Home Q&A: Should I get rid of wall cabinets in my galley kitchen?

Answer

Don’t panic — it’s not a binary decision. There are multiple ways to tease open your kitchen with long areas of liberated wall while retaining some blind storage where you really need it. 

Wall cabinets began to drop from kitchen design in 2022 with a new enthusiasm for featured runs of base cabinetry that allowed available light to flow through large and even smaller single and double galley kitchen layouts. 

There’s no doubt they are something of a visual bully in their traditional conception, with a solid door, and can make the transition between a kitchen and open-plan living area a little clumsy.

Still, this rush to the barely dressed wall is curious as wall cabinets can be visually tamed if not physically eliminated in a number of creative ways. Keep their depth to 30cm for example, add clear or reeded glass doors and internal lighting, and break down their bulky intrusion with open shelving and break-front designs for more architectural interest. Take them closer to the ceiling, and lose fussy handles replacing them with flip-up doors on gas-gentled soft-close mechanisms. 

Anything that teases open that typical huddle of 2-3 long-bodied, 600mm wide wall-huggers with solid doors should be looked at before it all hits the floor. The open storage celebrated by taking down those wall cabinets takes discipline to maintain in neat order. 

Kitchens contain a lot of unsightly stuff that’s not fit for going on show. It’s reasonable to ask — where are you going to stash it? What are your needs (after a reasonable spring purge)? 

If you’re uneasy at the idea of taking down your wall cupboards because of the loss of storage, you’re not wrong. With a renovation, now is the time to reconfigure, but losing every wall cabinet may not be appropriate, logical or ergonomic for this space. 

If you have brick or stone walling, it’s a pity to shroud it in resinous boxes. Could you open it to deep shelving over the counters and curate things you would enjoy looking at as you cook?

Consider bringing that ballast back to a super-sized pantry cupboard that could skim the ceiling and take up just 500mm-1200mm of floor. With double doors, these units are the super-stars of today’s kitchen, and in a roomy version can even make way for a dedicated desk area or cafe zone for a larger coffee maker and all its courtiers. 

One large, compartmentalised unit with a vertical thrust is often far less problematic than a terrace of wall cupboards forming an oppressive canyon in a galley. Pantries used as a ceiling-high bulwark wall are also a practical way to put a full stop on the end of a long run of counter over base cabinets that would otherwise just form a cul-de-sac. This partition can mark the end of the kitchen and the start of a small laundry area by the back door.

Depending on the composition of your kitchen and surrounding spaces, an even wider living wall of storage in an on-frame design can ingest six to eight wall cabinets' worth. Just keep in mind, as you would with any tall cupboard that the contents should be ordered with your everyday necessities at waist level where they are easier to grab. Look around for other areas beckoning for a role. 

Ask your designer for ideas in deep drawers, and slender metal shelving that pull out completely — often so much easier to detail and access than a high cabinet. Large drawers set under islands and peninsulas can often take weight from the walls, allowing the principal walls over the main counters to carry artwork, beautiful tiling, dramatic digitally printed back-splashes or whatever you fancy.

Because a wall is not carrying three metres of MDF boxes does not preclude it from offering storage, and long, floating shelves, structural niches, and narrow ledges are often introduced as singles or staggered up the walls for ornamental display, cookbooks, plants and larger, prettier pieces of the batterie-de-cuisine. So, what do you have to lose? 

Well, apart from the cubic metres of storage at a handy eye-level and arm’s reach, there’s a handy niche for a ceiling or wall-mounted extractor fan over the hob for starters. Very 2025, a new hob with counter-level venting could take over that role. I’ve never seen an extractor fan I’ve thirsted to launch out into the middle of my kitchen’s airspace. They are often bulky, and oppressive and create unwelcome obstacles in our line of sight. 

If you’re very ambitious and the wall without high cabinets is suitable, there’s the chance to introduce a new window through an outside wall (planning is likely needed, and an engineer’s eye is most definitely required).

Artificial lighting is something you need to rethink if you’ve used hidden units beneath the bottom edge of your top cabinets. Wall-mounted directional lights or LED strip lighting (again, making use of that floating shelf we can now enjoy) can work well in their stead. Without a cupboard intruding, you can really lean into that space, recovering areas of the counter and setting up taller appliances like a KitchenAid mixer. 

You know that feeling when your sink is set under a window? It’s open and airy, it lifts the spirits. I would argue that if your kitchen flows into a utility area, wall cabinets make fantastic use of the available room. Don’t feel pressed to throw those into the skip. 

The wall with the sink, possibly at a window, can be really lifted by taking down the boxes otherwise around your ears on that wall. Keep high cabinetry on the other side of the galley, and think of a pale colour, even white to lighten the hovering load.