Bi fold doors into garden and making lounge / diner open plan to kitchen

[AlwaysFullOfQuestions22]

Would i be mad to do this, as in would it cost loads more to heat downstairs being glass and not wall?
Or best off keeping the conservatory /replacing just conservatory rather than get rid.

Mad.
Cooking smells lingering on your sofa and no way to shut doors and cosy up.

I’ve seen 2 threads this week about heating bills with this set-up.

“nobody could’ve foreseen this” seems to be a common cry.

aye, except those of us long enough in the tooth to think beyond reality tv.

Open plan is very popular.
We have glass doors along the back wall and have put up really thick curtains for the winter which have made a huge difference.
Open plan is harder to heat generally but you need a really good heating engineer to zone it for you and design the space with heating in mind rather than just putting heating randomly around the room. Ours moved one radiator and transformed the feel of our extension.

That was my thought. Its pretty chilly with the lounge and dining room open plan already.
Thinking maybe just a nice re decorate instead.

I have a kitchen diner with a lot of glass. I live in the room spring, summer and autumn but come winter I need cosy and find I start using my living room - all that darkness beyond the glass is not cosy even if the room is warm.

I would have 2 of the 3 open plan, but not all 3.
I've lived in houses with all 3 separate, all three together, and a kitchen diner.
Think a kitchen-diner or a least a kitchen massive enough for a decent sized table is my preference.

I have this set up and I haven't found it that hard to heat but I do agree re the above with smells. Especially as DH cooks loads of spicy, strong smelling meals, it gets everywhere.

I've a hybrid of this. Our living room and dining room are at the back of the house and the kitchen makes an L shape attached to the dining room. We have glass doors between dining and kitchen and sliding pocket doors between the dining and living rooms. We rarely close any of the doors but this means that we are able to if we want to.
We have underfloor heating in the living and dining rooms and then radiators in the rest of the house and our heating is currently costing 15 to £20 per day in this very cold snap.
I wouldn't do fully open plan, I don't like it plus I don't think it's what future buyers will be looking for.

Similar to ppb we have a large-ish kitchen-diner and a set of bifold doors to the main living room. Best of both worlds because we have the feel of open plan but in the winter we can hear them separately - kitchen in the daytime and living room in the evening.

Heat separately not hear. Although keeping them separate also helps with noise!

It's a good idea to keep the kitchen able to be shut off, because of cooking smells and also when entertaining it means you and your guests don't have to stare at a pile of mess and dirty dishes after a meal.

The only time I lived in a house with an open plan room including the kitchen, we all hated it.

If you were watching tv & someone put the kettle on, you couldn't hear the tv, if someone cooked something, the smell was everywhere long after the food was gone.

Would you put your kitchen bin in your living room?
That's open plan living for you.

Do you have a dog or cat with food bowls you'd have on the kitchen floor?
Now they will be in the living room.
I've been to houses where they had a litter tray in the kitchen, with open plan cat litter can end up in your living room.

Sometimes, what you want is a different room, e.g you & your friends are in the one room having a chat, your other half is in a different room having a chat instead of always having to be right on top of each other.

Or sometimes one of you wants to listen to loud music/a film & the other wants to chat - open plan removes that option unless you have a second living room.

Guests want to stay & you usually put some of them up in the living room?
Now they will be in the kitchen.

Heating is also more expensive.

I would never do it again.
Spent so much time in my bedroom in that little house, because there was nowhere to go downstairs that was away from everyone else.

Don’t do it.

There was an open plan house for sale not far from me, it was not selling and it was beautiful looking. I would never buy open plan.

We've got a kitchen diner with glass sliding doors out into the garden and new wet underfloor heating. We spend a lot of time there as it's light, once the heating is up and running it stays comfortable at 18 - we just leave it at 18 all the time and it's well insulated so that's fine.

The rest of the house on the ground floor is traditional, and freezing. I wouldn't like it to be all opened out. Brrr.

Our old flat was open plan and I hated it,
Always paranoid the furnishings smelled of food. It would put me off buying something in future if it was kitchen/living room open plan tbh

We have two combined but not 3. As it is, the open plan space is more difficult to heat and it is annoying if someone is trying to watch TV and someone boils a kettle, or puts the dishwasher on or does the washing up. The noise does not make the open plan space very useful if you want to watch TV in it.

We have a large L shaped kitchen, dining area and seating area. With 6m of bifolds and 2 large lanterns. It's cold at the moment!! But we also have a downstairs study, utility and lounge which we can shut off.

The lounge is delightfully warm (too warm with the heating on) but the open plan area hasn't really got above 18 degrees, and that is with the heating on for hours.

I love our open plan living, but without the other rooms to escape to it would probably be a little too chilly.