The Element That Adds Modern Nostalgia To Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Design

Gordon Ramsay doesn't seem like the kind of chef who'd be into delicate kitchen decor. Instead, most of us are used to seeing him in frantic, high-heat kitchens where every surface and tool is purely functional. However, the celebrity chef has been inside kitchens of every kind and seems to have taken inspiration from the classics for his own home's cooking space. Elegant glass-fronted kitchen cabinets constitute exactly the kind of vintage kitchen decor trend we want to see making a comeback. They offer the functionality of displaying what is in the cabinet, but with a more upmarket, vintage aesthetic than, say, open kitchen shelving. Such glass-fronted cabinetry is what you find in Gordon Ramsay's home kitchen.

Glass-fronted cabinets come in many shapes and forms and are easily customizable to most kitchen decor themes. The crockery and kitchenware stored in such see-through cabinetry usually isn't the kind you pull out every day. Instead, it is what you use on a semi-regular basis and, more importantly, what you'd like to have on display. With glass fronts, it's not just the cabinets but also what they hold that becomes part of your kitchen aesthetic. In fact, this very neatly ties into Ree Drummond's practical kitchen decor tip of using your best-looking kitchenware as decoration instead of adding new decorative elements, especially because kitchen space is often at a premium and never quite enough. For those pieces you'd like to keep out of view, there are a ton of useful Ikea storage pieces for a more organized kitchen.

While they carry vintage appeal when combined with wooden cabinetry, glass fronts can also blend into modern and minimalist kitchen styles. The doors' transparency opens up several options for what exactly you want to highlight in your kitchen. At their simplest, these cabinets display crockery at eye level. If you want pieces more prominently displayed, the glass fronts can be enlarged, and the shelves can be fitted with internal lighting, essentially making them functional display cases. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want to store relatively plain kitchenware in them, consider getting frosted glass fronts, which have the appeal of glass-fronted cabinets without the limiting need to only store aesthetically pleasing kitchenware in them.

The back wall of the shelves also becomes an important design element since it is constantly visible through the glass and can be matched to the rest of the kitchen. For example, Gordon Ramsay's kitchen shelves feature the same tiled design as seen on the rest of the kitchen wall, highlighting tile as a design element. Note that if you're using a patterned surface on the inside of glass-fronted shelves, use them to store crystal or glassware (like Ramsay does), lest the pattern get hidden behind regular opaque kitchenware. The more ornate the glass-fronted cabinets, the more they tend toward a vintage or Victorian-inspired aesthetic. For a modern look, use cabinetry with clean lines and large glass panes. A mirror backing on the shelves also adds a sense of space to small kitchens. It makes cabinets appear deeper, and even regular kitchenware stored in them looks interesting with the added mirrored dimension.