Styling Our Dining Room Cabinets

It Finally Happened

When I moved into my historic 1940s apartment a year and a half ago, I had big dreams for the dining nook. The kitchen, while decently sized for the apartment, is not quite big enough to house all my cooking supplies, food, serving pieces, dishes, etc. As an avid home cook and true lover of baking, I keep a well-stocked kitchen. And as a content creator, I also keep a nice collection of serving pieces for styling and food photography. I truly do love creating food content (keep an eye out for more holiday recipes dropping soon) and feel very blessed that Simon is such an enthusiastic supporter of my adventures in cooking. The solution to our kitchen storage problem? Dining room cabinetry.

The very first thing that we put together when moving in was an old bedroom bookshelf. While this bookshelf served as a room divider in my old place, I put it in the dining room of the new apartment as a “temporary” solution to house our drinkware, dishes, serving pieces, and my extensive cookbook collection. One year later, this “temporary” solution was starting to feel less than temporary. We still hadn’t gotten around to settling on and buying a replacement. I had some requirements in mind though. It needed to have doors of some sort (one year of open shelving and Simon was already tired of dusting off our glassware), it needed to be big enough to house everything we wanted to put in it and to fit with the general arrangement of the room, I wanted it to visually take up most of the wall. A few practical needs as well: We aren’t allowed to anchor furniture into our walls so we couldn’t put anything in that was too tall or too at risk of falling over, and we wanted something versatile enough it could be repurposed for a different room when we eventually move.

At the beginning of 2021, I set a goal of getting a proper cabinet in the dining room (I had a real fear that busy schedules and indecision would lead to another year with my temporary shelving). Well, it took 9 months, but we finally did it!

WhAT WE PICKED

After a year and a half of dreaming and “online window shopping,” we finally settled on the cabinets. After looking at places like PotteryBarn, West Elm, CB2, etc., we settled on the Malsjo cabinets from Ikea. People have a lot of opinions about Ikea, but my personal experience is that they really do tailor to everything from affordable-lightweight-composite products you’d put in your first college apartment to the more expensive and sturdy. The Malsjo is one of the higher-end options. It features actual wood and glass, self-closing tracks, and the style matches our PotteryBarn bistro dining table and chairs. Additionally, I’d seen two of the cabinets side-by-side before so I already had an idea of what it would look like in the room. We went with two because we have enough to fill two, and it would visually take up most of the wall—just like I envisioned.

Getting the cabinets was a whole other adventure. We drive a Mini Cooper and while we’ve fit an impressive amount of things in it before, there was just no way we could get two cabinets (6 long boxes) in the car at once. We picked up one order on a Sunday evening and then Simon went back for the other the following Monday morning (such a fun way to spend a weekend, am I right?). Normally, I’d post before and after pictures, but I somehow don’t have any actual before images. However, for a little fun before and after, you can check out the video above, and if you want a full tour of the plans for the dining room and kitchen, check out my YouTube channel.

My Philosophy behind styling Shelves

There are a few styling “rules” I typically use when it comes to shelving, bookcases, and cabinets. I love to play with textures, layers, and heights, and use a bit of a “trust my gut” when it comes to placements. I actually find styling shelving or tablescape not all that different from food styling. Particularly since these cabinets need to be both practical and aesthetic, I stuck to my four main guidelines:

Group like objects where they make the most sense. For example, it’s logical for all the glassware to be together and up higher on the shelves (no one wants to bend down to get a drinking glass from the bottom shelf). I grouped bowls together—serving, pinch, soup, cereal, etc.—and plates and players together so finding what you need is simple and easy.
Create different heights. To keep things visually playful and utilize the space to its fullest, I create a mixture of heights: Stack items like serving bowls and cake stands, mix in taller pitchers among shorter cocktail glasses, and display serving players upright instead of storing them flat. While I want things to feel cohesive, I don’t want things stacked exactly the same way shelf after shelf. Make it interesting.
Layers. There was a documentary about Vogue editor Anna Wintour some years back and in her home, every issue of Vogue she worked on was lined up on shelves with the occasional knick-knack in front. I loved it and have stolen the general concept for my own home ever since. My extensive cookbook collection is a constant source of joy for me. I love having them on shelves in the dining room (or kitchen) where they are convenient to access but also aesthetically pleasing to look at. I keep my cookbooks on full display in the cabinets with little kichen-y knick-knacks sprinkled in front. Nothing difficult to move when I want to pull out a book, but a little extra to make the shelving more dynamic. I also use layering on the top of the cabinets. I love having over-lapping prints and creating texture with holiday/seasonal decor.
Add something green. This is definitely a personal preference. I like decorating with plants. To help visually fill out the wall, I added taller plants to each side of the cabinets and a few on the top shelf as well. I think plants help give a space life. They’re just a nice touch. (Tip: don’t have a green thumb or styling shelves in a room with less light? There are some really nice faux plants out on the market that can give you the same aesthetic without the challenge of keeping a plant alive. I currently have a faux plant from PotteryBarn on top of my fridge because I love the look of it but it’s a location where real plants just won’t survive.)

I’d been imagining how I’d style the new cabinets for a while—and was admittedly slightly nervous if things would fit the way I imagined it. I also knew that going from white open shelving to a black cabinet would create a huge color shift in the room. I really love how it turned out though. Especially now that I’ve been living with it for a bit. Here’s a quick look at the full dining nook with our cute little dining set (for two since it’s just the two of us and a smaller apartment) and the view of the cabinet from my work from homes space. As someone who spends quite a bit of my day sitting where the cabinet is in full view, I can’t express just how happy I am to have a proper cabinet. Not only am I happy with how it looks, but I no longer have a constant reminder of an unfinished house project. Beauty and accomplishment all in one!

A few Dining room favs

I’ve been collecting beautiful serving pieces for years. There are a few things in that cabinet I’ve had since college (and a cookie jar that is definitely older than I am). I’m drawn to these things not just so I can lay out a beautiful tablescape for dinner parties or the holidays, but because I love to have things that are more than decoration—they’re functional too! Lately, I’ve also started a minor obsession with hand-crafted ceramics. There aren’t any artistic ceramic pieces in the dining room yet, but you’ll find a collection of ceramic mugs in the kitchen from a few different artists I love. (I’ll share more on that soon). Below I collected a few of my favorite things for a dining display cabinet, open kitchen shelving, or simply for setting a beautiful table.

Staub is one of my favorite cookware companies and the cocotte is not only a fantastic item for cooking, it looks fantastic if your cookware is out on display. They make a more traditional dutch oven style, mini cocottes, and, my personal favorite, a seasonal pumpkin cocotte.
I can’t resist a beautiful salad bowl or cake stand. They are great props for food styling, can elevate a tablescape, and look nice when you’re serving dishes are kept out on a shelf. I get many of mine from Anthropologie, include the two pictured above.
Serving platers are a must-have for me. I have platers of various sizes to serve everything from holiday cookies and Caprese salad, to roast beef. My favorites are the Sicilian platers and the Blue Mosaic Hanukkah plater from William Sonoma.
The entire top shelf of our cabinets is filled with glassware. I have wine glasses I inherited from my grandmother, stackable everyday glasses, tumblers, holiday cocktail glasses, fun juice glasses, and more. Glassware is almost too easy to collect! A few of my staple pieces are our stackable bodega glasses, my textured lowball glasses, and Blue Mosaic drinking glasses.