and stand-out from the rest of the colour palette or it can be in the same majority colour in the room, both will give a vintage vibe in your kitchen pantry.
13. Modern Flair Pantry
Nothing beats a simple and sophisticated design vibe for creating modern style kitchen pantry ideas. Maintain the simple whole visual of the pantry with harmonious cool tone colour.
My personal preference for modern design is to use a darker colour rather than a light colour to balance down the mood of the room.
Be brave in using more sophisticated material like glass or metal to give modern mood in your pantry. Sliding glass door will be the perfect entrance for modern style kitchen pantry.
To hide all the ‘mess’ behind you can choose icy glass to block the visual continuity from the kitchen into your pantry.
14. Classic Atmosphere Pantry
Bring the traditional design from your kitchen to your spacious kitchen pantry ideas with these simple elements.
Many people correlate traditional design with extravagant decor elements and assume that classic vibe can’t be presented in the kitchen pantry.
However, many functional yet classy-looking elements can be put in the kitchen pantry to give a vintage touch to the room.
The simplest and easiest way is to combine painted wood for cabinets or shelving panels with white tile. Use a dark colour, preferably black as the grout line for the tile.
This little detail gives impact much bigger than you think and will give your classic kitchen a matching kitchen pantry.
15. Bold Floor Pattern
A bold pattern flooring for your kitchen pantry ideas is a bulletproof way to make your simple pantry look extra.
If you’re hesitant to put in a lot of decorations and want everything looks clean, the patterned floor will step up the finishing look of your kitchen pantry.
A small space of kitchen pantry is a perfect amount to channel bold pattern so that the pattern won’t overthrow the modest and minimalistic design of your kitchen pantry.
Different design and colour of your patterned flooring will give you different visual. Match the vibe of your floor pattern carefully so that it creates continuity with the whole design.
16. Hanging Storage
When the available space is limited, it is crucial to optimize every inch of our kitchen for storage. The vertical surface of your kitchen is actually an ideal space for hanging storage. This will be a perfect addition for your small space kitchen pantry ideas.
You can hang your cookware in order of their shape and size, or based on their colour. This idea is especially perfect if you happen to have copper cookware. Displaying your copper cookware will give your kitchen a bold rustic and vintage vibe.
17. Material Selection as Mood Creator
Your material selection for your kitchen pantry ideas is crucial. Since kitchen pantry commonly only have small space, the presence of material determines the whole mood of the pantry. Material selection in your kitchen pantry will have a stronger impact on creating a mood with a matching colour palette.
For more masculine kitchen pantry, you can create an industrial style pantry with stainless steel crate combined with a bare finished brick wall. For balancing the cool characteristic of steel and brick, you can combine it with light coloured wood flooring.
18. Make the Entrance Count
Your spacious walk-in kitchen pantry may conceal a lot of items that will make your kitchen look messy, but it does not mead the existence of it shouldn’t be bold. Your kitchen pantry door can also be a statement piece in your kitchen design style.
Barn Door
Get a touch of rustic farmhouse vibe by replacing your ordinary kitchen door with a sliding barn door.
The steel sliding structure combines with reddish bulky wood leaf will be a perfect simple yet bold farmhouse ornamentation in your kitchen.
Chalkboard Door
Make the to-do list making fun by adding a chalkboard in your kitchen. The colourful handmade chalk writing in the kitchen will surely give a lively mood in your kitchen and makes the space homier.
Not only it is a fun way to display your chores, but also a great canvas for you and your family to share their creativity from time to time.
19. Channel Your Character through Your Decor
Even though its main function is as a storage space, there’s no such rule that you can’t make it pretty. If you have all your stuff organized in uniformed bins and jars and you work on a beautiful colour scheme, adding eye-catching accessories here and there is encouraged.
Decorations are a great way to put in your taste and character into the design and make it your own. It also makes your clever and organized kitchen pantry ideas look stylish.
You can put your decor elements on the top shelves or where it’s difficult for you to reach but still visible. This way, you don’t need to sacrifice strategic storage space for your decorations.
20. Fun Lighting
One good quality that a pantry definitely need is good lighting. Good lighting will determine the visibility of the items stored inside the pantry which is essential for storage space.
If your shelves are deep, it is better to install additional strip lighting on each shelf so to make the back of the shelves well lit.
If your shelves are not too deep a general lighting is enough. You can also choose an interesting lighting fixture for your pantry that goes along with your kitchen design.
This way, even though your pantry is separated from your kitchen, both of them have similar ambience.
With many technical specifications a good kitchen pantry needs, you can still fashion your kitchen pantry to your aesthetic preferences.
These kitchen pantry ideas show you how to turn your cluttered and cramped kitchen pantry into an organized and fun storage space.
With your own decor style and organization system, your kitchen pantry not only boosts the look of your kitchen but improve your cooking experience at home.