This Designer Transformed a Cramped Laundry Room into a Stylish Coffee Station

Unless you’re building from the ground up, most houses have a layout quirk or funky feature to overcome. For designer Kate Appiah, it was a laundry room right off the kitchen on the main level of her Connecticut Colonial-style home. “The location didn’t really make sense for us,” says Appiah. “It was very close to the kitchen and also on the smaller side, so it wasn’t going to be the most functional laundry setup for our family.”

Appiah also didn’t love the idea of doing laundry so close to all of the cooking and eating in the home. So they’d use a different room for laundry and convert this covert little area into something truly enjoyable. “At first we debated between turning it into a mudroom or a coffee station, but the coffee station ultimately won,” says Appiah. “A mudroom brings a lot of traffic and mess, and we didn’t want that right next to the kitchen either.” 

Coffee bars may be a big kitchen trend today, but Kate and her family have always had a small coffee corner in every home they’ve lived in. So this choice wasn’t about chasing a fad.

“Creating a dedicated coffee room felt like the perfect way to elevate something we already enjoy daily,” she says. “The goal was to make it feel a little more lounge-like — a space that felt intentional rather than just a small section of the kitchen counter.” 

The design plan came to shape pretty quickly. Because the little laundry room was sandwiched between the kitchen and a full bathroom on the main floor — and the home had no powder room for guests — it just made sense to turn that full bath into a half as part of this redo. “To make that work, we had to remove the wall between the spaces and redistribute the square footage so both rooms felt functional,” says Appiah.

This phase of the project came with the challenge of window placement. “It wasn’t in an ideal spot for the new layout, and depending on where the wall went, one of the rooms would have ended up feeling extremely tight,” says Appiah. “We decided to relocate the window so the proportions of both rooms made sense before rebuilding the wall. It definitely added to the scope and cost of the project, but it made a huge difference in how the final layout works.”

Once each space was carved out, Appiah got to work bringing fixtures and finishes into the roughly now 59-square-foot coffee station, starting with new marble-look flooring on the ground: the Martinique Azul Polished Porcelain tile. 

Coffee making comes with a lot of accoutrements, so storage was always going to be important to the function of the space; the key was making it look good, too, which Appiah did by selecting a mix of glass-front cabinets, concealed cabinets, drawers, and shelving. The glass-front display, in particular, is showstopping, as it stretches from floor to ceiling and dominates most of one of the room’s walls. 

“I wanted everything to have a place while still keeping the space visually clean,” says Appiah. “The glass cabinets allow us to display mugs, glassware, and coffee pieces, while the lower cabinets hide the less attractive items.”

To stretch the budget, she salvaged some of the existing base cabinets and drawers — the latter of which came with custom interior dividers that were perfect for coffee accessories. She united the old cabinetry with the new ones by painting all the built-ins with a deep black, Sherwin-Williams’ Inkwell (SW 6992), in a semi-gloss finish, which added an extra hint of bold shine to the room. The cabinet and drawer fronts all got a hardware makeover, too, thanks to acrylic pulls from Amazon. 

Then came the true star of the redo: the wall treatments. A glitzy backsplash featuring Mirror Glass Subway Tile from Tile Club pairs gorgeously with glam palm-frond wallpaper to “create the elevated, lounge-like feel,” Appiah wanted. Because so many of the other details in the room are simple, these elements, along with the bold cabinetry, really shine.  

Now that the room is complete, Appiah couldn’t be happier with the results. Her family uses the space every day, and it’s such a fun party trick to show her company when entertaining — the space is even kitted out with a wine fridge for after hours! 

“I absolutely love how the space turned out,” she says of the project. “Even though it’s a small space, it feels bold, layered, and intentional, which is exactly what I envisioned.”

Maybe Appiah’s best advice, though, comes down to the room’s small but mighty size — and the design joy (and functionality!) it’s brought her and her family. “Don’t overlook small spaces,” she says. “Sometimes the smallest rooms are where you can take the biggest design risks and create the most memorable moments in your home.”