18 Unique Cabinets For Any Dining Room's Style And Budget

If you have a dining room in your home, you may be wondering how to maximize both functionality and storage in the space you have available. While the kitchen can be the heart of the home and is often used for dining, formal dining rooms can vary from hosting regular meals to being vastly underused. Even if you don't use the space regularly, it can still be a great place for auxiliary kitchen storage where you can keep dishware, serving trays, or appliances you don't use that often. 

Storage is especially important if you use the room as a dual-use space, like a home office or craft room. While your mind may immediately go to traditional types of furniture for the space, like hutches and sideboards, there are no real rules for dining room storage and display cabinets. This delightfully means that all sorts of pieces, from vintage lockers to tidy bookshelves, can offer excellent dining room cabinet space.

There are lots of types of dining room storage that can add style and make a statement in a room that is usually occupied only by tables and chairs. It's also a perfect chance to repurpose other pieces from around your home, like dressers, entertainment consoles, and armoires, to easily store dishware, linens, and more. Fortunately, there are a ton of creative cabinet ideas for every style.

Wall-mounted cupboards can be a great cabinet solution for smaller dining rooms, allowing placement at the ideal height. They leave the floor itself empty, which makes cleaning under them far easier. Mounted cabinets also make the area near the floor less bulky. Try a shallow wall cabinet above a table in a dining nook or a floating sideboard cabinet perfect for storing dishware and cookware. The top of a low floating cabinet can also serve as extra serving and buffet space.

Long a classic for dining room storage, traditional hutches allow a large amount of both display space and storage. Most are encased in glass up top, or completely open, with drawers or doored cabinets on the bottom. This makes them perfect for displaying dishware or decor in a safe place and can free up extra room in your kitchen where these things might otherwise be stored. They also come in a variety of styles and sizes, meaning you can purchase slender ones that fit in a smaller dining space along the wall or in a corner.

Open shelving is a great solution for storage and display, especially when used with bins or baskets to tuck away things you might not want to be visible. The open shelves offer plenty of room for attractively displaying dishes and décor no matter your design style. Mount them on the wall over a table for elevated storage, or create an entire wall of shelves on one side of the room to maximize the space. You can also combine open shelving up top with other kinds of storage like drawers and doored cubbies below.

While your first thought may be doored cabinets to gain some extra dining room storage, reused vintage dressers can look right at home in a rustic room and traditional pieces can fit more classic styles. And, don't underestimate the functionality of drawers, which can be great for storing all manner of things from dishes to linens. The drawers are deep and allow you to see everything at once rather than rummaging through the back of a cabinet. They can also work well for storing more unwieldy items like large serving platters and baking sheets that don't always fit in cupboards.

If you have a lot of books or love old world-style libraries, turning your dining room wall space into a home library can be a great two-in-one solution. Adding bookshelves is a great way to fill an otherwise blank wall space and add to an eclectic or maximalist space. Line the room with shelves for a cozy feel or add them to a single wall for a literary touch. Store your collection of paperbacks, decorate the bookshelves with plants, sculptures and pottery, or both!

While perhaps the most expensive and luxe variety of storage, custom built-in cabinetry can offer great functionality, including storage, display, and serving space. Built-ins are also typically designed stylistically in line with other cabinetry in the home, so can create a cohesive look that makes an overall space look larger. If your home does not have custom built-ins, you can make store-bought cabinets look custom with the addition of trim and molding at the tops, the bottoms, and where they meet the walls.

Vintage record cabinets, with the recent rebound of interest in vinyl albums, are great for holding your music collection, but they can also be perfect low-slung, mid-century modern dining room storage. Wide and deep inside, they easily accommodate larger serving items, punch bowls, and appliances you don't use very often. The top is a fitting surface for extra serving space. If you are a music lover, you can also actually use it as intended and turn your dining room into a dual-use music room by adding a turntable and speakers on top.

Armoires are typically a popular way to store clothes and entertainment equipment, but they can also make excellent dining room storage. They are usually quite large and deep, many with drawers and cubbies that are perfect for stashing dishware, cookware, and appliances. Most armoires are also quite beautiful to look at and have an old-world European feel. You can also turn an armoire into a cute coffee center behind closed doors with a coffee or espresso machine, mugs, and accessories.

