29 Kitchen Pass Through Window Ideas

Kitchen pass through windows have been traditionally installed indoors, to easily serve or transfer food from the kitchen to the dining area. It’s a simple design solution that simply involves making an opening through a wall or a door and adding a small window large enough for food and dishes to pass through.

More contemporary applications of the kitchen pass through window involve connecting the kitchen to the outdoor areas. Not only does it allow additional ventilation and light for the kitchen, but this is also the perfect idea if you don’t have the space for an outdoor bar, but would like to efficiently serve food and drinks in your backyard or porch.

These can also be often found in restaurants, allowing kitchen workers to directly send food orders to the counter or food servers without leaving the kitchen.

In the picture above an accordion kitchen pass through window directly connects the modern kitchen to the pool area of the house. The accordion window is gathered on one side of the frame, allowing a very wide opening.

Types of Pass Through Windows

Different types of windows can be used as kitchen pass-through casement. The appropriate type will depend on the design of the space, and the available wall space of the installation, budget, and personal preference. Here’s the most common pass through windows used:

Awning Window – These are a great choice especially for those located in tropical countries or anywhere with constant rains and monsoons. These are available in a variety of sizes and designs. The large, modern style awning windows would have hydraulic technology so you can easily lift the casement open or close as needed. When open, the framed design also serves as a canopy.

Swing Up Window – Swing up and awning windows could often be confused because both technically “swing upwards”. The main difference is that awning windows swing OUTWARDS, while swing up windows swing INWARDS.

This option is good if you don’t have any overhead shelves, lamps or cabinets that will block the way of the casement. This is also an ideal option if you current window opening is a casement type with a sill, where it would be difficult to install an awning casement.

Pocket Window – If you don’t want open windows to obstruct anything indoors or outdoors, or if you are simply short on space, a pocket casement might be the perfect option. This is easy to install on drywall, and such design allows your windows to slide “inside” a pocket hidden between the walls for a large and obstruction-free opening.

Garage Door – You can use an existing garage door track to convert it into a pass-through casement as well! A little bit of DIY skills would be needed to complete this, but is very doable!

Accordion Window – This type of casement slides to either one or two sides of the frame. Accordion windows is especially ideal if you have a bigger or wider area where you need a pass-through. This is usually the choice for bigger openings.

When looking for kitchen pass through casement ideas its best to consider your home’s layout to determine the style for you. You can try using kitchen design software to enter your exact specifications and visualize your ideas.

This is a great example of a kitchen design with an accordion pass through casement. However, this one folds the windows into two sides of the frame and has a more classic silhouette to match the classic Spanish colonial style of the kitchen.

Window to Outside Patio

This example shows an accordion kitchen pass through that folds outwards. On the edge of the casement opening, a metal-framed bar ledge was installed and fixed with barstools for an instant outdoor bar area.

Even when closed, you can still make use of the bar ledge as a small dining area or food serving/preparation station.

This pass through window is very wide, so an accordion type window was used. This allows you to fully utilize the whole width of the opening.

Smaller window widths can also use accordion pass through windows. Because this window was installed by the sink, the accordion folds outwards so it doesn’t hit the faucet. See our guide to standard window sizes on this page.

This is the view from outside, showing how it folds outwards on the small marble ledge outside the pass through window.

To match the clean and minimalist aesthetic of the culinary space, narrower framing was used for this pass through window. It has a white powder coated finish to match the white cabinets.

This accordion pass through window conveniently connects the culinary space to the outdoor patio through an opening that matches the window size of the house. This is a great option for those who’d love to entertain and serve food in the patio, but don’t have roof or covering to protect an actual outdoor barbecue area.

This backyard patio with pass through window also helps include the person cooking and preparing the food in on the action.

Galley Kitchen with Opening to Patio

If you don’t like the obstruction of folded windows from an accordion window, the canopy, or an awning window or cannot use a swing-up window for your space, you can also consider a slide-up window as used in this galley kitchen. This allows you to still give efficient access between the outdoor area and the cooking area, and allows a wide window opening as well, but sacrifices a bit on the opening height.

U-Shaped Kitchen 

Pass through windows works just as well on U-shaped kitchens as they do with any galley or L-shaped kitchen. This example features a simple, white framed accordion window that matches the overall color scheme of the kitchen.

Large Window

Pass through windows have traditionally been used indoors, and they don’t necessarily need an actual window to work. This example shows a large pass through opening from the kitchen to the dining area.

