DO:  Make sure your kitchen is well lit.  Exploit whatever natural light you have.  Open up walls with pass-throughs or archways, which are safer and cheaper than removing whole walls.  Add as much artificial light as you can.  Bright is always good in a small kitchen, but do add dimmers for those softer moments.

DON’T:  Try to squeeze an island into your small kitchen if there isn’t enough room.  A tiny, odd-shaped or weirdly-designed island is more of an eyesore than having no island at all and will greatly diminish the sense of openness in your kitchen with very little gain.

DO:  Be realistic about what you need to keep in your kitchen for regular use. Get rid of the things you never or rarely use and move the things you do use but only occasionally to some other part of your home.  These don’t need to be cluttering up your kitchen.

DO:  Create other storage options beyond just cabinets.  Pot racks, peg boards, open shelves and the tops of upper cabinets can all be used to store and display your best-looking stuff.  This will add visual variety and free up your limited (and expensive) cabinet space.

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DO:  Make your kitchen as sweet and attractive as your budget allows.  Style and pizzazz go a long way toward making a small kitchen feel bigger.

DON’T:  Overbuild your kitchen. Too many big, bulky cabinets and appliances wedged into a small space can make it seem even smaller.

DO:  Lean toward using light or bright colors for cabinets and walls in a small kitchen.  These are the surfaces that most define the sense of space in your kitchen.  Restrict your experiments in dark or offbeat colors to smaller surfaces like the backsplash or the countertop, or an accent or two.  Try to keep your floor colors neutral.

DON’T:  Load up on bulk purchases in giant sizes from Costco or Sam’s Club that you know you won’t be able to use up quickly — UNLESS you have a separate large storage area outside of the kitchen and only if you know they won’t be sitting there for more than a few weeks.

DO:  Use storage containers for bulk items like flour, pasta, cereal, etc.  They’re more stackable than bags or cardboard and will keep your food fresh longer.  Clear containers let you quickly see what you have and how much is left.  Use square containers, which are more efficient in a (square) cabinet than round ones.

DON’T: Buy three, four or ten of any food item just because it is on sale.  If you know will not use it within a month or so, leave it on the grocery shelf.  Trust me.  It will still be there when you need it.

DO:  Keep your counters free of anything beyond a few essentials, for functional and aesthetic reasons.  A small kitchen has limited counter space.  You need it all to prepare and serve food.  And nothing adds to the sense of space in a kitchen like long stretches of open counter.

A big Do:  Looks matter.  A clear sense of style in this kitchen and its artful details like inset doors, cupped pulls, salvaged wood counter and brick flooring helps make it a stand out.  Light colors and lots of lighting also expand the sense of space.

A definite Don’t:  Buying in bulk makes no sense when you have no room to store it all.  You lose space you need for other things and make everything harder to find.

Another definite Do:  To maximize the storage capacity you have, get creative about ways you can add extra, attractive storage space outside of your cabinets.  Open shelving or wall mounted racks will free up some of that pricey cabinet space. 

DON’T:   Buy things designed to do only one thing.  Many of the tasks that single-function “wonder” gadgets and appliances are meant to perform can be done with a simple knife or in a pan that you already own without eating up valuable space and creating more clutter.

DO: Label any storage containers you use so that you can easily locate whatever you are looking for, and hence avoid any unfortunate mix-ups between, say, sugar and salt or between dried kidney beans and pet food.

DON’T:  Sully your beautiful creation with clutter, either intentionally by adding too much junk to your design or unintentionally by yielding to lethargy.  Clutter kills style and will always diminish whatever great ideas you bring to your small kitchen project.

DO:  Pay attention to distinctive details!  The perfect set of cabinet pulls, a uniquely chic lighting array or just the well-curated way you display your dishware—all the minor things you might tend to overlook—can add immeasurable oomph to the personality your kitchen and the pleasure you get out of it.

DON’T:  Buy large appliances for a small kitchen.  They look awkward and will steal valuable space from your countertops, cabinets and other storage areas.  You can cook just as well on a small range as on a big one.  Just ask most Europeans.

DO: Get serious about organizing everything in your kitchen and keeping it organized.  Shop the web for any of the gazillion storage gadgets available and then use them religiously.  Having everything carefully stored in its place will improve your ability to use your small kitchen as well as how it looks.

A Definite Do:  Keep your countertops and other surfaces as clear of clutter as you can. Clean, empty countertops translate into more space, visually and functionally. 

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DON’T:  Tear out a perfectly usable pantry closet to make space for more cabinets.  You will never be able to replace the amount of storage space a good closet can hold and you will spend thousands of dollars trying.  Update the closet instead with modern organizational gadgets.

DO:  Use a lazy susan or, better yet, a blind-corner pullout in any base corner cabinet.  These will give you easy access to the dead spaces there, provide lots of handy, good-looking storage and waste the least amount of space.

DON’T:  Install diagonal drawer units at the corner of your base cabinets (see above).  These are a colossal waste of space, leaving large wedges of dead air on either side.  They are also clunky and unattractive.

A Don’t:  Using corner drawer base cabinets in a small kitchen wastes valuable storage space and they do little to improve the appearance of your kitchen.

An Everyday Do:  Make organization a top priority!  Use whatever nifty containers and gadgets you can find to keep everything ordered, handy and put away.  Having everything efficiently stored and stowed will create much more space, both actual and visual.

Ideas:

    If you live with a less-than-large kitchen you already appreciate that things are different in your kitchen than in the ones you see on the internet, in design magazines or on almost any “reality” remodeling TV show.  With an actual real and probably small kitchen you’re confronted with limitations that those kitchens don’t seem to have, care about or address, so you might need help figuring out how to get what you want in spite of those limitations.  Here are a few simple suggestions, guidelines and reminders drawn from years of experience that may be useful as you seek to transform your own less-than-large kitchen into the high-functioning, eye-catching and gourmet powerhouse you know it can be.  

A Few Suggestions for Achieving Grace and Maintaining Sanity

Small Kitchen Dos and Don’ts