Definitely walk in if you have the space in your floorplan (especially for new construction). With the walkin or reduced depth pantries with doors everything is visible and you can plan space for brooms, infrequently used appliances, and bulk storage. Walkin pantries have standard household doors which will last for decades. Downsides of pullouts are that they can move abruptly, which can cause items to shift or tip over. They are also are more fragile since the glides bear a lot of weight even with reinforcement. I can certainly imagine restless kids or grandkids slamming the pullout pantry closed or trying to climb up the shelves like a ladder.

I am just now reading all these amazing comments. We were going to sell our 5 bedroom house and build a “smaller” 2B2B barndominium, but plans changed due to my dad getting sick and not wanting us to move away from me. So we have decided to renovate what we have and incorporate the things I wanted into this house but I have no clue where to start. This house had NO storage. We have extra rooms I want to make one a butlers pantry that connects to my kitchen and the other I want to make a master closet. Any ideas would be appreciated

"I still need to go through everything I have and decide what exactly will go in the pantry and what will be stored in the kitchen. I need to get on that. I noticed as I was cooking this weekend that I have all of my oils, vinegars, etc in the current pantry. I also have all my baggies & wraps in the pantry. I need to make a space for all of that in the kitchen. Time to go through everything and start figuring out exactly where it should be stored!" There's an entire thread on that now (http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/4840159/adjacent-pantry-what-food-do-you-keep-in-kitchen#20664933) so you can see how different people have set things up. Most commonly, it seems people keep the things they use most frequently in the kitchen, and store less commonly used things, extras of things, and small appliances in their pantry. Much like setting up which drawers or cupboards to use for your pots/pans/utensils, don't be afraid to change your mind about those things, and any decision you make now does not need to be set in stone. It took me a few weeks to set things up, and I changed things a couple of times in the next month, trying to find what felt natural and made sense to me when I worked (not what made sense on paper).

Hey Kadi, You probably have to reflect on how you live and how you want to use the space. A ton of people will tell you that pantry is huge and what a waste yada yada. My wife and I are preparing to build a house and after much debate.... the walk through pantry is 16'x6.5'. This is its own special place in the house and we want it to be absolutely beautiful. You have a very similar size to ours. We will do full depth counters around the outside wall (Big L shape) and either 12" or 18" deep shelving or cabinets on the inside wall, which is about 10' in length. 3.5' walkway. We plan using a library ladder so we can put shelves up to the ceiling, which is 10' high. We'll also be roughing in a sink, but we may just put one in. Haters will hate, this is a huge pantry and would be a 3 sink kitchen for a 2 person house hold. We're not rich. We just love to cook and we love to cook together so we put serious thought into what we want our future work space to look like for years to come. Our kitchen/living space (open floor plan) is a serious priority for us in our design. We have received all sorts of feedback about our pantry, a lot of it negative. Those people did give us hesitation at first, but maybe ask to see their kitchens/ pantries and talk about how they cook, as then you can most likely dismiss their advice. We realized that the majority of kitchens we went through belonged to people that store more "food" than ingredients. My spreadsheet has 30 appliances on it that should either be on the counter, or easily accessible. Almost all of these things (microwave, toaster, coffee maker etc) go in the pantry as we do not want any counter clutter in the actual kitchen. When we have the space we generally have 5 types of flour, 5 types of sugar, a huge variety of chilies, nuts, beans, lentals, etc. We want everything to have its place and every ingredient to be easily accessible. We are minimizing over head cabinetry in the kitchen - I prefer the cleaner look and my wife is short and anything but the very first shelf is wasted space without a step ladder or her sous chef (me). All of that said... Maybe you have too small of pantry? Maybe you need a sink in there for the coffee maker and quick wipe downs? Only you will know. :-)