Small Breakfast Nooks

190 Ideas by Emily Hilton

Breakfast nooks are a cozy place to kick-start your day. It’s a more informal and easy-going alternative to eating your cereal and drinking orange juice at the dining table. It also doubles as an excellent location for a casual lunch or hosting a friend for coffee. If your home has modest square footage, these picks for the eight best small breakfast nooks seat up to four people, perfect for tucking into smaller spaces.

If you kitchen has not enough place for the standard table and chairs, you can try to arrange the little breakfast nook. The bench could have the storage place hidden inside for rarely used pots and crockery.

4 Person Breakfast Nook Dining Set

I just love the way this kitchen is set up. What a creative idea to put storage shelves hidden in the benches, which themselves give the room a very unique, restaurant-like look. Very vintage and traditional.

Black Breakfast Nook Dining Set

GREAT IDEA FOR DINING AND SPACE SAVING IF IT WERE DROP DOWN WITH CHAIRS THAT COULD ALSO BE COMFY LIVING ROOM CHAIRS. Lovely solution for a small kitchen

Ethan 3 - Piece Pine Trestle Dining Set

2 - Person Counter Height Dining Set

LOVE this little dining nook! It would be the perfect size for me, and I would actually sit down for a meal...

Tabiatha 3 - Piece Dining Set

This L-shaped banquette bench is a nice option for when you might not have too much floor space in your interior, since it will fit easily into your kitchen nook, creating some more room for convenient eating.

The dining table with drawers makes your kitchen so lovely and cosy. It can perfectly work as a kitchen nook in every small dining room. Drawers enable to store a huge amount of your things, which makes it even more suitable for small houses.

4 Person Dining Table Set

Small Breakfast Nook Dining Set

This breakfast nook is bright and cozy! Love the vintage feel and the contrasting light and dark tones. Perfect for that morning energizer.

Two person breakfast nook dining set small space

Perfect for a breakfast nook!

I am a huge fan of the banquet! The Bailey boys love ours! I say go big when it comes to kitchen seating...I have had 20 people sitting at mine! This one is a bit small.

7 Genius Ways to Design a Small Space - Dining Corner

This looks like our corner in our kitchen/dining room. Great way to utilize every nook and cranny. Id love this!

4 - Person Counter Height Dining Set

Breakfast Nook Dining Set With Stools

Dining Set

Elegant small space breakfast nook

Kayler 3 - Piece Dining Set

More Ideas

Small Breakfast Nooks

Buying Guide

Emily Hilton Interior Design Expert

Emily is an interior designer specializing in kitchen and dining spaces, with a strong focus on function, craftsmanship, and detail. Shaped by both formal training and hands-on studio work, she approaches every project as a problem-solving exercise that must balance workflow, storage, and comfort with a cohesive visual story. Her guidance helps readers transform everyday cooking and dining areas into inviting hubs that truly support how they live and gather.

Morning is often a busy time, and for families where nearly everyone goes off to work or school and is gone for most of the day, the evening isn’t much of a slow-down. A breakfast nook can help keep the morning meal contained in the same place as meal prep. But a small kitchen might not have a lot of space for a breakfast nook.

How much space do you need for a breakfast nook?

It all depends on the number of people you want to seat comfortably at once. Generally speaking, you need a space at least 22 inches wide by 15 inches deep for each place setting.

How to develop a breakfast nook in a small kitchen?

The idea is to arrange a breakfast nook without interfering with the necessary paths for meal prep. Here are some ideas:

Small Drop-Leaf Table and Push-in Chairs

A small drop-leaf table with a pair of matching chairs that push in under it can provide a place to seat a couple youngsters or two adults for a fast meal before heading out the door. With the kitchen triangle close at hand, it is scarcely any trouble at all to rinse tableware so that it will be easy to clean at the end of the day – or even before heading out.

An oval table and barrel chair set with storage

If you love a good book with your morning tea, this is the table set for you! When it is not in use, this table looks like a wrap-around bookshelf. But it is really an oval table with a storage cupboard hidden under it, flanked by two barrel chairs that could easily also have little storage drawers under the seats. It is the perfect place to hide that steamy novel or to keep track of your great-grandmother’s hand sewn book of special recipes. Bold, beautiful and just a little bit sneaky, this table and barrel chair set will be the perfect complement to your morning tea and crumpets.

Gate Leg Table with Matching Stools

No time, no space, no problem. A cute little gate leg table provides a hiding place for two stools, and the gate leg drop leaf adds enough space that you can set out both the honey bear and the sugar bowl, as well as your plate of pancakes and favorite morning drink. When breakfast is done, the leaf can go down and the stools can be stashed under the table, making it a spare bit of counter space.

How to arrange a breakfast nook without a table?

Some kitchens are so tiny there isn’t room for a table. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t plan for a good breakfast. Dedicate a little counter space to a toaster, a drip percolator, and a pair of cold cereal dispensers. If it’s close to the refrigerator, so much the better because your milk and juice will be handy. Add a stool or two, and you are good to go.

Breakfast is said to be one of the most important meals of the day because it fuels you up for the hours ahead. But it can also be the meal where the dishes are left to set for eight to ten hours, making it one of the messiest meals of the day. Add a small microwave to hour breakfast mini-bar, and keep frozen breakfast burritos on hand to gain some morning protein and cut down on cleanup.