Organized and Instagram-Ready: Luxury Pantries Are the New Must-Have

While a walk-in pantry has been a top kitchen feature for homebuyers for some time, social media and the pandemic have taken the feature to a new level. As Realtor.com puts it, the walk-in pantry is so prized, desired, and requested by many homeowners that it is the new designer shoe closet. One homeowner spent $5,000 after moving into a 6,000 square foot home to create a Dewey Decimal-styled pantry system inspired by reality TV star Khloe Kardashian’s. Purchasing a surplus of food for stocking up during the pandemic makes the need for extra food storage that more needed for some homeowners as well. Toll Brothers’ vice president of design says while walk-in pantries have been around, the luxury pantry is a new must-have.

Toll Brothers recently unveiled its new Porter home model—priced between $635,000 and $779,000—which features a 70-square-foot walk-in pantry with options for built-in shelves, quartzite countertops and hardwood floors. Buyers can further accessorize the pantry with spice-rack pullouts, wine-storage columns and built-in lazy Susans for extra storage in tight corners.

Amita and Mark Riksen, who both work in the energy sector, relocated from Orange County, Calif., to a $1 million Toll Brothers home in Spring, Texas, outside of Houston, in May as coronavirus infection rates began to soar. Ms. Riksen, whose two college-age children are at home studying remotely, is glad that she opted to extend the 7-foot-2 by 5-foot-2 walk-in pantry by several feet to include space under a stairway.

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