When looking around the average modern kitchen, count how many appliances you can see on the worktop. Is there a coffee machine? A kettle? A Toaster? A stand mixer? Suddenly, now the beautiful surface holds a small army of things, and you don’t actually get to appreciate the beauty of the worktop.
Here at Planet Furniture, we’ve watched a small, clever design solution rise quickly to answer the problem: the appliance garage. This is a dedicated, beautifully made section for the kitchen where all those everyday countertop appliances can live neatly, out of sight and ready to use in an instant. Recent UK data from Houzz shows searches for appliance garages rising in 2026, making them one of the fastest-growing feature requests in the premium kitchen market.
Our blog below explains exactly what an appliance garage really is, and why the trend has taken hold so quickly. Here is how we design them beautifully into our bespoke handmade kitchens.
What We Mean by an Appliance Garage
An appliance garage is a dedicated section of kitchen cabinetry, purpose-built to house countertop appliances behind a single beautiful door. Rather than sitting on the worktop, exposed to the rest of the kitchen, they live inside a cabinet and are plugged into their own dedicated sockets. Once you’re finished with it, the door can close, and the whole run of joinery reads as clean, considered and completely uncluttered.
In a bespoke handmade kitchen, the appliance garage doesn’t need to look like a cupboard either. It can be finished with a tambour door that rolls up. Sit behind bi-fold pocket doors. Hide behind a drop-front panel, a lift-up shelf or a set of matching cabinetry doors. The form varies. However, the principle is the same: your everyday appliances stop dominating the worktop, and the kitchen finally has room to breathe.
Why the Appliance Garage Has Taken Off
Why has the appliance garage become part of the design of a premium kitchen? Firstly, the number of countertop appliances the average household owns has grown quietly but significantly over the past decade. Homeowners are investing in serious coffee machines, air fryers, stand mixers, blenders, food processors, steam ovens, sandwich toasters, soda makers, milk frothers and pod machines, all part of everyday life. Rather than choosing between them, most families simply add another one and hope the worktop can absorb it. However, in many kitchens, it can’t.
Alongside that, the aesthetic of the modern kitchen has moved firmly towards clean, uncluttered elevations. The quiet luxury movement that defines 2026 is about calm, composed rooms where the design language does the work, not the everyday appliance sitting on top of them. Naturally, once you commit to that look, you need somewhere clever for the appliances themselves to live.
Finally, the open-plan kitchen has made the whole room visible from the sitting area, the dining table and the garden view. There is nowhere for clutter to hide anymore, which means clutter has to be designed out from the very beginning. And that is exactly what an appliance garage is designed to do.
What a Really Good Appliance Garage Includes
Once you’re decided on an appliance garage for your next kitchen project, the next question is what actually goes into it. In our experience, the best bespoke appliance garages share a similar anatomy.
What leads the design is the layout. A generous worktop-height section of the cabinetry, deep enough to hold the largest of your appliances comfortably, forms the working base. Above it, adjustable shelving is set to the exact heights of the appliances you own, so nothing is wedged in or leaning at an angle. Below, deep drawers take the accessories: coffee grinders, spare mixer attachments, blender jugs, air fryer baskets, all the small pieces that usually end up scattered all over the kitchen.
We plan power into the joinery from the outset. Sockets are built into the back of the appliance garage, positioned exactly where each appliance’s cable naturally reaches, so nothing is trailing across the surface. In some of our designs, USB charging is added in for phones and tablets.
Bespoke LED strip lighting turns it into a genuinely elegant feature. It activates the moment the door is opened, bringing the interior to life and making every appliance immediately visible. The finishing touches, meanwhile, keep the design cohesive. The same materials, timber, finishes and hardware as the rest of the kitchen ensure the appliance garage reads as a considered part of the run rather than a standalone gadget cupboard.
The whole zone is designed to be effortlessly usable during the day and completely invisible the moment you’re done.
Where to Put the Appliance Garage
Positioning the appliance garage matters, because it only really earns its place if it sits where you naturally reach for those appliances.
In most homes, the sweet spot is near the coffee bar, kettle, boiling water tap, breakfast prep area, toaster, coffee machine or juicer, as these are all used first in the morning. The appliance garage then doubles as a beautifully organised breakfast station, streamlining the busiest 15 minutes of the family’s day
Larger kitchens focus on the appliance garage in amongst the run of cabinetry set slightly away from the main cooking zone, so the appliances have their own space to breathe. Some clients even prefer to hide the appliance garage inside a walk-in pantry.
Wherever it lives, the goal is the same. The appliances stay out of sight when they’re not in use, and the everyday kitchen worktop finally stays clear.
How Planet Furniture Approaches the Appliance Garage
At Planet Furniture, every bespoke appliance garage we design begins with a simple conversation about how you actually use your kitchen. Which appliances do you use every day? What ones are you planning to buy? Do you want the interior on show when the door opens, or completely tucked away? Do you prefer a smooth tambour roll-up, discreet bi-fold pocket door, or a straightforward set of cabinet doors that read as part of the run?
From those answers, one of our kitchen designers can design the appliance garage around your real life.
Related blogs:
One of the Most-Requested Features: The Walk-In Pantry
Function Meets Style with a Walk-In Pantry
If Heaven Was a Bespoke Kitchen: The Details That Make a Space Feel Divine
A Full-House Brand Story: How to Choose Appliance Brands That Belong Together
The appliance garage is a perfect example of what bespoke handmade design does at its best. It takes the reality of everyday kitchen life and quietly solves it with a great design. Behind that single door, you will find the coffee machine, kettle, toaster and microwave you use every day. Surrounding it and in front of it sits the calm, uncluttered, beautifully composed kitchen you set out to create in the first place.
If you’d like to design a bespoke appliance garage into your next kitchen, we’d love to help. At Planet Furniture, every kitchen we build starts with a single conversation about how you really live, and then we design it into your home. We look forward to hearing from you and working on your next project.
