Apartment Therapy's biggest event of the year, Small Cool 2011 just wrapped, and the winners were announced. It was a complete festival of inspiring compact homes this year — nearly 200 entries from teeny-tiny to small. We took this as an opportunity to dig through this year's entries and pull out the most inspiring small kitchens. From sleek, all-white modern kitchens to simple and homey spaces, here are 30 small kitchens to inspire.
FROM THE FINALISTS & WINNERS
• Lasse in Denmark
• Julia in New Hampshire
• Nicole in Brooklyn
• Jordan in Brooklyn
TEENY-TINY
from homes under 400 square feet
• Stellah in Brooklyn
• Cammie in Boston
• Arden in New York
• Paul in New York
• Sandy in Brooklyn
TINY
from homes under 600 square feet
• Eduardo in New York
• Abbie in Norwalk
• Maya in New York
• Christine in Sausalito
• Danielle in Los Angeles
LITTLE
from homes under 800 square feet
• Susan in Amherst
• Joey & Kati in Chestnut Hill
• Sammi & Dave in Oakland
• Maureen in Denver
• Dan in Cambridge
SMALL
from homes under 1000 square feet
• Darren in New York
• Christopher in Cambridge
• Anna & AJ in Los Angeles
• Johanna in New York
• Kathryn in Iowa City
• Heidi and Dave in Portland
INTERNATIONAL
from homes under 1000 square feet
• Eider in Spain
• Steve in Sydney
• Dean in Glasgow
• Bianca in Cape Town
• Patricia in Canada
• SEE ALL THE SMALL COOL 2011 ENTRIES: Small Cool 2011 at Apartment Therapy
(Images: All images provided by owners/inhabitants of featured homes.)
How To Cook Fluffy, Tasty Quinoa
Perfect Summer Cocktail Recipe: Honey Bourbon Lemonade
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Elizabeth Apron fro...
100 DIY Ideas for the 3-Day Weekend
Danielle's Charming, Classic Walk-Up
I love posts like this! SO much diversity, very inspiring.
I guess "small" is relative, as some of these kitchens look quite comfortable (and some are about half the size of my New York apartment!).
It does seem to be a relative term. I have roughly the same amount of counter space as Julia in New Hampshire *and don't have the island* and think I have a decently sized kitchen. It's not small by any means, though it's not huge either.
I have shelves like Abbie from Norwalk, and I adore them. I actually used shelf braces from lookintheattic.com. They're wrought iron-looking, I think they called it oil rubbed bronze. I have a bright yellow kitchen and used dark, antiqued metals as an accent. It looks so good.
@aliebert yes, the "small cool" refers the size of the home as a whole, and it seems like some have large kitchens, proportionally-speaking.
BUT we are doing a small cool KITCHENS contest later this summer - stay tuned!
This is a prime example of how the user interface is so frustrating on this site. With so many thumbnails to scroll through, you have to scroll down, click, scroll back up, scroll down and find your place among the tiny thumbnail, scroll back up to look at the picture. Most of the time I give up looking at the picture because it takes so long. Please please please put some arrows or something up so you can just click quickly through the images. Or maybe just click on the photo to go to the next one. It drives me nuts!!