The kitchen and dining rooms are separate areas, but the large opening of the pass through window helps connect the two areas of the house. The large opening helps make the kitchen feel less stuffy or small, and also helps efficiently serve food and dishes from kitchen to dining and vice versa.

For those who wish to remove the wall to open up the space there are kitchens with columns that still provide support for the ceiling without adding costly beams overhead.

Peninsula to Dining Room

What’s unique about this design is the clever use of French cabinet doors placed on both sides of the large pass through opening, which makes it look like open window panes instead of storage/display cabinets.

Peninsula to Breakfast Bar

This breakfast bar is a simple and functional use for pass through windows. A large opening was made on the dry wall, and a slab of granite was installed as a ledge on the opening so that it can be a functional breakfast bar.

Space is really a challenge in apartment buildings or flats like this example does. The small kitchen is on a separate enclosed corner of the unit, and because it doesn’t get any sunlight because of its location, it tends to look dark and stuffy.

By creating the large opening on the dry wall, we allow natural light to seep into the small kitchen. The added granite ledge also adds more function to the opening by utilizing it as a breakfast bar.

Sliding Up Window

Depending on structural, architectural and layout restrictions, awning or accordion windows might not work. Like in this example, a slide up casement was used instead of awning or any other window types.

Dining Area to Kitchen

The traditional use of pass through windows is to connect the kitchen to the dining area, whether it may be a residential space or a restaurant. This example shows a small opening used as a pass through casement to connect the small room to the formal dining area.

This pass-through casement from the culinary space to dining room opens up the cooking space and provides another space for dining. By creating a large opening from the drywall and extending the countertop past the opening, a small breakfast bar was created, in addition to connecting the cooking to the dining area.

For this example, a higher bar counter height breakfast bar was installed to connect the culinary space to the small breakfast area/room.

This is how it looks inside the cooking area. There’s a U-shaped counter that uses white cabinetry and black granite countertops. The countertop is the same height as the opening, so you don’t need to add extra cut or stone material as you would if you want a bar height pass-through.

Kitchen with Small Window

Sometimes, we have to make do with what’s already there – an ordinary sliding casement was used in this example to connect the culinary space to the outdoor patio.

Kitchen with Round Window

Following the unique architectural details on the ceiling of this house, the culinary space uses a unique round opening as a pass through casement so that it matches the whole theme and silhouette of the architecture of the space.

Dining Space with Casement

Because this dining room is enclosed, the two pass-through windows framing the dining room entry help make the space feel less stuffy and look more bright and inviting.

Closed Layout Kitchen with Casement

If you find having an enclosed cooking area a bit inconvenient when it comes to serving food and entertaining guests, one easy solution that doesn’t involve taking down walls is by adding a pass-through casement.

This small culinary space added a large pass-through casement opening that allows you to see the culinary space and see from there, while also allowing you to conveniently serve food through the large pass-through opening.

Home Bar with Casement Window

One way to make your pass-through opening more functional is by adding a ledge or a counter surface where you can lay down food and drinks. Take an extra mile and use a durable material, such as natural stones to make it more functional and elegant. The ledge in this example has been extended outwards to provide more knee space as well.

Kitchen with Garage Door Style Casement

Upcycled architectural features really have their own charm. Aside from saving on materials and hardware, you also help reduce waste produced during your remodeling. This example shows a garage door converted into a pass-through casement.

This casement opens into an enclosed patio design, where you can find a wooden swing bench and 2 bar stools placed in front of the pass-through that match the overall rustic charm of the space.

Pass-Through Kitchen Peninsula

When designing kitchens, there’s usually a tough choice you have to make: having more storage space vs having more natural lighting. If we could have the best of both worlds or at least a balance between the two, it would be a dream come true!

This modern culinary space is an example of such. While overhead storage is usually sacrificed for more casement space, this culinary space still keeps a full set of overhead cabinets by offsetting the counter from the full-height glass windows and suspending the overhead cabinets through metal post supports. This makes your counter double as a peninsula counter as well.

If you only have a small cooking space, the best option is to keep it open so that it doesn’t feel or look too enclosed. Some prefer having “divided” spaces in their homes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need walls in between.

This example features a kitchen with a peninsula counter to divide the space from the living room. The design creates a large “pass through” opening between the cookinig space and the living and dining area.

Arched Casement

When working with existing buildings or houses, the best practice when installing new windows and openings is to follow the original style of the architecture, as much as possible.

This example shows classic French style doors and windows with arched transom windows. To keep in theme with the original architectural style, the pass through casement also installed a fixed arch transom above it to match the rest of the windows. Visit this link to see more dining room ideas.