20 Inspiring Small Coffee Shop Designs in Detail

Good small coffee shop design makes a tight space work hard: a compact, well-placed counter and coffee station, a clear route from door to order to pick-up, seating that suits short and long stays, one strong material or colour idea, careful lighting, and, wherever possible, an extension onto the street or a courtyard. This guide, for designers and café owners, sets out those principles in a table with examples, then presents 20 inspiring small coffee shops from around the world, each with a short explanation of the idea that makes it work.

Architects can make a lot of a small space, and creative small coffee shops prove it. You can use lighting to change the perception of a room’s size, choose space-saving furniture or extend the café outdoors. Some of the best coffee experiences in the world happen in very small rooms.

Principles of small coffee shop design

The table summarises the design moves that recur in the 20 projects below, with examples you can study.

Rules matter too. Seating numbers, accessible toilets and entrances, fire escape routes, ventilation and food-hygiene separation are regulated, and the requirements differ by country and city. Check the local building, fire, accessibility and food-safety rules before fixing a layout; the cat café below shows how a hygiene rule can become the main design idea.

20 Inspiring Small Coffee Shop Designs in Detail

Arch2O selected 20 small coffee shops from around the world. For each, we explain the main idea in our own words, based on the architects’ descriptions.

1. zmianatematu | xm3

In a renovated historic building, the architects added a single new element: a white, organic “alien” form that grows into the small room from inside the building, forms the bar and divides the space into functional areas. The new white insertion contrasts with the existing walls and ceiling, left in raw roughcast plaster.

2. Jury | Biasol

Biasol played dark bluestone walls against bright colours and blond timber. Plywood, structural timber and concrete form a geometric, colourful feature wall that brings the site to life and lets it move on from what the designers describe as its dark past.

Also read: how interior lighting design can affect a space

3. Dallah | Associated Architects Partnership

The design takes its cue from the dallah, the traditional Arabic coffee pot, and from the ritual of making coffee with cardamom, cloves and saffron, ingredients traded along the Silk Road, as a gesture of hospitality to guests and passers-by.

Also read: secret room ideas

4. Option Coffee Bar | TOUCH Architect

On a small plot facing the main street in the centre of Udon Thani, Thailand, one space works in shifts: a café and bakery with a healthy-food restaurant in the morning, and a craft-beer bar in the evening. Time-sharing lets a small room support three businesses.

5. The Fluted Emerald Elgin Cafe | RENESA Architecture Design Interiors Studio

The café is organised around materials and brand: a day-dining café area and a private dining room that can be separated by sliding folding shutters, so the room can change with the occasion.

6. Koji Saryo Café | Atsushi Suzuki + Transit Branding Studio

Inspired by the warmth released during koji fermentation, the café centres on a red fixture surrounded by benches. It is deliberately set low, at eye level, so its colour stands out strongly when seen from outside.

7. Together Apart Cat Café | Davidson Rafailidis

For Buckminster’s Cat Café, health rules required an airtight separation between the cats and food preparation. The architects turned that rule into the concept: in a century-old brick building in Buffalo, New York, a glass wall separates the café and kitchen from the cats’ area, so the two sides stay apart while still feeling together.

8. Cafe Simsim, inspired by Jeju Island | STARSIS

In Nohyeong-dong on Jeju Island, South Korea, café Simsim sits in the new “Soom” building by Todot Architects. The design brings Jeju’s nature and relaxed pace inside, with earthy materials that make the café feel like a calm shelter.

9. Tewa Cafe Ayutthaya | BodinChapa Architects

At this café in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Thailand, lines of grey brick, inspired by woven carp, lead visitors from the street into the shop, bring planting inside and connect the new café with the existing Patewaraj restaurant behind it.

10. Canvas Café Bali | Studio Tropis

Near Sanur beach in Bali, Indonesia, the harbour for boats to the Nusa islands, Canvas Café uses a contemporary tropical style. Its name expresses a playful, homely character, intended as a hub for creative people.

11. Fikafabriken | small scale projects

Fikafabriken is a small independent patisserie and café in Setagaya, Tokyo. Its concept comes from the Swedish custom of fika, a coffee break shared with others, and its renovation has given the local shopping street a new focal point.

12. Coffee No. 9 | PHTAA Living Design

Here the coffee-making area takes up about 80% of the interior, leaving only 20% for seating. The solution was outside: the landlord allowed the café to use street-side space, on condition that it was shared with customers of the neighbouring restaurants.

13. Today is Long Cafe | Absence from Island

In Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong, the façade repeats the half-circle of a setting sun, giving the café a strong geometric identity among older buildings. One half-circle becomes an entrance arch and short tunnel that leads guests from the busy street into a quiet interior.

14. 1402 Coffee Shop in Aranya | B.L.U.E. Architecture Studio

Inside an existing red-brick building in the Aranya community, China, the architects inserted a new volume of pigmented cement that holds seating, waiting, a pour-over bar, display and planting. The volume extends to the street façade, giving the plain building a new focal point.

15. Proti Proudu Bistro | Mimosa architekti

In Prague’s Karlín district, the theme of current and connection honours the Karlín-born electrical engineer František Křižík. A white perforated-plywood bar wall works as a grid to which everything connects, from the wires of the table lamps to the paper roll with the daily menu. The bistro was completed in 2015.

16. El Moro | Cadena Concept Design

The redesign of this long-established brand simplifies its classic wall tiles and stained-glass windows into a fresher, minimal graphic system that keeps the essence of the original.

17. Estação Ciência Cafe | Una Arquitetos

During the day the café is transparent from inside and opaque from outside; at night the effect reverses. Sliding glass panels open fully to the platform and allow cross-ventilation, and a single fixed counter holds all the services and equipment.

18. Chimney Café | GOA

Built in about two months and completed in 2015, this café of about 60 square metres opens into the courtyard of the SPSI Art Museum in Shanghai. From the pavement of Jinzhu Road, passers-by glimpse the café and a bamboo courtyard through a semi-transparent steel-mesh wall.

19. To Tsai Tea Room | Georges Batzios Architects

This tea room, offering around 500 teas, was renovated to combine a tea room, a retail shop and a small tea-focused restaurant in one space, setting it apart from the many tea rooms that have opened nearby.

20. Black Drop Coffee Shop | ark4lab of Architecture

In the centre of Kavala in northern Greece, Black Drop treats coffee as an urban experience. A mosaic-clad stand is the place to talk about coffee, and copper, terrazzo, exposed concrete, old timber and rusted walls give the feel of a laboratory.

How to apply these ideas to your own small coffee shop design

• Start with the counter. Size the coffee station and its services first (water, drainage, power, extraction); everything else follows.
• Draw the queue. Keep the route from door to order to pick-up short and separate from seating.
• Choose one strong idea, such as a material, colour or story, as Jury, Koji Saryo and Proti Proudu do.
• Borrow space from the street, a courtyard or the time of day, like Coffee No. 9 and Option Coffee Bar.
• Light it in layers: daylight, task light at the bar and warm light for seating.
• Check the rules early: occupancy, accessibility, fire escape and hygiene separation in your jurisdiction.

Whether you are fitting out a kiosk or a corner shop, good small coffee shop design comes from a few clear decisions made well.

Sources and further reading

• The Architect’s Newspaper: Davidson Rafailidis’s cat café in Buffalo (2020)
• ArchDaily: Chimney Café / GOA
• Designboom: Proti Proudu bistro by Mimosa architekti