10 Glass Kitchen Cabinet Ideas to Make a Space Feel Bigger

a white kitchen with reeded glass upper cabinets with brass frames. A decorative chandelier sits above a brass and marble dining table, and an archway to an outdoor space is shown to the edge of the frame.

(Image credit: Anson Smart. Design: Atelier Alwill)

published March 2, 2025

I'm calling it — if you want a kitchen that feels spacious, you should be looking at glass kitchen cabinet ideas. Where wall-hung cabinets can sometimes look a little bulky, choosing glass fronts softens the whole effect, helping the room look bigger without losing out on that all-important storage.

The secret to making it work? Choosing the right kitchen cabinet ideas. Which type of glass? Where in the kitchen? What to store inside? These are the questions you need to ask, and the questions kitchen experts know the answer to.

Here, I've curated 10 of the best kitchens with glass-fronted cabinets to inspire this design element, with advice from the interior designers behind them on how they achieved the look, and how you can, too.

1. Choose the Right Glass to Fit Your Needs

a countertop glass fronted cabinet in a black and white kitchen. The ceiling has beams and there's a rug on the floor — Plain glass is better suited to cabinets with aesthetic contents.

The big decision you'll need to make? The type of glass you choose for your glass kitchen cabinets. The different choices will lend themselves best to different kitchen storage ideas and styles, and while there's no 'wrong' answer as such, knowing where each is best used is your best bet.

2. Install Lighting in Glass Cabinets

a white kitchen with reeded glass doors with lights on inside, a traditional style island sits in the foreground — Lighting in a glass cabinet isn't only practical, it adds to the overall ambiance of your kitchen.

If you're going to do glass kitchen cabinets, can I ask one thing? You consider your kitchen lighting ideas at the same time. When used hand in hand, glass-fronted cabinets don't just offer a way to break up a run of solid cabinetry but also contribute accent lighting to your scheme.

Magnus Nilsson, lead designer at kitchen studio Blakes London, agrees. "The aesthetic can be further enhanced through the introduction of soft mood lighting, normally in the form of an LED strip inserted inside of the cabinet which adds warmth and further interest to a space," Magnus says.

"In practicality, this works best when planned in advance and placed on the same lighting loop as the rest of the mood lighting within the room," Magnus says, but if you've inherited glass kitchen cabinets (or you didn't think about it at the time), you can add in light strips (like Philips Hue, available from Amazon) or rechargeable puck lights, to introduce lighting behind glass doors.

3. Pair With a Fun Cabinet Color

a kitchen with pale pink and glass fronted cabinetry, with a brass-effect island — This pale pink cabinetry feels a little more understated used with glass doors.

Don't you love a good mix-and-match kitchen cabinet scheme? The brilliant thing about using glass-fronted cabinets in this kind of design is that you can go bold with material or color, without it overwhelming the space. After all, once you've got a glass insert, the door itself takes up less real estate.

This kitchen by London design studio Roundhouse is the perfect example. The use of pale pink cabinetry could be saccharine used for the entire door, but when paired with the sophisticated wood finish inside, the color takes on a new, grown-up personality.

4. Add a Pop of Color Inside

a white kitchen with blue painted inside the glass cabinets. a patterned rug sits on the floor in front of the small island — A bright, bold blue inside these glass kitchen cabinets enlivens an otherwise neutral scheme.

On the other hand, if you want to go a little bolder with your kitchen color ideas, why not use glass kitchen cabinets as a way to do something more exciting?

The was the idea behind this clever kitchen designed by Warsaw-based Marta Chrapka, who, in an otherwise white kitchen, used a bright blue for the interior of the glass-front cabinets.

"Since the room is small and the clients wanted it to be kept in light tones, this was one of the few areas where color could appear," Marta tells me, "and since the cabinets are used to store white tableware, the choice fell on this blue which is a good background for the white porcelain."

Want to recreate the look? "The color inside the cabinets is Stone Blue from Farrow & Ball," Marta tells us.

Stone Blue

Price: £5.95 per sample

In Marta's scheme, this blue is the bright color pop that brings energy to the design.

5. Try This Built-in Glass Kitchen Cabinet Idea

a wood and black kitchen with a tiled wall, and built-in glass cabinetry storing glassware — Large glass kitchen cabinets create more of a larder door look.

I've had this glass kitchen cabinet idea saved to my Pinterest for a while, and I needed to know a little more about it. It sees a glass, larder-style door built into a recess in a tiled wall — an unusual set-up, but there's something about it that just feels undeniably chic.

