Design ideas for open shelving in kitchens
Ask any chef, and they’ll tell you a well-organised kitchen and work station is an essential to the smooth running of service – you need to know where your ingredients are, your knives and implements, your pots, pans, plates, the works. The same goes for a domestic kitchen which, while it is hopefully a little more harmonious and less chaotic than Boiling Point or an episode of The Bear, will benefit from clever organisation and easy-to-reach cooking implements.
Step one in this organisation is to sort out your storage. Cupboards and drawers are, of course, a presence in nearly every kitchen, but it’s possible to cleverly lay out open shelves in a way that is both helpful and – just as important – beautiful. Picture smart rows of mason jars, pots and pans stacked up, labelled ingredients… all the things you might find in a traditional drawing of an old-fashioned kitchen. Open shelves are as much about display as they are storage, and you can and should sprinkle in a handful of interesting pieces of art, books or other decorative mementos among your plates and bowls.
The great thing about open shelves, too, is that they don’t change the amount of space in your kitchen; they’re pretty much the same as cupboards, minus doors. And in fact, they can also offer more space, because anything which might not have fit into the cupboard can jut out a little, past where a door would have been. Plus, open shelves mean you and visitors to your kitchen will never lose track of where things are in the kitchen.
Note that if you are planning to rent your house out, whether occasionally or otherwise, you obviously can’t lock open shelves in the way you could a kitchen cabinet or cupboard. This was a problem Rita Konig faced when renovating a farmhouse she planned to let on occasion back in 2020. “With my growing china and glass collection,” she explained, “there are pieces that I want to keep separately. I am also adding a lock to the dry-store cupboard – frankly, there is nothing more depressing than renting a house and being faced with the owners’ half-finished, sticky jars of Marmite and honey. Equally, I am not that keen on returning home like Old Mother Hubbard.” You also might not want to only rely on open shelving in your kitchen, even if you do partially. Most kitchens tend to be home to a plethora of unsightly plastic bottles, microfibre cloths, bin bags, rubber gloves and the like – these are things which most people prefer not to have out on display at all times.
So, with those minor caveats out of the way, read on for some of the ingenious and inspired uses of open shelving in kitchens by interior designers featured in House & Garden past and present.
Chris Horwood1/16Sophie Warburton redesigned her kitchen in a calm avocado colour, including a long ribbon shelf just under the main cabinets. The shelf doesn’t have much “headroom”, and is mainly used for mugs – the decision provides punctuation and further horizontal focus in a room which is already oriented as such.
Michael Sinclair2/16In Pandora Taylor’s highly individual house, the open shelves have a very specific and particular materiality, with their original rough wood unfinished. Pandora built much of the furniture in the house herself.
Christopher Horwood3/16Cleverly staggered shelves in the kitchen of Lucy Williams’ house, which was designed bespoke by Browson Design, make the wall space look a little more considered and deliberate. Breaks in shelves can also leave spaces for taller objects to breathe. The joinery below is painted in Paper and Paints’ ‘Sky Blue’ with Beata Heuman hardware. Lucy found the large brass handles at Ardingly Market, while the brown marble countertops were sourced from Lapicida.
Line Klein4/16If building in open shelves feels like too much of a commitment one way or the other, freestanding units can have a similar effect. They’re more flexible because you can move them, but (obviously) less bespoke. In this light-filled flat in Copenhagen, Josephine Akvama Hoffmeyer has installed simple white metal shelves on which to store glassware and crockery.
Dean Hearne5/16This house in Deal by Nicola Mardas has a long and high open shelf mirroring the countertop, precisely at the height of the hidden extractor hood over the oven. Along with the considered green/pink/white colour scheme it makes the whole kitchen’s design scheme logical and clean. The cabinets are painted in Little Greene's ‘Woodland’, while the walls are in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Middleton Pink’.
Michael Sinclair6/16An unusual design catches the eye in the kitchen of Catherine Chichester’s Cotswolds farmhouse, in the form of an open wall unit of shelves bought from Vinterior. This unit is more decorative than practical; it displays ceramics by Robin Walden.
Michael Sinclair7/16Alice Kettle’s newly built house in the foothills of the Mendips in Somerset has suitably contemporary and stylish open shelves which fit in well with the mid-century-inspired joinery cupboards above the window in the kitchen.
Dean Hearne8/16If too many cupboards can make a large wall or space in a kitchen seem monolithic, an unbroken slab of colour, then including a section of open shelves in the centre can be a clever and effective way to punctuate the cupboards – as seen in this instance from artist Daisy Sims-Hilditch’s Notting Hill flat.
Boz Gagovski9/16Where space is at a premium, overhead open shelves can be a godsend, as well as a way in which to avoid suffocating the space. Cupboard doors can feel overbearing or claustrophobic, but open shelves give the impression of more space. They are also vehicles for detail, as Benedict Foley pointed out of the cleverly-designed flat in Hackney that he shares with Daniel Slowik. “We based the kitchen on the sort of details you see in service areas in country houses,” he explained. The shelving is based on the design of the base and feet of a provincial George III cabinet.
Mark Roper10/16Spaces which otherwise might not be suitable for cupboards can be a great opportunity for open shelves. Here, at photographer Harry Carr’s Islington house, shelves have been ingeniously squeezed into the lozenge-shaped nook under the stairs.
Helen Cathcart11/16Sometimes, the simplest of designs are the most effective, and the most aesthetically harmonious. This kitchen by Isabella Worsley in a new build near Chichester has a long and basic open shelf above the countertop, in the same warm tones and material.
Tom Griffiths12/16This Kate Cox-designed kitchen is the perfect illustration of how and why variety and decorative elements should be included in open shelving.
Owen Gale13/16Designer Angelica Squire’s own house employs shelving in the same deep red colour as the joinery around it, with a continuous horizontal focus along the wall, other than a break for the marble splashback. Pictures hang under the bottom shelf in a personal touch.
Owen Gale14/16This house owned by Chris Graves of Clarence & Graves maintains a hierarchy of open shelving: wood for the fire at the bottom, then heavier pots above, a radio and large cookbooks, wine glasses and lesser-used books at the top. The most-used items are easiest to hand, around waist height.
Radu Palicica15/16The owners of this Chelsea house wanted an open, calm kitchen, and the under-counter open shelves add detail and character to the room, while other open shelves on the island have been put behind curtains to avoid it looking too cluttered.
Michael Sinclair16/16The former ice cream factory in Devon owned by the founders of Pinch blends kitchen and dining space by including open shelving along the sideboard which abuts the kitchen countertop.
