Closed pantry cabinets are where food goes to be forgotten. Something gets pushed to the back, hidden behind three cans of chickpeas you bought because you couldn't remember if you already had chickpeas, and six months later you're pulling out an expired box of quinoa you forgot existed. The whole system depends on you remembering what's behind the door, and nobody does.
Open kitchen open shelving in a pantry fixes this by removing the door entirely. Everything is visible. Everything is accessible. You can see at a glance that you have four cans of chickpeas and zero excuses for buying a fifth.
Here's how to set it up so it actually works and doesn't just become an open display of disorganized food.
Sizing: Depth Matters More Here Than Anywhere Else
Pantry shelves hold items that vary wildly in size. A spice jar is 2" deep. A cereal box is 4". A stand mixer is 14". Trying to fit all of that on shelves at the same depth either wastes space or leaves things hanging over the edge.
The approach that works best is varying depth by shelf height.
Bottom shelves (below counter height): 10" to 12" deep. This is where the heavy, bulky stuff lives. Appliances, large jars, stockpots, serving platters, baskets of produce. You need the depth and you need the weight capacity. A loaded bottom shelf with canned goods, a dutch oven, and a bag of flour can hit 50 to 70 lbs easily. Solid wood floating shelves on the Hovr bracket at 150 lbs per stud handle the weight without flinching.
Mid-height shelves (counter to eye level): 8" to 10" deep. Oils, vinegars, sauces, canned goods, pasta boxes, cereal. These items are medium-sized and you want to see every label without reaching behind a row of taller items. Pulling depth back to 8" or 10" keeps the front edge from blocking your sightline to the shelf above.
Upper shelves (above eye level): 6" to 8" deep. Light, small, infrequently used items. Spice jars, tea boxes, specialty ingredients you use twice a year. Shallower depth at height means you can see what's up there without craning your neck, and it keeps the overall wall from feeling like it's leaning toward you.
For a deeper breakdown by room and use case, the guide on choosing the right depth covers all of it.
Spacing: Give Tall Items Room to Breathe
Pantry items come in heights that range from a 3" spice tin to a 14" stand mixer. If you space every shelf equally at 12", you'll fit most dry goods but you'll be tilting cereal boxes sideways and your olive oil bottles will be jammed against the shelf above.
Bottom shelves: 14" to 16" apart. Accommodate stand mixers, tall bottles, and anything bulky that needs clearance.
Mid shelves: 12" to 14" apart. Covers most canned goods, sauce bottles, pasta boxes, and jars.
Upper shelves: 10" to 12" apart. Spice jars, tea boxes, small containers. Tighter spacing up high lets you fit more rows on the wall without wasting vertical space.
The spacing guide covers the full method: measure the tallest item per shelf, add 2" to 3" of buffer, and plan the full layout on paper before drilling. Ten minutes with a tape measure saves you from the "I have five shelves and only four fit" problem.
Walk-In Pantry vs. Pantry Closet vs. Open Wall
The layout changes depending on what kind of pantry space you're working with.
Walk-in pantry: You've got two or three walls to work with. Run shelves on each wall at different depths: deeper on the back wall (10" to 12") where you're facing items head-on, shallower on the side walls (6" to 8") so you're not bumping shelves with your elbows when you walk in. Shelves cut to your pantry's exact dimensions make the most of every inch. Measure the front and the back of each wall, because nothing in a house is square. Order 1/8" shorter than the shortest measurement, leaving 1/16" gap per side.
Pantry closet (reach-in): Usually one wall, 24" to 36" wide. Two or three shelves stacked vertically, 10" deep, handle most pantry staples. The depth limit is the closet itself, so you're working within whatever the builder gave you. If the closet has a corner, a pair of corner shelves butted together catches that dead space.
Open wall pantry (no door, no closet): This is the one that doubles as kitchen decor. You're looking at these shelves every time you walk into the room, so the finish and styling matter more. Maple or painted white keeps things clean and lets the food labels and containers provide the color. Decant your dry goods into matching jars if you want the Instagram look, or just keep things tidy and accept that a box of Cheerios is going to be visible. Either way is fine.
The Butler's Pantry Crossover
If your pantry connects to a dining room or entertaining space, the shelves pull double duty: storage on the pantry side, display on the visible side. This is where a butler's pantry setup overlaps with bar shelves and dining room floating shelves.
Go 10" to 12" deep for the bar/glassware section. White oak works well here because the grain is warm and neutral enough to bridge the gap between a working pantry and a room people actually see. Stack two shelves 14" to 16" apart so bottles and tall glasses clear the shelf above.
Organization: What Goes Where
The general rule is heavy and frequently used items at waist to chest height, lighter and less-used items above and below. But here's a more specific breakdown:
Eye level (48" to 60" from floor): The items you reach for daily. Cooking oils, salt, pepper, the spices you actually use (not the cardamom you bought for one recipe in 2019). This is prime real estate. Don't waste it on things you use once a month.
Below eye level (24" to 48"): Canned goods, pasta, rice, cereal, snacks. Heavier items that benefit from being lower so you're not lifting them down from overhead.
Above eye level (60"+): Backup supplies, specialty items, seasonal ingredients, the protein powder you swear you're going to start using again. Things you need occasionally but not daily.
Bottom shelf or floor level: Produce baskets, bulk items, heavy appliances that only come out for specific tasks.
Group by category, not by size. All baking supplies together. All canned goods together. All snacks together (and ideally somewhere your kids can reach them so they stop asking you seventeen times a day). The grouping makes restocking intuitive: when you come home from the grocery store, everything has a home.
Species for Pantry Shelves
Pantry shelves get more daily contact than almost any other shelf in the house. Things get set down, slid around, occasionally spilled on. The finish matters.
Maple is the best fit for most pantries. Hard, dense, light-colored, and the tight grain doesn't compete with the visual chaos that pantry items naturally create. It also takes a beating well. A jar of pasta sauce sliding across a maple shelf isn't going to leave a mark.
White oak is the second pick. Slightly warmer tone, more visible grain, works well in pantries that are visible from the kitchen or dining room.
Painted white disappears against light walls and lets the shelved items do all the visual work. Good choice for open wall pantries where you want the shelves to blend in rather than stand out.
All three come with a durable topcoat that handles the occasional spill. Wipe it up, move on. If something acidic (vinegar, tomato sauce) sits for a while, it might leave a faint mark on natural wood, so don't let spills camp out overnight.
How Many Shelves Do You Need?
Count the vertical space and divide by your spacing.
A typical walk-in pantry with 8' ceilings can fit five to six shelves comfortably: bottom shelf at 24" from the floor, top shelf at 8" below the ceiling, with 12" to 14" between each. That handles a family's worth of dry goods, canned items, and small appliances without cramming.
A pantry closet usually fits three to four shelves. An open wall pantry depends on how much wall you're willing to dedicate, but two to three shelves is the sweet spot for function without overwhelming the kitchen visually.
Stop Losing Food to the Back of a Cabinet
The whole point of open pantry shelving is visibility. If you can see it, you use it. If it's behind a door, behind another can, on a shelf you can't reach without a step stool, it expires. Open shelves don't solve every kitchen storage problem, but they solve the one that costs you the most money: buying things you already have because you couldn't see them.
Find the right shelf for your pantry in seven wood species, built to your exact dimensions, with 300 lb capacity on the Hovr bracket. Measure the space, pick the depth and species, and I'll build it to fit.
