Planning A Walk-In Pantry That Works With The Kitchen

The frosted glass door in these photos isn't a closet. It opens to a walk-in pantry, set right into a kitchen's run of stained cabinets beside the sink wall. From the kitchen it reads as part of the cabinetry. Behind it, white shelving wraps the room. It's a small detail with a big effect on how a kitchen works, and it's the kind of detail that has to be planned before the cabinets are ordered.

Put It Where The Work Happens

This pantry sits right off the sink wall, a few steps from the range. That's the point of a walk-in pantry in a family kitchen: food, small appliances and bulk supplies close to where they get used, without filling the counters.

When you're placing a pantry, think about the path from the garage or the back door too. Groceries come in that way. A pantry between the entry and the kitchen saves a lot of trips over the years.

Choose The Door On Purpose

The door here is frosted glass set between stained cabinets, with a subway tile backsplash running up to it. Frosted glass lets light through and hints at the room behind it, while keeping the shelves out of view. A solid door hides everything. A pocket door saves swing space. No door at all is the easiest to use and the hardest to keep tidy.

None of those is wrong. The right one depends on how much of your pantry you want to see, and how much you want guests to see.

Shelving That Wraps The Room

Inside, white shelving wraps around the walk-in pantry behind a stained door frame. Shelving on more than one wall gives you more storage in the same footprint, and it lets you see what you have at a glance. Think about what will live there: tall cereal boxes, a stand mixer, a case of water, the kids' snacks at a height they can reach.

Think about power, too. My business partner Colten Roth, who runs our builds, has put outlets in closets a number of times so a cordless vacuum can charge where it's stored. A pantry might want one for a coffee maker or a toaster. That's "stuff that can be overlooked and easily missed," as he puts it, and it's easy to add before drywall.

Lay Out The Cabinets Around It

One progress photo shows dark stained cabinets going in around the frosted pantry door, with unfinished island boxes in the middle of the room. That photo shows why the pantry has to be settled in design. The door width, the framing around it and the cabinets on either side all have to agree to the inch.

This is where having the people who draw the house also build it pays off. Colten asks for dimensions on the drawings measured the way the trades will need them: "I want this measured from here to here because when we're building this, this is what this sub is going to need." A pantry door between cabinets goes smoothly when the drawing already anticipated the install.

He has a line about a different small design detail that applies here too: "I'm glad that we don't have to figure that out in the field later."

If you're planning a kitchen for a custom home in Lincoln, make a list of what you'd like close at hand and what you'd rather keep out of sight. That list is the start of your pantry.