Small Kitchen

Living with a small kitchen is invariably frustrating, whether you’re a diehard gourmand or the type of person who uses the oven as wardrobe overflow. Spatial gymnastics, like chopping vegetables on a counter the size of a postage stamp or sucking in your stomach to navigate the passage between your refrigerator and kitchen island, can get old—fast. But being short on square footage should never inhibit the design potential of your kitchen. In fact, you might be surprised by the myriad methods out there to make even the most pint-size of cooking areas look and feel grand.

“Always extend your cabinets to the ceiling no matter the size of your kitchen, ” advises Lauren Buxbaum Gordon, a partner at Nate Berkus Associates. “It will make your ceilings feel higher and your kitchen bigger.” She recently incorporated this spatial trick into a Manhattan apartment with a tiny kitchen. If sky-high cupboards aren’t possible (we hear you renters), Buxbaum Gordon recommends thinking small: “Invest in details that will add up visually and feel impactful. Whether beveling or adding a brass band to the face of the countertop or bringing in vintage hardware…use these little details to make your personal imprint.”

Swapping a dreary paint shade for a light-and-bright one on your cupboards can go a long way too, in addition to a bevy of other tips and tricks. So we’ve rounded up 81 small kitchens from our archive to show you precisely how. Read on to see gorgeous homes that make the most of their small layouts with bold cabinetry, double-duty accent pieces, sleek lighting solutions, and more.

Diy Small Kitchen Makeover

This Victorian farmhouse in the Oxfordshire, England, digs of Toast CEO Suzie de Rohan Willner may be on the small side, but it sings with country charm. Bright green lower cabinets help the eye to zip around the space, while open shelving allows for smart storage and display of chic knickknacks.

The client of this Manhattan apartment doesn’t use her small galley-style kitchen that often, but that didn’t keep designer Lauren Buxbaum Gordon from making it a showpiece. Her signature move? To extend the cabinetry all the way up to the soaring period ceilings. Light countertops and a glossy white paint job let sunshine into the room, but it’s the gleaming gold hardware and accents that really make this small kitchen a winner.

When you’re working with a 16th-century townhouse, like French designer Eric Allart did, you have to embrace the period quirks. This kitchen came complete with terra-cotta tiles. Rather than rip them out, Allart kept them in place and designed a quirky kitchen in unexpected hues to complement them. Here, an inky tile backsplash refracts sunlight, and a Pepto-pink shade on the walls and ceilings works to move the eye upward.

Make A Small Kitchen Look Larger With These Clever Design Tricks

This apartment, designed by New York firm Husband Wife, employs Buxbaum Gordon’s towering kitchen cabinet rule. But rather than resort to the usual all-white, the designers clad the walls in a swirling marble and coated the cabinets in the dreamiest shade of glossy cream paint. It’s the perfect combo of classic and contemporary.

A small area didn’t stop Nate Berkus from incorporating a diminutive table and chairs (a vintage architect’s desk and school chairs) into his former Chicago kitchen. The metal cabinets were original to the 1929 apartment and pack in just the right amount of industrial-chic storage.

You’d never believe it, but this Provincetown, Massachusetts, cottage started life out as a humble fishing shack. Designer David Cafiero embraced the nautical theme throughout the house, including in this pint-size galley kitchen, which was modeled after a ship’s cooking space.

Top Small Kitchen Design Ideas In The Indian Style Under 100 Sq. Ft

This Brooklyn apartment is blessed with super-tall ceilings and tons of natural light. Designer Danielle Fennoy of Revamp Interior Design amped up the airiness in the combined kitchen and dining area with vibrant jolts of jewel-toned colors, including with this emerald green backsplash (which replaced the original, developer-installed white subway tile) and retro-chic Knoll dining chairs reupholstered in scarlet, “nightclub ready” Ultraleather.

Like most busy New Yorkers, the resident of this Manhattan apartment doesn’t have time to cook often, but that doesn’t mean the kitchen plays second fiddle to the rest of the home. Instead Sarah Mendel and Risa Emen of Cochineal Design converted the space into a functional showpiece of its own, with bold marble and cabinets lacquered in Farrow & Ball’s sultry Preference Red. Bonus: It’s the perfect nook for displaying the client’s collection of ceramics.

