Why Do House Flippers Love Open Shelving?
The storage solution is an easy way to make a cheap house feel expensive—but it’s hardly the best.
The storage solution is an easy way to make a cheap house feel expensive—but it’s hardly the best.
It doesn’t take obsessive trend-following to notice that open shelving in kitchens has definitively been deemed "out" for 2024. Yet that Googling will also show you endless Pinterest boards, guides, lists, and blog posts about how best to use a simple shelf as a cabinet replacement. Looking for a house or apartment? You’re pretty likely to come across open shelving, despite the trend’s status as clearly tired (and certainly not wired). Where did it come from, and why is it sticking around?
But first—the kitchen
Before we get into the history of open shelving, we’ve got to start somewhere, and some time, in particular. Since the history of the concept of "kitchen" is a little broad, let’s start in, say, 19th century America. According to Mary Anne Beecher’s 2001 article "Promoting the ‘Unit Idea’: Manufactured Kitchen Cabinets (1900-1950)," which is more interesting than it sounds, there were several different types of kitchens in America at this time. In urban rowhouses, the kitchen was often located in the basement; you can still see this layout in cities like Philadelphia. In tenements, kitchens were communal gathering places, shared by multiple families. And then there’s the "farm kitchen," which could be found in non-agricultural houses as well: a large, square kitchen, typically located at the back of the house, which included two items of note here. The first was a large, freestanding cabinet, sometimes known as "kitchen dressers," sometimes with glass doors, which held valuable display items like china and silverware. The second was a separate pantry room, with open shelves for supplies like dry goods, spices, and cookware.
The so-called kitchen dressers gained popularity in the waning years of the 19th century, helped along by mass production. But in the early decades of the 20th century, home economics, which treated housework as a career, with all the accompanying tools and optimizations, arose. This left an odd dichotomy: kitchen cabinets and counters, some with built-in tools like flour sifters or work tables, were all business, inspired by laboratories, according to Beecher. Then there were the glass-fronted display cabinets, which are almost by definition non-utilitarian; they are showcases for items not necessarily in regular use.
Mass production hit kitchen cabinets in the 1930s, as did renewed attention on efficiency and standardization. In catalogs and articles, the homemaker—always a woman, of course—was now going to work. This is where we first begin to see built-in cabinets, available in standard sizes, and mounted at standard heights. By the 1940s, kitchens looked roughly like they do now: appliances included the sink, refrigerator, and oven, with a block of cabinets and counters, all pretty minimal and off-the-shelf.
And how did we get here?
If we fast forward to 1994 and the launch of HGTV, open-shelving’s roots in contemporary times becomes clear. In its earliest iteration, the network barely made their own content; instead they hired independent contractors, bought the rights to cheap Canadian shows, and began pumping out endless shows involving house flipping. House flipping is defined, at least by a company called Attom which does studies on the topic, as selling a house which had previously been sold within the past year. One of the first reality shows about house flipping, Flip That House, started airing in 2005 on TLC (which is owned by the same company as HGTV). Soon more followed: Property Brothers, Fixer Upper, the entire Flip or Flop cinematic universe, and many others. This aligns with the first wave of flipper mania, according to those Attom studies, with over 100,000 flips (more than 8 percent of all home sales) in 2005.
It’s a win-win for flippers: something that reads expensive, but is actually cheap. The problem is that it also stinks.
We’re currently in the tail end of the second big wave of flips; the first couple of years of the Covid-19 pandemic produced outrageous numbers of flips, sales, and skyrocketing prices, to the tune of over 120,000 flips, making up over 10 percent of the entire housing market. There are reasons why that number might be inflated; someone who bought a house just before the pandemic hit might sell after realizing that 1. The housing market is wildly profitable and 2. They no longer need to be in proximity to work and/or 3. Anyone who was thinking about moving to the suburbs due to kid-related space concerns immediately did. That’s not exactly a "flip" so much as a "quick turnaround," but there’s no real way to know which of these sales were which, and the fact remains that numbers are extremely high.
House flipping, as presented by HGTV, TLC and Bravo, is a nice honest way to earn a living while beautifying a house and neighborhood. In reality, it can often be highly predatory, working hand in hand with gentrification to put houses out of financial reach for those in many neighborhoods. In a more physical way, house flipping presents an inherent issue of capitalism: the goal is to make money by selling a house for more than the combined cost of purchase and renovation. And so it is a fundamental goal of house flippers to be incredibly cheap and use garbage like gray laminate flooring, imitation marble countertops, the absolute bottom of the line appliances, and something a little odder: open shelving.
Open shelving is a very funny concept because it presents itself as something ritzy, designy, expensive: it is the natural descendant of those glass-fronted cabinets of yore. On TV and in photographs, it can look inviting, airy, and spacious, with beautiful pottery and glassware and cookbooks displayed.
But open shelving is chosen for the same reason that horrible gray laminate floors are: it’s cheaper than the good option. Even the cheapest Home Depot landlord specials—or flipper specials—cost a couple hundred dollars per cabinet, and most houses are going to need several. Compare that to the cost of a shelf, which is nothing more than a plank and a couple of brackets. Installation is also much more involved with a cabinet; those things are heavy, and have to be seriously measured and mounted. A shelf? You can do it yourself with a couple of drywall anchors.
It’s a win-win for flippers: something that reads expensive, but is actually cheap. The problem is that it also stinks.
Cabinets (with doors) exist for a reason!
Open shelving is a nightmare for people who actually cook. Anyone who is serious about cooking has accumulated a thrift store’s worth of mismatched stuff: pots and pans, bakeware in different sizes and shapes and materials, weird kitchen tools that their aunt thought they might like (a ravioli cutting wheel, a shrimp deveiner, a knife sharpener that does not sharpen so much as destroy), measuring materials, spices in bags and tins and boxes and jars. This cannot be displayed in any reasonable way.
Besides, "open" also means "exposed." Spices are exposed to light and heat, prematurely aging and dampening their flavor. Plates and glasses get hit with grease and oil splatters. Dust accumulates. A thoughtless barehanded grab of a roasting pan, and the full-body spasm that accompanies it, can cause an entire shelf to shatter. Books must contend with steam, heat, light, water, sauce. "If you want to store items that have a significant amount of weight, you need to ensure that they are properly anchored to the wall," says Alex Kober, an interior designer at TriVistaUSA. Everything has to be just so, and nothing is ever just so in a working kitchen.
I do agree that open shelving, as an exclusive kitchen storage option, is on its way out, because it is impractical, but also because we have a historical precedent. Some stuff can be displayed! But the old version, with a display cabinet and a separate pantry, can be translated to our modern kitchens: some stuff is better out of sight. Open shelving as a small accent? Sure! As something you put up yourself because your kitchen is the size of a standard acoustic guitar and doesn’t have room for actual cabinets? Go for it, but be careful.
As a selling point in a house? Gross.
Top photo by Tony Anderson/Getty Images
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