When you think about it, the kitchen is a pretty multifaceted place.
Especially for those of us with a combined dining room/kitchen (like a lot of more modern houses tend to have), the kitchen needs to fulfill a lot of goals. It needs to have room to cook, room to store all of your various kitchen supplies, and room to sit every so often.
But maybe it can have…room to enjoy the view?
Banquette Window Seats with Storage
In most houses, the kitchen is pretty strategically located near the back of the home, or at least near a good view of the backyard, side yard, or surrounding areas. A lot of homeowners choose to maximize this view by adding what’s known as a banquette seat.
A banquette is kind of a fancy way of saying “window seat”. Banquettes are typically long benches placed underneath an open bay window, or near any sort of low-hanging window that faces the backyard or side yard. In some fancier cases, these benches are built right into the wall as a windowsill, but for most of us, it’s a separate bench seat.
Technically, these can be anywhere in the house, but more often than not you see them in kitchens with larger windows. Banquettes in the kitchen primarily aim to add more seating, either for dining, entertaining, or both, but with the right benches, you can add a little more storage too!
With the right window, you can easily repurpose an entryway bench to use as banquette seating! Many entryway benches offer storage underneath the seat, allowing you to organize more stuff in your kitchen than before.
Think about it – a nice place to sit and take in the view while you enjoy your morning coffee, AND you can store things like plates, bowls, pots, and pans underneath? All you need is the right sized window, the right flexible entryway bench, and a pot of whatever your favorite morning beverage is.