My suggestion is make it as big as you can. I'm amazed at the lack of storage in some new homes. If it ends up more than you need for food, you can always store other things in there (paper goods, household supplies, etc.) We didn't have room for a walk-in, but our laundry room is very close to the kitchen and we put our freezer in there. You will LOVE having the freezer by the kitchen and not in the basement or garage.

:-) When I first saw the subject, I thought you were asking the size of our undergarments. Didn't see that R...

Anyway, we're at the end of the building process, and my pantry is roughly 4x6. There are only 3 of us, and I'm not a big cook, so we don't really need that much food storage. So, I'm putting a desk in one side and the storage shelves across from that with the doors in the middle. So, when you walk in, there is a 4ft desk on the right and a 4ft wall of shelves on the left.

I think the answer to your question is completely personal. Figure out what you want to store in there and size the room for that. If you want a freezer, find out the size of a freezer that you like and make sure that will fit.

Good luck!

My pantry is 7' x 7' which is perfect for our family of 4. However, there would not be room for a freezer in this size pantry IMO. I think you would want it to be at least 10' x 7' if you were going to do a freezer. If you only want shelves on one side, then you can get by with 5' or 6' x 10 feet, but then I think you might want a longer pantry to make up for only having shelves on one side, depending upon what else you will be storing in it.

LOL @ auburnfan. I read it the same way the first time!

I don't have too much advice on pantries though. We'll have two tiny ones and a laundry room next door.

Ours will be 5x8. We are a family of 5.

Ours will be 6X6 and definitely not space for a freezer. Just lots of shelves.

I just saw a walk-in old-fashioned pantry in a Martha Stewart home. It was really nice -- exterior window, permanent painted shelving, glass inset door from the butlers pantry. The "stagers" even filled it full of items that every family uses to show it as a pantry. My estimation is that it was at least 7' wide and probably 10' long.

We just finished designing our new home and I specifically requested space in my laundry room (right off the top of my kitchen) for a freestanding freezer. I absolutely did not want to go into my garage to use my freezer! I will also have a butler's pantry that connects from the lower end of my kitchen into my DR. We will have a wine cooler and a bar area in here. The butler's pantry here connects up in T formation to my mudroom from the garage. The architect has added an additional pantry closet off the butler's pantry area that takes up some space from my mudroom for even more storage. This smaller pantry closet is just off my kitchen. I love that I will have this much storage!

I built a pantry 5.5' x 12' and it is just enough. 20" shelves stacked 5 high on the right and they filled up fast with paper towels, food, sundrees. Brooms, vac, tools, cans on the left and not much room to spare. If you can afford it make it that big.

I just sold a house with a pantry that was too small! I like to have lots of food on hand ~~ just in case. Our pantry is 6x18. There will be cabinets on one end with a sink and dishwasher, shelves and our extra fridge on the other end. I can hardly wait.

Thanks for all the replies! This is helpful. I just really needed somewhere to start. It also really helps to see what people store in there to get ideas. We will have a pretty open floor plan, so I know I am not thinking of everything. We will have some storage space in the mudroom also.

Because of the curve of our house I have some space in the corner of the kitchen that made for unusable space. Well unless I wanted cabinets that I cant reach into the back of. Even then there would be unusable space. So i decided to make a WIP. It wont be very big but big enough for 2 people plus it will house a station for my coffee maker, toaster and microwave. That way I wont have them on my kitchen counter. Im having water in there to fill the coffee pot since the refrigator water will be right next to it.
Im not making my shelves very deep, prob 6in to a ft.

Just completed a 3,100 s.f. house with a pantry 7' deep by 4' wide, plus a servery and corridor. Lots of shelves, no room for freezer. Placing a freezer in such a small space, you will get quite a heat buildup.

If it had been my home, I would not have added the pantry. The 4'7" width came right off the dimensions of the dining room.

That's probably why I rarely see separate pantries on new homes.

My floor plan has a pantry 7'-6" X 5'-6" opened to 7'-6" X 7'-6" laundry room. In between both rooms there is a small broom closet. If it were up to me it would have been bigger. But every foot here and there is more money! Our kitchen is a decent size 15'-8" X 13'-4" with an Island. Hope this helps.

Ours is tiny, like 4'x4' or maybe 4'x5'. It looked ok on paper but not so much now. But since I really don't cook that often, or at least elaborate meals that take lots of prep and ingredients I think it will actually work fine. I don't have a pantry at all right now so anything's better than that!

