Anyone got fully open plan downstairs?

[Lovingmylife]

We are looking at doing some building work and thinking we might make the whole downstairs open plan. Has anyone done this and ended up hating it or regretted it? I wonder if I'd miss a cosy living room or if I'd love the open space.

Yup. We have all the ground floor open plan with kitchen, dining area, study/book wall area and living room. It’s noisy and messy but I’m ok with that - it’s family space.

We also have a decent size sitting room and study on the first floor so there is separation if needed and I’m not sure I’d be so keen on the open plan ground floor if it weren’t for this. It does take our property “down” a bedroom compared to others on the same road but we could easily convert sitting room to bedroom for a sale.

Also there’s open plan and open plan. If the property naturally had corridor/alcoves and good built in furniture you can “zone” an open plan well. If your house is a white box inside it may not feel cosy enough.

Friend has this and hates that if she wants to potter in the kitchen she can’t have the radio on if boyfriend watching telly, or vice versa.

We moved into a house that had no wall between dining room and sitting room, put it back, gave us a room for us and room for kids, also walls to put furniture against.

Wfh, much easier with more rooms to close doors on.

I have just extended to create an open plan kitchen/ dining/living room, I love it and it's such a lovely sociable place for us, we spend lots of family time in there.
There is also a separate snug and more formal dining room so we could have separate space if we felt needed to use it however they rarely get used, we spend all our time in the open plan area.
My children are older now so there's not toys everywhere which helps.
Also useful is that I have a separate utility room which keeps my very noisy washing machine and tumble dryer away from where we might be trying to relax.

We originally had big double doors that would allow to separate the kitchen and lounge. But we realized after having lived in the house for several years that we had never closed the doors, not even once. So it was clear that open plan works for us.

But depends also on what other rooms you have - for example for any business phone calls I would use the study anyway and not the lounge.

Ours is mostly open plan and I hate it! You can't escape anywhere, can't shut anyone out, just feels like constant noise coming from somewhere, and the whole house constantly smells of cooking!

Its bloody annoying if you have kids. No escape for you or them unless you go upstairs. Which they never want to do. I used to cook to relax now its stress city

We have a large kitchen/dining/living room. There’s a TV unit, sideboard, dining table and chairs, sofa and side tables. There are double doors to the hall and we have another living room that we use in the evening. Best of both worlds I reckon.

Ours is all open plan. There are a couple of reasons I like it, being able to see the TV or chat to DH or family while I'm cooking or pottering around in the kitchen for example. I don't find it's cold either. However, on the whole I'm not keen. I really don't like the cooking smells (especially if we've had something strong like onions or curry) that waft into the lounge and I find it hard to relax being able to see mess in the kitchen after we've made a meal. If we had a kitchen door we could just shut it on the tidying up
If I had chosen the house (I moved in with DH), I wouldn't have picked open plan. And if/when we move, I won't choose it then.

Our (open plan) living room is actually the nicest, cosiest living room I’ve ever had. And it’s nice to be able to talk when you’re in the kitchen and someone else is in the living room.

I really like it. Hate feeling penned in with closed doors though.

Oh and it’s far from cold but we have underfloor heating.

We have this. It's a large open plan kitchen and living room and dining space. We have a hallway walled off to the front door, stairs and WC. It's horrible and it's one reason we are moving house. There is no escape!! From each other, from the mess, from visiting family at Christmas etc! Plus there's no variation - you are always in the same space to make food eat watch TV read a book relax etc etc etc. The washing machine or dishwasher are the sounds that accompany your afternoon snooze on the sofa! The smell of last nights dinner always lingers. It was great for entertaining in the evening when it was just us but now with a young family it doesn't work at all. I would only do it again if there was a separate reception room and a utility.

(Flat not house).

Our large living area is all open plan, I love it, I don’t like closed off rooms.

Ours is open plan and I love it. We have 2 small children so it's handy that they have room to play while I cook. I don't really understand people's objection on here to "food smells"???

My friend did this, she has a massive downstairs. She ended up putting one wall back so had a really big kitchen, dining, living room and a separate big living room.

I'd say it depends on what other rooms you've got. DH is currently on a Zoom call for a committee he's on. He's sitting at the kitchen table. I will shortly be going live on a weekly Zoom quiz with friends. We couldn't do that if we only had open plan space downstairs unless one of us decamped to the bedroom.

I live in a Victorian terrace and we've just opened up downstairs completely. You come in through the hallway and the stairs are in front of you then to the left is the living room, dining room and kitchen - all open.

I thought it would make a small space feel bigger but actually I feel like the house feels smaller! There's more room bc we've removed the walls, but I'm not sure if I like being able to sit at one end of my house and see the other. Being able to see your house front to back makes it feel small unless it's huge!

Do you have children? We have partial open plan. Main area is not huge but we have kitchen, a table and sofa area and then a separate lounge. Works really well. Would you at least have a utility room? Wouldn't like to have to listen to the dishwasher or washing machine while watching telly!

My biggest problem with it is that I can't shut the wet dog in the kitchen!

Based on a lot of the property programmes on TV - Grand Designs, Building the Dream etc - you’d think open-plan living was the norm.

I think it partly stems from an idealised image of a large kitchen island, watching over the kids playing/doing their homework while doing the cooking or whatever.

The trouble is those years are relatively brief and kids soon want to do their own thing in separate spaces!

Ours is open plan with the bedrooms and bathroom coming off it. Don’t do if unless you’re naturally tidy! You see everything that’s been left out in every part of the room at a glance. With 2 primary aged DC... plus, I can’t hide from them to sneak a biscuit!

I had completely open plan downstairs in my last house and ended up hating it because there was no escape from mess and you couldn't watch TV when the kettle or the washing machine were on. A separate playroom and utility would have solved this though.

I used to have this and it looked fab but I wasn’t a fan - noise from the likes of the washing machine, the lack of space from other people, cooking smells lingering, drafty, had to keep it all tidy as I can’t rest if I see mess.

Don’t get me wrong I love a big open plan kitchen, we have one now with a snug off it, but we also have a warm family lounge, another reception room and a utility. DP is on for opening everything up to make a spectacular grand designs type affair and it’s a firm no from me!

We kind of do. There's an extended kitchen/diner with a seating area then a massive arch through to the lounge - previous owner was a wheelchair user so it's a really generous 'gap'. We then have a corridor-type thing to the front where the front door, loo and stairs are.

We love it but only have one DC. Being able to close off the front door/loo really helps with heating though, that corridor is the coldest part of the house. We only have one TV too, in the lounge, I can hear it as I'm tapping away on MN but it does't bother me. If you wanted to have two tellies going at once though it would be a nightmare.

My idea of hell. Fine for a tiny house as it feels less cramped but awful for a larger house. If you have space for even a small separate sitting room with a decent sized kitchen diner, keep those walls in place!