"Believe it or not, the location of that cabinet is where the stove was initially located in this kitchen," Maureen Ursino, founder of Ursino Interiors and the designer of this space, tells me. "By the time we re-worked the layout, we had very little depth on that wall, but still needed to make the space functional from a storage perspective."

It's a genius way to use this space, but while it's a glass kitchen cabinet idea that very much works in this specific layout, I love the idea of using the same material on the back of the cabinets that's on the walls, whether you go for a kitchen tile idea like this, or another finish. "We also wanted to bring in as much dimension as possible to keep that wall visually interesting, which was the impetus behind tiling the wall," Maureen explains.

Maureen Ursino

New Jersey-based interior designer Maureen Ursino launched Ursino Interiors in 2016, after working for commercial architecture firm, and studying for a Master of Arts in Interior Design from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University. While the firm started life in her spare room, Ursino Interiors is now an internationally recognized design studio.

6. Use a Sliding Door for Easy Access

an off white kitchen with a sliding reed glass cabinet doors storing plates behind. a large pendant sits over the marble topped kitchen island — Sliding doors are a no-brainer for cabinets that sit on top of countertops.

"We utilized a reeded glass front on these sliding cabinets to provide visual relief amidst the other upper kitchen cabinets, while also offering a substantial amount of storage," Mallory Robins and Elizabeth Bennett, co-founders of design studio KOBEL + CO tell me. "The transition to glass offers both an airiness and a textural difference to frame the range wall in this kitchen."

Sliding doors, whether glass kitchen cabinets or not, serve an extra useful purpose when used on countertop cabinets. Opting for standard doors means that if you want to use the countertop in front, you'd need to clear the space every time you need to open the door. With an alternative idea such as a sliding door, you get easy access, while getting to keep the beautiful glass doors as in this design. It's particularly useful in a small kitchen, too, where every inch of both countertop space and storage counts.

6. Or a Sliding 'Barn' Glass Door

a scandi-style wood kitchen with a reeded glass door — This innovative glass door idea gives an industrial edge to your kitchen design.

If you liked that sliding door glass cabinet idea, how about trying it on a larger scale? This barn door idea from design studio Blakes London is a clever way to obscure open storage, and could even be used to keep mess out of sight and out of mind temporarily (think post-dinner party, pre-clean up).

"The glazed barn door adds depth and character to this long wall, effectively defining a new zone within the expansive kitchen," lead designer Magnus Nilsson says. "Its sliding glass design introduces a playful, dynamic touch, offering a practical solution to discreetly hide any clutter at the coffee station while creating an intriguing visual element that invites further exploration."

It also gives this design an industrial kitchen edge that I'm taken with — it's a memorable detail that'll make your space stand apart.

7. Opt for a Freestanding Glass Cabinet

a black painted cabinet with glass fronted doors used to store plates and glasses — A stand-alone cabinet is an easy way to add the beauty of glass into an existing kitchen.

If you've already got a kitchen, you might not be in a position to totally change out cabinets for doors with glass fronts, but that isn't the only way to bring this idea into your space. A freestanding cabinet is an easy way to bring glass fronts into your space, and it even offers an opportunity to bring something a little more exciting and useful into the design.

"Open-plan living remains a really popular choice, and joinery can be a great way to segment the rooms," Lizzie Spinks, head of design at kitchen design studio Makers says. "The transition between kitchen/dining room is a great opportunity to add a cabinet with a slight difference to the kitchen, this can be in style or materials, to bridge that gap — and a really great way to do this is with a glazed cabinet to show off all your special occasion glass and chinaware. This unit doesn’t need to be tied to the kitchen, so having it freestanding is a great way to allow you to redecorate in the future."

In the example above, the studio took inspiration from Art Deco interior design, in the use of curves and soft edges. "The glass is embedded into solid utile, which has a lovely Mahogony-esque grain," Lizzie says. It also surfaces another great glass kitchen cabinet idea — using mirrored glass for the backdrop. It's another trick that'll make your kitchen feel so much bigger.

Riga Display Cabinet in Walnut

Price: £1,899

This display cabinet from Heal's would make for ideal storage for your most beautiful stacks of plates.

8. Create a Focal Point With a Glass Cabinet

a maximalist kitchen with a mural on the walls and an arched glass kitchen cabinet — Glass kitchen cabinets don't just need to be about utility, they can be a design feature, too.

