To ask if anyone actually likes open plan living?

[Thesystemonlydreamsintotaldarkness]

I love property porn. Always looking at big fancy houses well out of my budget.

I’ve noticed that there is a lot of open plan living out there! I think it would be horrible: a kitchen/diner with a bit for sitting, and a separate living room. Fine. But completely open plan?! Gives me the horrors! How do you escape the noise? What about privacy?

Those who are claiming they like 'open plan' are actually saying they like a large modern kitchen diner at the back of the house open to the garden but also want a utility, a living room, a playroom, and an office as well. So not open plan. Open plan is a single room where cooking, laundry, eating and all leisure activities take place. Like in a one bedroomed flat.

It’s really not. What you’re thinking of is homes that were not originally open plan which have been badly knocked through. People overzealously tearing down every single downstairs wall in their poky British terraces are doing it wrong and are giving open plan a bad name. Homes that were designed to have an open plan living/dining/kitchen from the get-go are designed differently and do have other spaces for quiet work, laundry, etc.

Filter to remove open plan.genious!

The other people in your family who you adore.

You can love the bones off people and still need a break. Especially when handling hot pans and timings.

I don't like open plan at all, and it would put me off buying a house.

If a house is small enough that it will have "poky little rooms" if it had walls up, then the resulting open plan area will be too small to have sufficient storage or to have quiet/private space or to stop kitchen noises/smells/visible kitchen mess from taking over the whole downstairs.

If a house is large enough that it has lovely big airy rooms - separate eat in kitchen, separate dining room, separate utility room, separate sitting room, separate study - why the need to knock it all through to make one large, noisy hard to heat space?

I think open plan has mostly become fashionable because developers have been using it as a way to squeeze more into a smaller footprint. If you took the floor plan of an average open plan newbuild and tried to work out how to divide it up with walls, the resulting room sizes would often be far too small to be functional.

We have an open plan kitchen/dining room/family room and then a separate lounge. We spend most of our time in the open plan bit and the lounge is where DH and I spend the evenings, I really like this set up.

I don't like open-plan. I like walls & doors. I'm quite antisocial so having guests is a nightmare situation. I think it's better for the energy bills to have walls & doors too.

No

I have some open plan but a separate sitting room which is lovely

I'm not that keen on the open plan kitchen space either when people are here

Open plan Not good with the current high energy costs

If a house is large enough that it has lovely big airy rooms - separate eat in kitchen, separate dining room, separate utility room, separate sitting room, separate study - why the need to knock it all through to make one large, noisy hard to heat space?

I don't think most people who talk about open plan have a literal single room with kitchen, living room, utility, bedrooms and bathrooms all in one, that would indeed be a little impractical.

Lots of people do knock through their entire downstairs though so sitting room, dining room and kitchen are one space, with just the hallway separate and no utility or office or separate sitting room. I've got several friends who have done it with small 3 bed semis. One of them then bought a bigger detached house and did a similar thing with a big kitchen/diner/sitting room but in that case at least had a tiny utility room just off the main room. But the two sitting rooms at the front of the house became two (large) offices for WFH so still no cozy sitting room.

And since this is a UK site most people will be thinking of those knocked through 3 bed semis, not a large modern house with multiple rooms and a big kitchen.

We've opened up our kitchen/dining room/playroom area and it's so much better because i can see the DC while I cook and am not having to constantly shove pans to the back of the stove and poke my head around the playroom door to check why someone's crying. I'm afraid we have a kitchen island too. Again it's so much nicer being able to cook without my back turned to everyone in a poky kitchen.

We do have a separate utility room and a separate living room, though.

Busted. It's true 😂

I particularly don't like it as I find that some building developers (or whatever they are called) do this to shorten the lack of space. So what you end up with is a normal sized (standard) living room cut in half with a kitchen which is basically like your corner room.

My other objection to open plan, now I'm on the topic, is that I have a lot of books and a huge weakness for sideboards and I need walls to put them against. I feel like open plan only works if you don't have Stuff. I very definitely have Stuff.