There are things we say in building our home that we did "right" and some "not so right". In our old house where we lived for 21 years, all I had was a large double kitchen cupboard for all my can goods. The pantry in our new home is 12' x 6" and is one of those things we "really did right". We have a finished cabinet so if the pantry door is left open it still looks nice. Then to the side of that we have on each wall an open cabinet where I store my cans and small appliances I want to use but not often. At the end of the room is a window for light.

I say if you can swing it. Do it.

Beautiful pantry, kats! We're also doing the same concept of an "open" pantry, but we'll have an arched opening in lieu of a door. Ours will be 8 x 10 with uppers and lowers (to match our kitchen cabinets) and a sink at the back wall. Here's the layout (kitchen, pantry, dining room):

we have a 3,600 sq. ft. house and we did a 10-1/2 foot long and five foot wide pantry. It's perfect. Lots of shelves and plenty of room for everything.

Current house, pantry is about 6x3, converted from a laundry nook. Door is centered on the long side, so there are shelves on 3 sides.

New house, it will be a bit smaller [builder messed up], about 4.5x3, shelves on 3 sides, light on automatic: door open=lights on.

Using it to store food items only, a pantry in this range holds way, way more than you might think, if you mix up the spacing to accomodate different height items [actually makes it easier to find what you need-- canned tomatoes aren't on the tall shelves for cereal boxes, vice versa].

I do keep paper items, light bulbs, etc. in the laundry, though. Rarely used items like springform pans and turkey roasters have to live in the laundry, too.

But used for food, this size hold enough that [for most households] a real effort will have to be made to keep using the stock before it gets a little stale. I like a pantry that I can inventory at a glance, so I can instantly tell if I'm low on/out of a particular ingredient, etc. Pantry space isn't public space: I want open shelves only so nothing comes between me and my food.

I'd argue that there IS such a thing as too much storage: it tends to fill up when you aren't looking, and you have to dig and paw to find anything.

Part of the equation is your kitchen, though: I'll have about 17 feet of base cabs[not including corners, DW etc.] in the new house, a %50 increase over the current house. so the springforms may come back from exile. If I had a smaller kitchen, I'd want a bigger pantry... or maybe a second, similar sized space for the springforms, waffle irons, etc.

I have a 13'x17' kitchen and a 12'x6' pantry, that will have a sink and a DW in it. It will have a wall of base cabinets, with an L and a wall of upper cabs with the L having open shelves. I think if I wanted to get an upright freezer in there, I would have had to give up the open shelves. I put my freezer in our laundry room, which is closer to the garage anyway. The pantry has pocket doors and a window above the sink. It is to the left in this photo, with the kitchen island to the front.

I thnk it depends on the size of the house/bedrooms/people living in the house and how many kitchen cabinets you'll have. Some open kitchens have almost no cabinets at all.
I think it also depends on whether your a kitchen gadget person and/or canned goods person vs. frozen foods person.
FWIW, I found that having lots of kitchen space allowed lots of cans and when I moved and went through them, many had actually expired.
Also, is this where you'll be storing brooms etc?

We haven't started building yet, but our design calls for a 10' x 12'. It will have lots of shelves for food, gift wrapstoarge and wrapping station, a freezer, a station for feeding the cats, a wine rack, vertical storage for framed pictures not on the wall, drawers for tablecloths, mats, etc and a small island. We are a bit out in the country, so we tend to shop at Sams/Costco once or twice a month and buy in bulk. The pantry will not have a window as it will double as a safe room (important in tornado-prone Oklahoma).

Everyone I ever talked to who has built a house has said to build more storage than I think we will need.

I'm not sure I'd want my safe room to have all that heavy stuff on shelves to potentially come tumbling down.

We're putting 4' shallow pantries on either side of a cased opening. One will be used for food storage and the other for small appliances and seldom used cookware/dishes. Currently we have a deep pantry and I'm really looking forward to not having to "dig" to find things.

There will be a seperate 7' closet in the laundry room for cleaning supplies, brooms, and paper products, etc.

kats

A handsome pantry indeed. Only a shame to hide it away!

Thanks worthy and vineyard. Like I said, I've never had a decent pantry before and I just love what we've done. Personally, I hate doors that scream "PANTRY" on them so I did a frosted 9 lite marginal. Now when the door is closed I can turn on the pantry's under cabinet light at night and it gives a great shadow effect.

I must be missing the pantry gene.