The same glass kitchen cabinet ideas you can explore with a freestanding unit, you can also explore with a built-in design — if you're brave enough. Take, for example, this next kitchen from Polish design studio Colombe, which uses an arched kitchen centered on the countertop as the focal point for this maximalist scheme.

"This apartment is a pied-a-terre for its owners and they cared more about aesthetics than functionality," designer Marta Chrapka explains of this bold design. "The cabinet is illuminated and displays the tableware, and since the living room is exactly in the axis of the passage to the kitchen and the arch above the cabinet opposite, it seemed to us that this symmetry would work better as a frame. We didn't have to deal with a lot of space on the worktops here, so the location of the cabinet in the center did not interfere with the functioning of the kitchen," Marta adds.

In a kitchen with a lot to look at, from the wall mural to the intriguing mix of colors and materials, the glass cabinet's placement at the center of it all makes it a stand out of the space.

9. Use a Bold Material to Frame Glass Doors

a neutral kitchen bar with glass fronted reeded cabinetry surrounded by a brass surround — Elevated materials will make glass cabinets sing.

Okay, so technically this isn't a kitchen, but this home bar idea from Atelier Alwill is too good not to include in this roundup. Using upper glass-fronted cabinets with a brass surround gives this run of storage an exquisitely elevated look.

"We wanted a bar unit to feel lightweight over the feature stone behind it, and also to connect with the brass legs on the dining table situated in front," designer Romaine Alwill tells me. "The materials needed to pop but still feel connected to other elements in the room."

By making the doors faceted, the brass picks up the light in four different directions, giving this material a greater sense of depth and interest.

10. Try This Glass Drawer Idea for a Different Take on the Trend

a dark kitchen with dark red tiles behind the range, a beamed ceiling and a large kitchen island with a vintage style wood finish and glass drawer fronts — Using glass fronts on something like an island can also help soften an expanse of storage.

So far, we've talked a lot about glass cabinet ideas as they relate to cabinet doors, but you'll also often see glass used for smaller doors and drawers, too.

One of the best implementations of this idea is as a kitchen island idea, especially when you're looking at a supersized design in a large kitchen. Kitchen islands can start to feel too solid and dominate a room when they get past a certain size, but by introducing glass shelf fronts, as in this design by Ursino Interiors, you can break up the expansiveness of these designs, and make them feel less overwhelming.

FAQs

Where Should Glass Cabinets Be Placed in the Kitchen?

Glazed cabinetry can be surprisingly versatile, so there's all kinds of positions in a kitchen it might suit. Here's just a few ideas:

For a countertop larder: Glazed cabinets make for great countertop units, and they look lighter than solid doors and are ideal for making a focal point of your best dishes.
For upper cabinets: Using glass fronts in your eye line will most effectively make your kitchen look bigger.
For lower units: You don't see them as much, but they can be just as effective at breaking up a space, especially on something like a kitchen island.
Either side of a sink: Great glassware and mugs could be stored here, so they're easy to put away after washing the dishes.
By a coffee station: Glass kitchen cabinets could be used to create a breakfast station or coffee bar idea.

Do Glass Cabinets Make a Kitchen Look Bigger?

When using a huge bank of solid door cabinetry, you lose the sense of depth of the space, which can make a kitchen feel smaller. A glass kitchen cabinet idea, or a portion of open shelving, can be used to highlight the depth of the space, and it works especially well for upper cabinets, which are directly in sight lines.

Glass-fronted cabinets are, in general, more useful than open shelving, too. "Glazed cabinets can be a great way to lighten a space, vs a solid unit, without losing storage," says Lizzie Spinks, head of design at Makers Kitchens. "Using light materials or mirror on the back further adds to this effect."

Glass kitchen cabinet ideas might not be right for everyone, but they fit such a varied style of space that if ensuring there's plenty of storage in your kitchen without it feeling cramped is important, they're definitely something you should consider.

Traditional or modern kitchen idea, there's a design you can choose to make use of the characteristics of glazed cabinetry.

Luke Arthur Wells is a freelance design writer, award-winning interiors blogger and stylist, known for neutral, textural spaces with a luxury twist. He's worked with some of the UK's top design brands, counting the likes of Tom Dixon Studio as regular collaborators and his work has been featured in print and online in publications ranging from Domino Magazine to The Sunday Times. He's a hands-on type of interiors expert too, contributing practical renovation advice and DIY tutorials to a number of magazines, as well as to his own readers and followers via his blog and social media. He might currently be renovating a small Victorian house in England, but he dreams of light, spacious, neutral homes on the West Coast.