(Which reminds me that now I have moved house, I have space to fit more sideboards in!)

Same. How the other half live ...

These are 2 new builds in my area. Only one of them is open plan imo. Both 4 bed detached houses.

Think it depends how old DC are and how much you entertain. I’ve had open plan before and hated all the sounds and smells of kitchen in the living area, but worked when kids were small as they can always be part of the daily churn of cooking etc.
as they got older we moved to period home with a kitchen diner and separate family room it’s so much better. I would never move to a completely open plan living space again

I have a very old cottage with separate poky/cosy rooms, kitchen has table and chairs. There’s no easy flow, tiny windows, but the rooms can be heated separately. I live mostly on my own, so it’s fine. My brother has open plan kitchen/diner/lounge with separate lounge and utility rooms, and a roaring fire behind glass which heats the whole open space if need be. I would rather what he has but only if the children are age 10 + or left home.

I like a kitchen/ dining room because it's a shared function, and plates have to move back and forth between those two zones anyway. Ours was knocked through by a previous owner and having seen the original layout at the neighbours, it works well as with some tweaking of the layout, dead corners where there had been doors became more efficient and the kitchen layout extended.

If it's a living kitchen with space for a sofa, but there is a proper, separate lounge, that's fine. If all the reception/ kitchen/ dining space is open plan, I'd find it too open and noisy.

The reality is that most British homes are small. Most people don't have the spare playrooms/ offices/ utilities/ dens needed to make open plan aspirational. Open plan in Britain often does become difficult for managing heat/ draughts. If walls are removed, that's less surface avaliable for installing adequate radiators. When our layout was changed and patio doors put in, they took out the wall with the radiator, didn't replace it and left a large room with no heating! The first winter we lived there, a large radiator was installed... but that was the only open wall then used up. It's easy to say "it's open plan being done badly" but that's the reality most people have to put up with because there isn't the space, budget and blank slate to do it the aspirational way. If you're really getting into aspirational design, people with mega money have public immaculate "stunt kitchens" for light use and hidden "sculleries" where the dirty stuff and serious storage take place

I like cosy and soft furnishings to absorb noise and retain heat. I like being able to tidy one room at a time and see a result.

The more we can seperate and contain noise the better, especially for autistic DS1. It's also important for my sanity to escape the gabblings of gaming youtubers from the TV (inane as they are, at least I can casually monitor what the DCs watch which is better than on tablets)

To me a nice open plan is an L shape, where the kitchen or lounge is in the smaller part of the L, so in its own 'space'

No i would hate it. My family are loud and boisterous and i would hate never being able to escape from the noise never mind the kitchen smells wafting everywhere. We have a separate living room and playroom/den for the younger kids, a family kitchen where we can all eat together but also a separate dining room if we are entertaining so that the kids can still access the kitchen without disrupting the grown ups if we have guests. It also means the living room is a toy free haven and always tidy and peaceful although they do obv come in and join us for movies/tv/ board ganes if they wish.

I also welcome unexpected visitors so with closed plan living know at least one room is always presentable!

Yes I 100% agree with this. Not for me - I like cosy and to heat smaller rooms is much cheaper.

I loathe open plan. Cooking smells, through the home. Lots of space to heat up.

i love my character cottage, cosy and my living room doesn’t smell of what i had for tea.

each to their own

I love it! Our kitchen opens into one of the lounges, and has a serving window to the patio and pool area. We have a barn door leading to the dining area, which we can close at night if we want to be more quiet. The other tv room is off there, but also opens to the entrance hall and out to the pool area on the other side. We also have a small dining area in the kitchen for breakfast and the kids evening meals during the week.
i would hate having the washing machine and dryer in there, agree the noise would be horrible. But the laundry room is separate. I love being able to sort supper and have the children around, in their lounge playing and we can be together. In my opinion it makes the house more homely, but can totally see why some people may not like it.

Each to their own, indeed although what is a character cottage, it sounds like Disney? But if you are living in a modern open plan house, you have good insulation and extraction, so neither of these things is a problem at all.