Sometimes it’s best to embrace the chaos. And we can’t think of a better example than this jubilant kitchen nook belonging to William Cullum, the senior designer at Jayne Design Studio, and his partner Jeffery Rhodes. A hot-pink Victorian-era pie safe-houses antique serveware, while a goat sculpture (formerly a display fixture at Saks Fifth Avenue) cheekily guards the fridge (camouflaged in whimsical artwork) against midnight snack marauders. In this space anything truly goes, as long as you do you.

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Just because you have a miniature cooking space doesn’t mean you need to forgo areas to prep and dine. The trick is to think small, as with this diminutive kitchen island in an apartment designed by Nicholas Obeid. With vintage stools tucked beneath and a pair of Allied Maker pendants hung above, this vignette has all the impact of its sprawling suburban cousins.

We love how this kitchen, in a family-friendly Brooklyn apartment for the cofounders of Civilian, packs in plenty of storage with whimsical details. The custom island, topped with an eye-catching piece of marble, doubles as a repository to stash cookbooks and dinnerware, while the cherry-red hood (also custom) adds a fun postmodern pop.

We’ve been seeing lacquered cabinets everywhere lately and this chic example, located in a Paris pad designed by Hugo Toro, proves that the finish can add extra oomph to even the smallest of spaces. In addition to the glossy coat, in a custom shade of burnt sienna from Redfield & Dattner, Toro incorporated handsome brass finishes (just check out that ceiling!) and bold marble on the walls, countertops, and ceilings.

Beautiful Small Kitchen Designs And Ideas You'll Love

Relying on a light palette is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to creating the illusion of space, and with good reason. Here, in the Washington, D.C., home of Dan Sallick and Elizabeth Miller, feathery marble, crisp white cabinets, and warm timber details work in concert to foster the airiest of cooking nooks. The inky David Weeks chandelier adds a graphic touch.

Sure, green and black kitchens have been trending in recent years, but we love this happy pale lavender version in the Milan apartment of Lisa Corti. The hue works to delineate the space, which the textile designer further personalized with open shelves, knickknacks (we love the framed photo of the cat), and a sky-blue table.

Who says thinking inside the box is a bad thing? It certainly isn’t in this sculptural kitchen in a Los Angeles bungalow designed by LAUN. A green lacquered volume not only is a chic way to camouflage the refrigerator, it also serves as a handy device to break up the home’s mostly open floor plan. High-shine brass cladding around the sink and cabinets, meanwhile, amplifies the room, not to mention gives the scheme a glam Midas touch.

Small Kitchen Design And Decorating Ideas For Your Home

Not all of us can say we live in a refurbished 1970s geodesic dome, like hatmaker Nick Fouquet, but there are still spatial lessons to be gleaned from the kitchen: Instead of fighting the quirky architecture, Fouquet embraced it, creating a faceted cooking area and echoing the building’s geometries in the island. He even installed shelving in the triangular-shaped structural elements.

Even though designer and paint entrepreneur Nicole Gibbons has a small New York apartment, she made her kitchen feel light and airy by painting the walls an ever-so-subtle duck egg. A petite breakfast nook—complete with its own tiny gallery wall—makes the most of her square footage and her budget, with a small table from Amazon and Marcel Breuer–style chairs.

This kitchen in a secluded alpine getaway may be small, but its smart spatial solutions (we love the hanging shelves above the sink) and strong material palette of locally sourced stone and timber allow this cozy cooking space to punch above its weight.

Welcome To Our Best Small Kitchen Design Ideas

A pint-size space is a good excuse to go bold (take the humble powder room, for example), and a kitchen is no exception. In this truly one-of-a-kind kitchen in a St. Petersburg apartment, designer Tim Veresnovsky covered the walls, cabinets, and chair in a black-and-white striped eucalyptus veneer.

The high-shine, high-contrast brass finish on the cabinets in this Milanese kitchen creates the illusion of more space and gives the whole open-concept space some Midas-tinged glam.

Anna Fixsen, Deputy Digital Editor at ELLE DECOR, focuses on how to share the best of the design world through in-depth reportage and online storytelling. Prior to joining the staff, she has held positions at Architectural Digest, Metropolis, and Architectural Record magazines.

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