Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Every client who walks into a design meeting says the same thing about their pantry: they want it bigger. More shelves. More depth. More square footage pulled from somewhere — the garage, the hallway, the dining room nobody uses. The pantry is the room people have been quietly resenting for years, and a new build feels like the moment to finally fix it.

Here is what we’ve learned after designing over a thousand homes across Omaha and the greater metro: square footage is almost never the problem. The problem is almost always how the space is planned — the shelf depths that are too deep to see the back, the counters at the wrong height, the layout that puts everything out of reach for how a real family actually uses a kitchen.

A well-designed eight-foot pantry outperforms a poorly planned twelve-foot pantry every single time. This is the conversation we have before the walls go up.

01 — The Depth Problem

Twelve inches of shelf you’ll never see again

Standard pantry shelving is typically spec’d at 16 to 20 inches deep. That’s the depth of a grocery shelf at a warehouse store — designed for volume, not visibility. In a home pantry, it means whatever you put at the back is effectively lost. You buy a second jar of pasta sauce because you forgot the one that’s been sitting behind the risotto for three months.

The fix isn’t more shelves — it’s shallower shelves. Twelve-inch shelving lets you see everything in a single row. Nothing hides behind anything else. Pair that with good lighting (an often-forgotten spec) and a pantry half the size of what you imagined will perform better than the cavernous one you were dreaming of.

The exception: lower shelves and counter-height areas can accommodate more depth because you’re looking down into them. This is where you store the large appliances, the backup paper towels, the Costco haul. Graduated depth — shallow up high, deeper at counter level and below — is one of the details that separates a designed pantry from a spec’d one.

→ Upper shelves: 12 inches deep — full visibility, single-row storage
→ Counter height and below: 18–24 inches deep for appliances and bulk storage
→ Shelf spacing: 10–12 inches apart for cans and jars, 14–16 inches for boxes and mixers
→ Lighting: under-shelf LED strips, not just an overhead can — shadows kill visibility

02 — Counter Space

The counter you didn’t know you needed

Most pantry conversations focus entirely on storage. How many shelves. How many cabinets. How many linear feet of wall space. What gets overlooked almost every time is counter space — and it’s often the single addition that changes how a kitchen actually works.

A pantry counter gives you somewhere to land the groceries the moment you walk in from the garage. It becomes the staging area for baking prep, the place where the stand mixer lives unplugged and accessible, the surface where you can decant bulk items without taking over the kitchen island.

In Omaha’s new build market, where most production homes offer a small walk-in closet with shelves and call it a pantry, a counter-height workspace is the detail that signals a properly designed home. It also photographs beautifully — which matters if you’re building with resale in mind.

“The pantry isn’t a storage unit. It’s the engine room of the kitchen. Design it like one.”

— Jenna Friesen, Interior Designer | Structur Design + Interiors

03 — The Workflow Triangle

Where you pantry sits in the plan matters more than its size

This is the detail that gets almost no attention on a new build: the relationship between your pantry, your refrigerator, and your primary prep area. In kitchen design, we call this the work triangle — and it applies just as much to where your pantry lands on the floor plan as it does to appliance placement.

A pantry that’s tucked around a corner, accessed through a door that swings the wrong way, or positioned on the far side of the kitchen from where you actually cook is a pantry you’ll slowly stop using. Items migrate to the counter. Cabinets fill up. The pantry becomes the place you put the things you don’t know where else to put.

The ideal pantry placement: adjacent to the refrigerator, on the path between the garage entry and the kitchen island. Groceries travel a straight line from car to cold storage to counter. No detours, no awkward door holds, no traffic through the cooking zone.

In our drafting process with Omaha-area clients, we review pantry placement relative to the garage entry before the floor plan is finalized. It’s a five-minute conversation that changes how the kitchen functions for the life of the home.

If you can’t unload groceries, open the refrigerator, and reach your pantry without crossing your cooking zone or walking around an island — the pantry is in the wrong place. No amount of custom shelving fixes a layout problem.

04 — Four Pantry Types

Which one fits your life

Not every home needs a walk-in. Not every kitchen has room for a butler’s pantry. The type of pantry that’s right for you depends on how you cook, how often you shop, and what your floor plan can actually accommodate. Here’s how we think about it.

Type 01

The Walk-In

The most versatile. Works as pure storage, or gains a counter and sink to become a full prep space. Requires a minimum of 5×5 feet to be genuinely useful — smaller than that and the door swing consumes too much of the floor area. Best suited to households that buy in bulk or cook frequently from scratch.

Type 02

The Butler’s Pantry

A galley-style pass-through between kitchen and dining room. Ideal for entertaining — it’s where the dishes stage, the bar lives, and the mess disappears when guests arrive. Requires thoughtful door placement and a minimum 42-inch clear width to be comfortable. The secondary appliances (wine fridge, dishwasher, second sink) belong here.

Type 03

The Reach-In

Underrated and under-designed. A well-planned reach-in with pull-out drawers, door-mounted racks, and graduated shelf depths can outperform a walk-in twice its size. Best for smaller floor plans or second kitchens. The mistake here is treating it like a closet — it needs the same planning rigour as any other pantry type.

05 — Before You Commit

The questions to ask before the floor plan is locked

Whether you’re building with a production builder in Elkhorn or Gretna or working with a custom builder across the metro, the pantry conversation needs to happen before the slab is poured — not during selections, and certainly not after framing.

Here are the questions your designer should walk you through:

• Where does the path from the garage to the kitchen run — and is the pantry on it?
• Is there a counter included, or only shelving? Where will your stand mixer live?
• What is the shelf depth, and does it vary by height?
• Is there a dedicated lighting plan, or just one overhead fixture?
• If it’s a walk-in, which way does the door swing — and does it block the most-used section?
• Is there a window? Natural light changes how the pantry functions and how it photographs.
• What appliances are you moving in — and is there outlet placement and counter depth for each one?

Most production builders will make changes to pantry layout at no cost if the request comes early enough. The window for that conversation is short. After framing starts, changes become expensive. After drywall, they become renovations.

Work with Structur

We review every pantry before the floor plan is final.

Our drafting and interior design process includes a full review of your kitchen workflow — pantry placement, counter depth, shelf planning, appliance locations. Based in Elkhorn, serving Omaha, Bennington, Gretna, and nationwide.