Unless you don't have enough convenient upper cabinets in your kitchen, or you have a very large family, or you are many miles from grocery stores -- do you really need a separate place to store dry goods? I don't get it. Why walk into another space to fetch ingredients, or 'stock twice', moving things from storage to cabinets?

Pantries were originally needed because kitchens didn't have cabinets and people bought in bulk because it was difficult to reach a grocery. There were no frozen foods.

Do small familes with modern kitchens who live near groceries need separate pantries? I don't understand wanting 'nothing' on my kitchen countertops either. My kitchen is where I USE my coffeemaker, toaster-oven, etc. every day. don't want to have to go to another room to use them, nor do they need to be 'hidden'. To me "kitchen" is where you cook and where you use "kitchen" gadgets. My kitchen isn't posing for 'House Beautiful' every day and my house isn't on the market. (No need to pretend the kitchen isn't used.)

I understand needing to store things. I have a back hall with a 30" X 9-foot closet for that. Double 36" doors. All sorts of things are in there, just not many kitchen-related items: Paper goods, vac hose & attachments, mops, buckets, DR table leaf, ironing board. There's a rod to hang drip-dry and some coats. The only food in there is a sack of potatoes!

How often do y'all go to your pantries? Do you have little storage right IN your kitchen?

The FREEZER I can understand! If we were more than two now and if our grocery was not four minutes away, I'd try to convince myself that the added electric cost was worth buyng a separate freezer.

I have a walk in pantry and I like it 100% better than the pantry cabinets that I had in my old house. I do not move things from the pantry to kitchen cabinets. The only food items I keep in our kitchen cabinets are spices and fruit that is in a bowl on the counter. Everything else that does not need refrigeration goes and stays in the pantry. My pantry is just a few steps from my kitchen island where I do my prep. When I am cooking/baking, I go to the pantry and take out everything I need and place it on the island and then put it back in the pantry when I am done. I can walk into the middle of my 7' x 7' pantry and see everything that is in there. I find that with a pantry where everything is in plain view that I actually keep less food in the house because nothing gets lost in there so I don't think that I'm out of something when I'm not. It is also nice for storing bulk items, big appliances that aren't used very often like my nesco roaster, deep fat fryer, crock pot, bread maker, etc. (if I kept all that stuff on teh counter I would not have any work area left!) Also, it is cheaper storage than kitchen cabinets and I just find it to be easier to access things in a pantry than in cabinets. And yes, I do have fewer kitchen cabinets than I would if I had not had a pantry which enabled me to have a larger eating area in my kitchen. But it is a personal preference thing.

The house we are building is quite far from the grocery store so we planned a large pantry, 6'6" x 17'4". A corner is taken up by the water heater ( walled off though ). There will be a freezer in there and lots of shelves and a window for light. There is also a door out of it to the outside so we can pull the car up and unload right into the pantry.

kats - I love your house!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats all I have to say about that. ;-)

Not sure how big out pantry is. Looked big on paper, not so much now. BUT we have a ton of cabinet space. I bet over 50% of my cabinets will be empty when we get moved in. I don't care though, better to have to many then not enough. I think our pantry will do though. It is bigger then I have ever had to I am happy!

chisue,
I'm 100% in agreement with carolyn53562. I've lived with every can good I own stacked in an upper cabinet. I've lived with a plethora of appliances on my counters. I like my new way better. My family consists of DH and myself. I DO have lots of cabinets, both upper and lowers. Before my pantry cabinets were built I had all my can goods in the cabinets right next to my cooktop. Having the pantry finished is just ten-fold easier. I can see everything I have. I don't lose items anymore or start to make something only to realize I'm out of an ingredient. I'm more creative because I know what I have. I don't over buy. I find I use my small appliances more because they're easy to find and easy to put away. No searching for anything. Plus I'm more "emergency" organized. We get snowed-in occasionally, we live 400 feet from the San Andreas earthquake fault and we're miles from the nearest store. On the other hand I have TP and cleaning supplies in each of the bathrooms. My central vac brooms are in the closet where the unit is. My dog food is in the pantry with the rest of the "family" foods. You keep all that stuff in a huge closet. Doesn't matter whether you call it a closet or a pantry. Doesn't matter what you put in them or where they're located so long as they make your life easier. :)

kelntx,
Thank you for that very nice compliment!

What do you all think about converting a coat closet in the front hallway (right across from the kitchen) into a pantry? I can't get used to the idea, but my friend suggested it when I looked at a home last nite to buy. She thinks it would work great. Don't have a ton of money to remodel kitchen, and I can't live without a pantry.