The larder, the pantry, and why they are not the same room

One was designed to keep food cool without a fridge; the other exists to keep the working kitchen tidy — and the difference still matters when we draw them.

The two words are used interchangeably now, and not only by clients. Trade magazines, kitchen retailers and most architects’ schedules of accommodation treat larder and pantry as synonyms for a tall cupboard with a bit of shelving in it. Historically they were two different rooms doing two different jobs, and if you understand which one you actually want, the room you end up with will be much better.

Two rooms, two jobs

A larder was cold storage. Before domestic refrigeration was universal — so, in most English houses, before the 1950s — perishable food had to be kept cool by the building itself. A proper larder was a small masonry room on the north or east side of the house, ideally with an outside wall, a vent to outside covered by a fine brass or zinc mesh, a stone or tiled floor, and shelves in slate or marble. The mass of the walls and the cold shelves absorbed heat out of anything placed on them; the vent kept air moving and stopped the room going stale. A meat safe hung from the ceiling. Milk and butter went on the coldest shelf, usually the marble one nearest the outside wall.

A pantry was different. Its job was dry-goods storage and daily service: flour, sugar, tea, jars, tins, bread, crockery not in daily use, the good glasses, the breakfast things. It sat between the kitchen and the dining room in bigger houses and was warm, dry and well-lit. It had a worktop, a shallow sink in the grander examples, drawers and cupboards to the floor, and often a run of open shelving above. It was, in effect, an overflow kitchen with the door shut on it.

So a larder controlled temperature and a pantry controlled clutter. Both are still useful. They are just useful for different reasons.

The larder as we build it today

Most of our clients have refrigeration, so a modern larder is not being asked to keep raw meat safe over a July weekend. But there is still a real case for a genuinely cold storage zone: charcuterie, cheese, fruit that ripens badly in a fridge, root vegetables, chocolate, wine intended for near-term drinking, cut flowers waiting to go into vases. All of these keep better at 8–14°C than at 4°C or at room temperature.

Where the building allows it — a north-facing external wall, a suitable air brick position, and no habitable room directly above the vent — we build the larder as an integrated tall cabinet with a cold interior. The carcase is our standard 18mm birch-faced ply, but the internal shelves are honed marble or Welsh slate, typically 20mm, set into hardwood shelf bearers rather than adjustable pins so the weight is properly carried. A vent grille passes through the back of the cabinet and the outside wall, sized so the room’s warm air does not simply push into the cupboard; a small internal baffle stops daylight and insects. The door is a full-height in-frame door, usually solid rather than glazed to keep light out, with an intumescent seal and a positive catch.

Where there is no external wall to vent to — a flat, a basement kitchen, a listed room in the middle of the plan — we do not pretend. Calling a cabinet a larder does not make it cold. In those cases we say so and specify a dedicated undercounter larder fridge set to around 10°C, dressed into the run as a cabinet, with the marble shelf above it doing the honest work.

The pantry as we build it today

A pantry is more common than a true larder, and more useful to more households. On our drawings it takes one of two forms.

The first is a walk-in room, ideally 1.6 to 2.2 metres wide and 1.8 to 2.6 metres deep, with a worktop down one long wall, drawers and cupboards under, and open shelving or glazed cabinets above. There is a socket circuit along the worktop for the kettle, toaster, coffee machine and stand mixer, so the main kitchen worktops stay clear. There is often a second, smaller sink for filling the kettle and rinsing a cafetière. A pantry of this kind takes the daily mess out of the kitchen and lets the kitchen photograph itself even on a Tuesday morning.

The second form is a full-height run of tall cabinets — usually two or three doors wide — with a pull-out worktop or a fold-down flap, drawers to the floor behind the lower doors, and fixed shelves above. This is the pantry for a house that does not have a spare room to give up. Done properly, with the correct depth of drawer (500mm internal is our default) and full-extension runners, it holds a surprising amount and closes flush with the rest of the run.

Either way, the pantry is a working room. It is warm, well-lit, ventilated to the room rather than to outside, and specified with the same face frames, mortice-and-tenoned joinery and hand-cut dovetailed drawers as the main kitchen. It is not treated as a poor relation.

Doors, and how they close

In-frame practice matters here. Both the larder cabinet and the pantry room want doors that sit within a solid timber frame, planted onto the carcase or onto the door lining, so the reveal is even and the door has something to close firmly against. Butt hinges in solid brass, three per door on anything over 1.8 metres tall, and a ball catch or a magnetic latch rather than a soft-close mechanism that will drift open in humid weather.

Glazed doors suit a pantry, especially where the client wants to see what is inside and where the shelves are worth looking at. We use 4mm float glass in a bolection-moulded frame for the PLAIN and MOULDED ranges; astragal glazing for the MOULDED range if the rest of the kitchen carries it. Larders are almost always solid: cold storage does not benefit from a window.

Sizes that actually work

An integrated tall larder cabinet works best at 600mm wide and 650mm deep, taller than the standard 2100mm carcase if the ceiling allows — 2250mm gives you a real fifth shelf. Below that width the marble shelf becomes awkward to lift out for cleaning; above it, the door starts to feel heavy on its hinges.

For a walk-in pantry, aim for a clear internal width of 1.8 metres so two people can be in there at once without shuffling, and a door opening of 838mm rather than the standard 762mm. Worktop depth of 500 to 600mm is enough; anything deeper wastes floor. Head height for the lowest shelf above the worktop should be 450mm, which takes a kettle and a taller coffee machine without cramping.

When a client says larder and means pantry

Most clients who ask for a larder are describing a pantry. That is fine, and we do not correct them at the first meeting. What we do at survey is establish which of the two jobs the room is actually being asked to do: is this cold storage, or is it daily storage with the door shut on the mess? Often the answer is the second, and the room is drawn accordingly, called a larder on the plans because that is the word the client uses, and built as a pantry because that is what the client actually wants.

Occasionally the answer is both, and there is space for both. In that case they get separate rooms, drawn as such, and the marble shelf goes where it earns its keep.