Adding a home bar cabinet or bar console is a surefire way to add a refined and debonair quality to your dining room, family room or living area. Home bars, and their accompanying bar stools or pub sets, often have a magnitude of character to them that is borne out of their size, stylish elegance and role in social activities on days and nights when libations are in order. Home bars typically feature storage cabinets, bottle and stemware racks and a number of utility organizers to make entertaining guests all the more easy for the hosts.

Home Bars Play Different Roles

The specific function of your home bar will also impact what kind you will buy. To decide what you should be looking for, consider the following.

Do you see you and your guests as people who would congregate at the bar for an extended period of time? Then you’re ready to commit space to a large bar set complete with bar stools or one or two pub sets.

Will you regard your home bar more as a place to prepare beverages before moving on to enjoy your drinks in the living room or dining room? A compact size home bar with plenty of counter space and no bar stools might be a good fit.

Are your tastes and those of your guests significantly varied, or do you most commonly enjoy certain beverages more exclusively? For example, many people often drink wine and/or select liqueurs rather than spirits. If this describes you, then perhaps a spirits cabinet or wine console would be a better choice.

Do you generally entertain and enjoy beverages in the same room of the home, or is it an activity that is not always centered in one specific area? Select a home bar on casters, which will give you the flexibility of moving it from room to room as needed.

Different Sizes and Types of Home Bars

By getting an idea of the average standing size of your bottle collection, you can determine whether or not it can be accommodated by any home bar you may have your eye on. Some people may at any given time have more than five to six bottles of their liquor of choice and a few wine selections on hand. Others with more extensive tastes and a fondness for mixology may carry up to 30 bottles or more at a time. Before going shopping for a home bar, have some idea on how much room you will need and how big the home bar should be to accommodate everything. By using the diameter of a standard 26-ounce liquor bottle (3.5") as a guide, in a cabinet that is 16" H x 16" W x 14" D, you could easily store four bottles cross and three rows deep.

Hide-a-Bars are ideal for individuals who wish to maintain the decorum of their dining or living area and yet have the practical convenience of a centrally-located serving station. Behind an unassuming and simple stylish 2-door cabinet, a hide-a-bar has the extensive storage capacity to retain everything you’ll need to prepare drinks (save ice perhaps) with the appeal of it all being discreetly concealed from view.

An L-shaped bar looks like a straight bar with an extension to either the right or left side. The extended part of the counter is generally shorter than the front part, designed to accommodate a sink or a bar fridge. Like other types of home bars, they can include shelves for bottles, cabinets and pull-out serving trays or cutting boards.

Portable home bars provide you with the freedom to re-locate your serving station anywhere within the home and as often as you’d like. If you find yourself entertaining in other less-traditional areas of the home, including out-of-doors, take a look at a portable bar cabinet on wheels. Portable bars are typically dry bars (ones without sinks) and while many models do have comparable features to standard home bars such as bottle storage, a prep area and adjustable shelves, they tend to be more compact with generally less storage capacity.