Antique pie safes are a charming historical artifact from the days before refrigeration. They were cabinets originally designed to keep baked goods safe from pests. While some are enclosed and look like simple doored cabinets, others boast wood-carved or tin details, including slots, screens, and perforated areas to increase airflow through the cabinet. While they are harder to find in antique stores and can often be quite expensive, their beautiful woodwork and unique details can make them an ideal place to store dishware in a dining room with a country or farmhouse decor style.

A great solution for smaller spaces or rentals (especially if you live on a higher floor and can't easily haul up large sideboards or hutches) is to use a number of wooden fruit crates to create a charmingly rustic way to store dishware in your dining room. You can hunt out vintage ones via thrift stores or purchase new ones at crafting and home stores. Stack them together or attach them to the studs for a stunning crate wall storage system. They fit particularly well in boho, cottage, and shabby-chic style interiors. 

A great durable way to add cabinetry space to your dining room is to use metal or wooden lockers. These great pieces instantly add an industrial and casual look to your dining room space, and come in a number of sizes and formats, from small cubby lockers to rows of higher lockers with shelves inside. They also come in a variety of colors to make a statement in your dining space. Look for them at home retailers like this one from West Elm. You can also find vintage-looking ones resale shops, architectural salvage stores, and on Facebook Marketplace.

If you are a wine drinker or do a lot of entertaining, a dining room space can make a perfect a wine cellar with bottles at the ready. Add a built-in with a dedicated wine rack, or build and entre X-formatted rack on the wall for stunning wine storage from inexpensive lumber. Proper wine storage is a careful science, so make sure the light and temperature is optimal for storing bottles (not too warm, nor too much natural sunlight during the day.) You can also invest in a shallow glass wine cellar cabinet that is temperature controlled. 

Another traditional and classic dining room piece, buffets or sideboards are usually lower cabinets that provide space for storage, as well as for serving on top. They typically feature large deep drawers and ample closed cabinets for storing dishes, linens, and serving pieces. Since many vintage dining room sets came with these pieces as a set, many people have unloaded them over the years if they didn't have space for them in smaller dining rooms. Thus, you can often find them in thrift stores for a steal.

A perfect solution for a smaller dining room without enough space to add larger pieces of furniture is a simple bar cabinet. These come in various sizes, some on casters, that make them easy to move around for serving and cleaning. Use them to store glassware, bar supplies, and liquor, where they fit perfectly in a corner or between two windows without taking up much space. They are especially great if you have a large collection of liquor bottles or glassware and like to entertain.

For smaller dining rooms and dedicated dining nooks, space is often at a premium. A corner cabinet can make the most of unused square footage and provide room for storing and displaying dishware, décor, and other essentials. Some hutch cabinets feature a triangular-shaped back that wedges perfectly into corners. Or, you can create an L-shaped cabinet by placing two slender bookshelves at angles in the corner. For doored storage, look to slender cabinets or skinny bookcases like those available from IKEA and other home retailers.

If you have the space under a window in your dining room, consider putting in a window seat with storage underneath. This is a great way to not only add some discreet storage large enough for storing even the largest appliances and serving pieces, but it also provides some additional seating and a perfect place to lounge and enjoy your morning coffee. It's also a project that is scalable to the size of your dining room. Purchase a pre-made bench from home retailers with built-in storage or build one to size yourself DIY-style.

Antique or vintage-look apothecary tables are a favorite piece to add a sense of history and functional storage to any dining room. While the drawers can be very small or narrow, even compact drawers are especially useful for storing items like silverware and utensils. Cabinets come in a number of wood and painted finishes, as well as different sizes and orientations, including tall slender models and wide low pieces that resemble sideboards. While antique versions can be hard to find and very expensive, modern versions are available from retailers like Wayfair and The Home Depot. 

Another great option if you love the look and functionality of multiple drawers are architectural flat file cabinets. Usually used to house paper, artwork, and blueprints, they come in both stainless steel and antique wood. These shallow drawers are perfect for storing linens like placemats, tablecloths, towels, and napkins, or can house silverware, candles, and other smaller items. For farmhouse and cottage style dining rooms, look for a wooden version with a lot of character. Or opt for a sleek steel model for more industrial-style spaces. This is an especially great storage solution if your dining room doubles as a workspace.