11 Ways to Wake Up a Walk-in Pantry

Do you ever open your walk-in or closet-style pantry and think, "I’m so uninspired"? Add some colorful character to that pantry and you just might find yourself opening up the door in a completely different state of mind.

Even the best-laid-out pantries can be a missed design opportunity if they're all white. Sure, white offers a crisp backdrop, but sometimes it gets bo-ring. Here are 11 ideas for using color and mirrored and wooden elements to strike an inspiring tone that makes accessing the pantry a more pleasurable experience.

1. Paint the walls a different color than the shelves. This pantry feels playful with its vibrant blue walls behind a standard shelving system. The color, Benjamin Moore's San Clemente Teal, is unexpected, and it feels like no bad meal could come from the ingredients stored here.

Choose a wall color that evokes the mood you'd like to be in when you come to the pantry after a long day at work.


2. Paint the walls and shelves the same color. The cohesiveness of this pantry keeps things feeling organized. The green is a beautiful color that shows off the white tableware in a way white shelves wouldn’t. Plus, the color is in keeping with the palette of the rest of this historic house.


3. Try a tone-on-tone look. If you use different tones of the same color family, your pantry can be just as elegant as any living space.

See more of this Victorian row house


This pantry has paint in a medium gray (Benjamin Moore's Edgecomb Gray) that punctuates the lighter paint (Gray Owl) of the kitchen and draws the user into its peaceful surroundings.


4. Add an accent wall. If you’re not willing to commit your entire pantry to a single color, try adding an accent wall. Energizing orange draws the eye to an organized desk here. This sort of diverting effect comes in handy when the rest of the shelves aren’t shipshape.

Tip: A pantry accent wall is an ideal experiment if you don't feel very confident with colors. Should you decide you can't stand the color, you can paint over it.


This Benjamin Moore Umbria Red accent area inspires more excitement than an all-white pantry would. What better feelings to have than happiness and inspiration when contemplating dinner options?


5. Paint the ceiling. Maybe you're content with your white walls (or you can't imagine the work involved in clearing out all those shelves), but you still need that extra something in your pantry. This ceiling's vibrant hue plays off the wood cabinetry as well as other red details throughout this Victorian home.

By painting only the ceiling, you'll get to enjoy the mood-enhancing benefits of your chosen color with less work than painting all four walls.


6. Install colored shelving. Another twist on color is to keep the walls white but use colored shelving. The gray shelving unit gives this pantry an entirely different aesthetic than that of a white-on-white pantry.

Either choose a system that's already the color you want, or prime and paint bare wooden shelves. Allow the shelves to dry completely before hanging them or adding your foodstuffs.


7. Use mirrors. Mirrors in a pantry are beneficial in ways that painted walls aren't: They add brilliance and create an illusion of more space. Mirrors were added as a backsplash here to cabinets painted in Benjamin Moore's White Dove.


8. Hang wallpaper. Who says wallpaper has to be reserved for formal living spaces? A pantry (and those who use it daily) can benefit just as much from a favorite design.

The vintage-style paper on this wall is from Thibaut, and the subtler print adorning the ceiling is from Schumacher.


For a smaller pantry, a more petite and simpler print will work well. This pantry has a striped wallpaper that gives the illusion of texture.


9. Stencil it. An alternative to wallpaper is to stencil a pantry wall, as shown here. You'll enjoy it every time you open the door.

See the easy way to stencil a wall


10. Embrace what you've got. Sometimes pantries are built out of creatively transformed spaces. Rather than covering up original details — say, old brick — embrace them by keeping them natural or painting them a color you'll enjoy for the long haul.


11. Let wood do the talking. Beadboard paneling (added to Sheetrock) is painted a clean white here. Yes, it's still white, but its texture, along with the shelves' brackets, changes the entire look. Now the pantry is reminiscent of a farmhouse or country store.


Add color to transform vintage-style beadboard.


The designer responsible for this pantry bypassed paint altogether and used higher-grade cabinetry shelving that creates the appearance of a library. It feels inspiring, like great things can manifest from inside it. Imagine, a pantry that takes your cooking confidence to new levels.

Your turn: Please show us your colorful and charismatic pantry!

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