Kitchens Without Wall Cabinets?
Achieving a workable balance between competing requirements in a kitchen is a large part of what kitchen designers do. For example, all good kitchens provide abundant natural light and ample convenient storage. A lot of the most useful storage is in cabinets attached to the walls of the kitchen.
Large kitchen windows produce a light, airy kitchen but eliminate space for wall cabinets. Precisely where the windows go. So, if a kitchen has a lot of wall cabinets, it cannot have many windows. If it has many windows, it has to do without a lot of convenient wall storage.
Wall cabinets are unquestionably useful storage, but with drawbacks. A major disadvantage is that wall cabinets make a kitchen seem smaller by closing in the space at eye level — which is where we subconsciously judge how large the space around us is. The typical rank of identical cabinets marching along the wall of a kitchen with the precise alignment of a Marine Corps drill team creates what is in effect walls within the walls of the kitchen, really closing the space in.
Small kitchens in particular can greatly benefit from the perception of a larger room that results from not using wall cabinets. But smaller kitchens are also almost always desperate for more storage. The smaller the kitchen, the more acute the storage need, and the stronger the temptation to use at least some wall cabinets to meet the need.
So, which way to go. No wall cabinets, lots of windows for a more open, lighter, airier kitchen. Wall cabinets, fewer windows for more storage but a room that seems smaller and more closed in. Hummmm!
These custom 30" deep base cabinets (36" at the sink) create more countertop space, allow 16"-deep rather than the standard 12" wall cabinets, and have room for an appliance garage or two with enough room in front of the garage be useful for kitchen tasks. The ideal solution, of course, is a kitchen that combines both: plenty of convenient storage while eliminating most if not all wall cabinets for more light and openness. How to do this is, of course, the problem, but a solvable problem using creative design and the innovative storage solutions that have become available in recent years.
