Mine has a single 24" door (top and bottom). Do you really want to have to open two doors, pull out the rollouts, then close two doors every time you need to get anything out? Trust me, a 24" door is not too wide -- especially on a tall cabinet.

I would say the answer relies in the amount of space you have behind you when you open a door with a 24" radius instead of 12" you are lazy if it really makes or breaks your day to have to open one extra door. No wonder why americans tend to be on the heavy side! I would make my decisions on space considerations more than anything else. Many manufacturers offer cabinets in 24" in single door or butt door (double door no piece of wood behind the doors where they meet) I would say the look is ok either way for most consumers. Most of the time there is very little price difference between 1 door and 2. If anything 2 doors should be slightly more. It depends on how the cabinet maker charges for it.

I would say then to jenva then order the pantry with roll out drawers instead of doors with roll out trays. Not every semi custom company offers this but it will be cheaper as a rull of thumb. Base cabinets with roll out trays are normall slightly more then the same cabinet in 3 drawers. There is more than 1 way to skin a chicken!

Our 24 inch pantry has two doors above countertop level, and two more below countertop level. If you click through on the link below, you can see it closed. Keep going through the photo album, and you'll find a photo with the top doors open to show the rollout shelves behind.

The thing I like about it is that I can stand quite close to the front, and open the doors. I would think that with a single 24-inch wide door, I'd have to step back to open it (to get out of the way of the swing of the door) and then step forward to put something inside.

We have countertop just to the left of the pantry. When we are getting multiple things out, it is easy to set them on the counter, and then close the doors when we are done. It does require both hands to close them, and sometimes they wait a few minutes before I get back to them to close them... but it doesn't bother me.

I will say that it was tricky for our installer to adjust the doors so that they would butt together properly when closed.

Here is a link that might be useful: our pantry

I have four, 24-inch doors on my island, with nearly 24-inch deep rollouts inside. I find them very convenient and functional--so much so, in fact, that I'm finding it difficult to follow the advice everyone gives on this forum (i.e., to replace them with drawers when I replace my cabinets), by that's another issue :-). Personally, I could imagine wanting narrower doors only if: (a) I was trying to do something special aesthetically via the narrow doors, or (b) I didn't have sufficient space to open a 24-inch door comfortably--in which case I'd want to rethink the 24-inch deep pantry closet, because it would be difficult to access the rollouts, too!

Eastbaymom, thank you for the photos. You have a beautiful kitchen.

I will have plenty of room to open the single door as the pantry will be on a separate wall next to the fridge, about 40+ inches across from the peninsula countertop. I like the look of 2 doors but the convenience of one door is also pulling at me.

I have the single 24" pantry door (large one at floor level and a smaller one above) and it is great! In my house, with a husband and three boys, more doors are more doors to leave open! With the pantry they usually close it because it is large. Another plus is that I used one large bar pull horizontally on it and that bar pull is incredibly useful as a towel bar and for hanging other things.

Our current broom closet is 24" with single partial inset doors (so the doors are more like 22"---one big one below, one small one above)---but I love having the single door. (We're actually copying this cabinet pretty exactly in the remodel--just moving it!) 90% of the time I'm getting something out that would require opening both doors anyway if there were two---that's what would make the difference for me. If you can envision lots of things you might get by opening just one of two doors, then it might make sense to have two. But if you think you'd be using the rollouts most of the time (and thus would need to open both anyway), I'd much rather have a single door. One thing to open, one thing to close.

If I step out of the way of the door, it's not consciously (I don't think I do at all, but will have to pay closer attention next time!) I would also never have guessed our door was as big as it is until I broke out the measuring tape when we started doing cabinet specs for the new kitchen....I imagine you'll quickly get used to it either way.

our walk in pantry has one single 24" solid door that opens out into the kitchen. we mounted a rack of narrow shelves on the inside of that door to have easy access to commonly used pantry items - ketchup, mustard, etc. If you don't open the pantry door all the way, the opening is a little narrow with the shelves mounted on the inside of the door, but still easy enough to walk in and walk out of. Love the storage. would do it again for sure!

We have 2 pantries, one is 36" wide and one is 24" wide. Both have double doors on the top portion. Since we use the 24" cabinet as a baking cabinet, I leave it open a lot---the narrow doors allow me to do this. I know there's a lot of skepticism about opening 2 doors vs one but I find it easier to swing narrow doors out of the way of roll outs than I do larger doors. Our 36" wide pantry handles our canned and jarred goods and since I have certain items I use often and lots that I like to have on hand for occasional use, I find that I usually just have to open one of the doors and grab since I put my favorite items in front. The shelves on the 24" pantry get rolled out more often.

I wish I could remember the measurement of my old upper cabinet door that extended out far enough to knock my nose. That was too wide. Get out a measuring tape and stand next to an existing cupboard, then measure where your nose is from the cupboard. That's too wide.