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?

Obviously a large open plan house with loads of other rooms where you can afford the heating is going to be way nicer that a poky little estate shoebox which has been knocked out and the owner can't afford to heat the whole space

I love it and our older kids are teens. We do have a breakaway room so we don't have to endure the sounds of the game consoles going flat stick and the utility and downstairs loo are separated off. But we have an open plan kitchen, dining and lounge and it means we can all be around each other and have guests around without being squished into one room. We don't live in the kind of monastic silence required to make the noise of a kettle annoying though.

I phrased that awfully. The consoles are in the breakaway room, dh aren't hiding in there to avoid the consoles!

We have a kitchen/dinning/living space with a stove which is very functional but we have 3 other living rooms too. As children get into their teens they like their own space to hang out with friends and we use every room on the ground floor of our older house every day.
Off the kitchen area we have a garden room that gets huge use because of its view of our garden, my husbands pride and joy.
We were advised to make it open plan onto the living area years ago, but are so pleased we resisted the urge.
The privacy of that space is something we love as it opens up onto the garden and is heavenly to enjoy a drink in for a good 6+ months of the year.

If they were all to leave we would definitely downsize, for maintenance reasons alone.

I open every window every day so the house always smalls very fresh, one of my little habits.

I hate cooking smells and have tried most things.
Burning a nice candle next to cooking really helps.

Incense burnt when the kitchen is finished with for the evening, means there is never a hint of a smell of food in the morning.

I buy the inexpensive sticks that you would find in any shop selling chinese products.
They really are great and safer than candles too!

I think a combination works.
We love our cosy sitting room and fire during the winter months.
I also wouldn't give up my utility/back hall for anything.

A combination of spaces works.

Certainly 6 of us all in one open space ALL the time gives me the shudders.

You need plenty of soft furnishings like rugs and curtains to soften the space and absorb family noise.

I hate it. Open plans not designed for ' messy ethnic' cooking. But so hard to find London flats without.

@Meandfour where do people have their washing machines then? I don't have an office either! My washing machine is in the kitchen so I just don't use it during work hours and I work in a space between the kitchen/living room

I love it - we’ve just bought a new place and basically turning the five downstairs rooms into one big open plan living space…but, there will be nooks, archways with curtains for separation and it will flow around the central hall in a U-shape, so if you were in the kitchen to the right of the front door, you’d have to walk all the way round the house to get to the living room to the left of the front door (or cross the hallway through doors on each side).

I still count that as open plan, but with enough separation to give everyone their space as well.

For privacy, there’s upstairs?

In the utility room. Or sometimes in the garage with the dryer. I’ve never had a washing machine in the kitchen. Even as a child.

I reconfigured one bathroom to fit it in. Can't stand them in the kitchen🙈

Our washer and dryer are in the utility room. DH works in the office.

We really love the idea of a big open plan kitchen/diner/living area for our next home, we have two small children and they often drag their toys from the sitting room in to the kitchen and play under our feet as we are trying to cook/clean. (Not literally but it’s just a bit cramped).

But I would love a separate play room downstairs for them and a utility, so I can shut the door on washing and their toys once they are in bed.

For those who have a large open plan area, do you have a wood burner or anything similar to heat it? I’ve seen a lot where the burner is a statement piece freestanding or a cube in the wall and I love the look of them but wondering if they really work to heat everywhere, our downstairs is all underfloor heating atm and works really well.

Love open plan living, rather than being cut off and having half a house that never gets used

@Meandfour ah
I've never had a garage or a utility room so...

Good insulation and wet UFH - you can have it zoned so you can control which areas of the floor are warmed, rather than all or nothing.

I think wood burners are now a no-go due to noxious particles

Washing machine in the utility room. We have a study for dh - I have a desk in the living room - the room that no one uses because thet all want to be in the open-plan room. We all own good headphones too with noise cancelling - you can connect to the tv or just sit quietly - or have a silent disco😂.

Most houses in the UK are old, we were the first country in the world to urbanise and the housing stock is old.

Carpet is insulation, in an old house in a northern european country with long winters it's much easier to have carpets than to get underfloor insulation put in. Most houses in the UK will have carpet in their sitting room and bedrooms I'd have thought.

People only have washing machines in the kitchen in small flats and houses that don't have room for them elsewhere, it's not like they've got a utility room sitting empty. We have the smallest bathrooms in Europe and there are rules against having electrical sockets in bathrooms so that's not an option (and personally having your laundry in the room you poo in doesn't seem ideal either). So where else do you suggest a washing machine goes? And since we're talking about open plan everything is in the same single room anyway.

Built in storage didn't originally exist in old houses so it needs to be retrofitted and needs walls. If you take out a wall between a kitchen and a dining room you massively reduce your storage options because you are usually getting rid of a wall that didn't have a fireplace and so could provide adecent stretch of storage.

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.

Its not for me. But then neither is 'light and airy'. I'm very much a small and cosy room person. When buying my current house (Victorian terrace) it took me ages to find one that had been left with the traditional design. And then people kept asking if I intended to knock through! I love having a separate old style front parlour to read, play piano, and to have guests without worrying about the state of the more lived in back of the house. The middle room is where we live and luckily the kitchen is big enough for a table so we eat in there.

Our washing machine and dishwasher are in the utility room. It’s not a big room, more like a large walk in cupboard with a window and a sink and a door leading to the downstairs loo.

But I would love a separate play room downstairs for them and a utility, so I can shut the door on washing and their toys once they are in bed.
We have a separate playroom but it ends up functioning as giant toy storage more than anything: they just drag their toys into the kitchen and sitting room rather than play in there, so there’s still a tidy up process rather than just shutting the door. Though at least I can just fling stuff in there and shut the door, but it’s not the mess panacea I’d envisaged.

know that most people on mumsnet are British and carpet is "a thing" but does anybody really still have carpet in their living area? It's not the 80s.

I do because I hate the echoey coldness created by tiled or laminate floors.

I have an open plan kitchen/diner which I love but I wouldn’t like any more than that. Our last house had open plan living/dining area and I hated it. Especially when I had a baby:toddler throwing food everywhere

No, I wouldn't have a wood burner in our house. We have column radiaters and a good boiler. We don't have any trouble keeping the space warm and we use near average gas consumption.

I hate it and would never buy a property that was completely open plan. Separate rooms all the way.

We have a 'town house'. Kitchen downstairs, lounge upstairs. We love it. Putting the radio on and cooking uninterrupted in the evening is how I wind down. No one else there with their tv noises and so on. Also means whoever's upstairs isn't interrupted in whatever they're doing / watching.
We have carpet upstairs too! Not all that keen on wood floors personally - find them too cold and noisy.