Plan your pantry with tips from the professionals. With the right planning, you will find that pantries are absolutely cool. You will discover that the convenience of a well-designed area can change the way you work in the kitchen, and also inject real style into what is considered the heart of the home.
Accessible and convenient pantries will add value to a home and can be designed to suit a wide variety of footprints and demands. New homes with smaller footprints don’t have space for pantries, unlike bespoke homes that can be constructed with pantries the size of walk-in cupboards, which brings us to design. No matter how small your home, it can have a pantry. Modular homes can also be designed with pantries to suit the various property sizes – movable pantries, what an excellent idea.
Based on the size of your kitchen area, you need to work out what kind of configuration you would like; would it be pull-out, walk-in or a regular reach-in cupboard. Each of these can meet the footprint of particular sized kitchens. Here are a few professional tips to help you get started:
Pantry door
You need to consider if there is enough space for a normal hinged door. In certain instances, you can lose space if the hinged door opens into the pantry, and sometimes you don’t have enough space for it to open into the kitchen area. If your space doesn’t cater for a hinged door, try a sliding door or cavity sliding door to save space.
Lighting
Pantries are no longer the dark places that hold all the food. Lighting makes a big difference in the design of your new kitchen cupboards. What sort of light are you going to go for? Most of the time a pantry is built without windows, so LED’s are a great option. If your pantry is against an outside wall you could opt for a window, which also keeps it aired.
Shelving
If you opt for floor-to-ceiling fixed shelves, don’t forget that you will need to access them easily and safely, which is where a step ladder will come in handy. The depth of the shelves also makes a big difference to the convenience factor of your pantry. Wide bottom shelves make it easier to store larger items. Narrower top shelves work well so that you can see everything that is on the shelf without having to climb to the top.
The interior doesn’t necessarily need to be only fixed shelving, you can also make cupboard space particularly suited for pull-out packets, which make it easy to store your potatoes and onions. If you’re not entirely certain of how you’re going to utilise the space, you can also insert adjustable shelving.
Ventilation
Pantries are normally very badly ventilated. They can get stuffy if they have no windows so you may want to think about installing an exhaust vent. If you live somewhere with high temperatures and humidity, this is essential to avoid damp and mould.
Position
Think about where you are going to locate your pantry as you will want easy access for when you are cooking, or in case you need to grab something quickly. We all know that packing away the shopping can be an arduous task when you are struggling to get to cupboards or shelving. If you’ve positioned the pantry well, then stocking it is fairly easily and makes it entire exercise quicker and more efficient.
Spare wall space
If you end up with a bit of spare wall space next to your pantry, there are a few ways to best utilise the space. A few practical tips would be a hanging space for your apron, a great herb rack, or even a great place to paint a portion of the wall with chalkboard paint so that you can have space to write your shopping list. There is so much fun to be had with a newly designed and packed pantry. When you have the right designers, you are looking at so much added convenience to your kitchen experience.
