Here’s how to select or build kitchen pantry shelving that works for you.

85 percent of home buyers considered a kitchen pantry “essential” or “desirable,” the National Association of Home Builders reports. In existing homes, there’s a clear drive to add and improve pantries, ranging from walk-in pantries to improvised solutions like open pantry shelving along basement stairs.

Pantries typically hold groceries, but no one says you can’t squeeze in a few platters, small appliances, and baskets to hold linens, paper goods, and cleaning supplies. Go ahead: Add the dog bowl too.

Organize Your Space with Kitchen Pantry Shelving

What’s key is a pleasing sense of order—another way of saying that even the tallest pantries need a place for everything and everything in its place. Read on for the details, whether you are building from scratch or reworking what you have.

Take Stock of What You Store in Your Pantry

Groceries

To start, figure out what you want to stash—or plug in—right there, whether it’s a lifetime supply of vanilla, a blender, cookbooks, your grandmother’s soup tureen, a folding ladder, or fondue forks you unearth once a year. Don’t wait until the shelves and niches are in—plan for your inventory and any outlets first.

Extra Cookware

Turn the top shelf into a colorful display of occasional-use pots and pans.

Countertop Appliances

Pull forward the ones you forgot you had. (Like you, Mr. Pasta Machine.)

Big Items

Got a step stool, an ice-cream maker, enough kibble to feed a kennel?

Select the Ideal Placement for Your Pantry Shelving

The ideal spot is cool, dry, and convenient. A gut reno offers the most options, but it’s not the only way to go.

Annex Space

Instead of taking down an interior wall to, say, open up the kitchen to the dining room, consider moving that wall to create space for a pantry on the kitchen side.

Tap a Recess

Pantry shelves can be added to a wall near prep space or can even fit between studs.

Repurpose

If you aren’t getting a lot of use out of a coat or broom closet, picture it as a pantry. There’s no law against setting aside a spot in it for the dustpan, too.

Bump Out

Colonial pantries were often unheated, shed-like lean-tos. Today’s equivalent is a one-story rear addition that could include a half bath or mudroom.

Look Down

If you have a cool, dry basement, pop in a freestanding unit; sturdy, open wire shelves hold everything and are easy to access. Or hang boxed open shelves along the stairs—the steps will be a built-in ladder.