A small walk-in pantry that actually works

Almost every kitchen we design now has a walk-in pantry, and almost none of them is big. In a renovated Queenslander the pantry is often the old hallway cupboard, a redundant corner of the sleep-out or a metre stolen from a bedroom. A pantry of a metre and a half by two metres holds more than a wall of overhead cupboards, and it does something the cupboards cannot: it takes the appliances, the boxes and the half-open packets out of the room where you live.

The door decides the room

The first thing a small pantry needs is a door that does not take space. A hinged door swings into the pantry or into the kitchen, and both cost you the width of the door. A cavity slider disappears into the wall and lets the pantry open fully onto the kitchen. If the wall cannot take a cavity, a surface-mounted slider on a track works, and a doorway with no door at all is fine if the pantry is around a corner from the dining table. We rarely draw a hinged pantry door any more.

Shelves, and how deep

The mistake in most pantries is shelves that are too deep. A 400 millimetre shelf loses the back half to things you cannot see. Above bench height we use shelves of 250 to 300 millimetres, so everything sits one row deep and you can read every label. Below the bench the shelves can be deeper, or better still drawers, which bring the back forward. Adjustable shelving on standards costs a little more than fixed and is worth it, because what you store changes.

Run the shelves to the ceiling. The top shelf takes the things you use twice a year. In a Queenslander with three-metre ceilings that is a lot of storage in a small floor area.

A bench inside the pantry

If the pantry has one wall of bench at kitchen height with a power point above it, the kettle, the toaster, the coffee machine and the mixer live there permanently and the kitchen bench stays clear. This is the single change that makes a kitchen look the way it did in the photographs. Allow 600 millimetres of depth for the bench and put the double power point where the cords will not cross the shelves.

Light and air

A pantry without a window needs a light that comes on when you open the door, either a sensor or a switch on the door jamb. Put the light on the ceiling near the door side so you do not stand in your own shadow. If there is an external wall, a small high window or a vent keeps the pantry cooler than the kitchen, which is what you want for the food in it. A pantry that shares a wall with the oven or the fridge compressor will be warm, so we try to plan the layout so it does not.

What goes where

Wire baskets or open crates at low level for onions, potatoes and fruit, where air moves. Clear containers on the eye-level shelves. A shallow spice shelf on the back of the door or on the return wall by the entry. The recycling bin, if the kitchen has nowhere else for it. Every one of these is a small decision at drawing stage and a permanent annoyance if it is missed.

When a pull-out is better

If the kitchen cannot give up a doorway, a tall pull-out pantry unit of 400 to 600 millimetres beside the fridge holds a surprising amount and keeps the layout simple. It is a good answer in a workers' cottage where every wall is already spoken for. It does not take the appliances off the bench, which is the walk-in's real advantage.

The pantry is one of about forty decisions in a kitchen, and we go through all of them in the design stage of a renovation. If you are planning one, bring a photo of your current kitchen to a free meeting and we will show you where the pantry could go.