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?

I don’t like it , we have a kitchen diner and the two other lounges one large and one smaller and that works very well for us .

This is the only way to do open plan successfully and was like my house in NZ. Not like the UK and Ireland version which just plonks a tiny kitchen at the end of a room and sticks a bistro table in front of it

I’d hate to be looking at my kitchen, even if it were spotless, while sitting on the sofa. No thanks. Separate rooms for me and doors on every room 😀

I love both the haiku and the door slamming amenities.

Just to clarify, I loved the haiku but not open plan living with no doors to slam.

It's not a haiku, which has three lines, with five syllables on the first, seven on the second and five on the third.

This might work:

Hating noise, I also
Love shutting out the mess, and
Making another room

Not the loveliest of haikus as I wanted to avoid using the subject, doors as a word in it.

Yeah I don't know what it is, but having the washing in the kitchen really grosses me out. It seems so wrong. If there's no separate laundry I think it's better being as part of the bathroom

We have the best of all worlds. We are in Aus so open plan is the norm - our kitchen flows through to the dining area flows through to the family room (though there are sliding doors we could pull if we wanted to) then out to the balcony. Laundry is downstairs so we don’t hear machines, we also have a large living room at the front of the house with it’s own door and French doors onto a patio. Garden/pool can be accessed that way or from stairs off the wrap around balcony. When DS had an accident and ended up immobile for six months we were very glad of that extra separate room. It only works in my opinion when you have large spaces.

I like it, provided there is a "3rd space", ie not bedroom, not office. I grew up in a house with a huge family/living/kitchen room and glass and sliding doors that divided in half from a big reception room and dining room. But it was not a British house so the spaces were all proper sizes. Glass doors meant some separation was possible + my mom had an office, kids had own rooms and we had a big rec room kind of space when my brother and I were teeens, so basically everyone could be in a space by themselves if they wanted to that wasn't a bedrooms.

I don't think it's often done well because of the bedroom obsession!

I have an open plan kitchen, dining and lounge, and also two separate living areas on their own. The other two lounges are never used as the living room that's open plan with the kitchen is the most convenient. One of the lounges is on the top floor with the best view, but still its barely used. I would always want an open plan (I'm not in the UK), I just find it has a better flow

We have the open plan with kitchen, table and a smaller sofa, comfy chair. But then we have another separate room with if comfy sofa . I don't think I'd want just the open space as it can definitely be louder if someone's in the kitchen cooking .

I kind of like is so everyone is together but hate the sound of the washing machine/dishwasher when sat on sofa watching tv. You do need another room

I hated it at first but I like the kitchen and lounge being together so I am not hidden away when in the kitchen

So ideally I would love open plan kitchen/dining/lounge and a seperate lounge

That's what I like too, otherwise you're by yourself and the rest of the family is elsewhere. Also great when entertaining

We all know what a haiku is. It was a joke with its similarity in structure and had the feeling of a haiku poem.

That came across in your post, I wasn’t implying that you didn’t love the haiku. I loved that you called it a haiku and I loved your reasoning on separate rooms with doors to slam 😀😊

I like to blast my tunes whilst cooking so open plan would not work of someone was trying to watch the telly.

I could not bear the thought of hearing pots and pans clattering whilst I was in the living room and the smell of sizzling, noise of pressure cooker etc.

We do have an open dining room/living room though, which makes the room nice and big, which I do like.

I love open plan .

I had a flat that was open plan and I loved it. You could keep watching TV while you were cooking and it was sociable if you had guests.

Cooking smells were no worse than if the kitchen is next door to the living room, I had an air circulation thing that drew out a lot. Plus I had a balcony and windows. I had a quiet washer dryer and in all honesty the noise didn’t bother me at all.

I always think they won’t be warm enough for tv watching

I was just thinking, separate closed off kitchens are all about the patriarchy! 😆 I'm only half joking ....

We had an open plan house once. I loved the idea of it but I'd never choose to live open plan again, simply because of the noise. The house wasn't big enough so if you were watching telly in one room, you could hear the telly in the other. Also in the winter it felt so cold, you couldn't shut a door and keep the heat in.

I can't bear open plan. I find that I need to be away from other people sometimes, and really how are you supposed to achieve that if everywhere is one big room?

What if you got a mouse in the kitchen? It would be in the living room too

We had open plan at our old house. It's fine when there's 1 or 2 of you, not when there's a family who want to watch TV in the living room/ chat with a friend at the dining table / listen to music whilst cooking in the kitchen. There's too much going on and everything clashes.

We have separate rooms now except for a lounge / diner which I really like. I love having the mess, smells and noise of the kitchen separate. I don't really need an audience when cooking, I have a big disco going instead.