Big kitchen diner or medium kitchen plus dining room/family room

[Popcorninapot]

We really need to decide on a layout before the builders come in early next year. Help!

Is it best to have a big open plan kitchen diner, plus separate lounge? Or medium kitchen, four metres by four, can fit table in, plus separate family room with big dining table, plus separate lounge?

Family of five, plenty of space upstairs so most toys are stored in an upstairs playroom. Kids are young though so will be downstairs with us most of the time.

Please help!

I've never been open plan, but I am just in the process of moving the kitchen into another room (double garage) just so it's bigger, and in the process turned down the chance to make things more open plan and end up with large kitchen dining room, leading to family room, and separate lounge. So we'll have seperate kitchen, utility, large lounge, and then dining room with archway into family room.
Doesn't help you much but I've just been through that decision process and it's tough so draw lots of plans of layouts as it was that that swayed my decision making.

We've gone open plan.
Our kitxhen is 8m x 5.5 m which is open onto our family room which is about 3.5 x 6 m.

It's a big L.shape.

We then have a separate reception room.

I love our layout

We have a kitchen diner with separate reception rooms and I love it. I love being able to cook dinner while the DC do homework at the table. I love walking away from the kitchen for the evening into a different room.

I would go for a kitchen diner, and keep the lounge/living room/sitting room or whatever you call it separate.

As long as you have a separate living room, which you do with both options, I'd go with massive kitchen diner with sofa tv for kids - will come into its own once they're older.

Definitely keep a separate lounge and eat in the kitchen.

I think separate kitchen. Means you can shut the door & not have to look at piles of dishes or put up with the noise of cooking, cleaning, other people getting drinks when you are watching TV.

If you have friends over for dinner you can eat in the kitchen & then sit in the lounge whilst your kids sit in the family room. If you have the big kitchen your kids will be in the tidy lounge & your guests in the family room/kitchen all night

I love open plan but would want a separate living room.
So Large open plan Kitchen/diner/family room plus separate lounge

We’re currently extending and are having a large kitchen/dining/family plus our current lounge, a snug and utility room x

Ideally I'd have a kitchen diner plus 2 separate reception rooms. But 4m x 4m sounds a little bit small to fit a big table in too. If you could have a bigger kitchen diner, living room and snug that would be better for me personally

For us when the kids were little they would follow me around the house, so a separate play room would not have been used. Now they're older my dh in particular would love somewhere to get away from the kids, so a separate family room would be perfect.

Kitchen diner and seperate living room. You willl get so much more use out of it that way, we sit and eat in our kitchen diner, we socialise in there too, we’ve never used a seperate dining room and have ours turned into a second living room/play room.

Big open kitchen diner and separate lounge. I'd try and get a tv and couch in so that when the kids are older you have two spaces, one for teens and one for adults but the big room will be a much more socialable space.

Any option to have dividing doors to do both?

Will you have a utility? Worst thing about open plan kitchen / living room is I can’t use the washing machine in the day. Love being able to keep an eye whilst cooking and cleaning though!

Don’t do open plan so we would do breakfast kitchen with separate living and dining rooms.

I love the layout of our house. We have a kitchen diner, big enough for dining table and sofa and chairs. We also have a separate lounge.

We have stayed in holiday cottages where it is all open plan (with no other living space) and it's not for me.

We will have a laundry room upstairs and a separate boot room/utility downstairs. There is room for a sofa, tv etc in the current dining room. No option for smaller snug unfortunately, it’s wall in or wall out!

If the kitchen was a metre bigger we would keep it separate. Dining room is lovely square room (Edwardian house) hence part of reluctance to change too much. But don’t want to invest in new kitchen and wish we had taken wall out.

Also doors to garden will be from dining room in either scenario so if kitchen is separate it won’t have direct access to garden (would be through boot room).

Thank you all, feel like I have been thinking about this and changing my mind forever, need to decide and commit!!

As long as you have a nice seperate lounge, I'm leaning towards a big kitchen, diner, family space as it's not really open plan if you have a seperate space. You can still close a door. The bigger space is more flexible if you need a lot around the table.

We built to the side of our house, and built a playroom, with laundry room and downstairs toilet.

We opened up the kitchen and dining room, it was the best decision as ended up being able to build a walk in pantry in the kitchen, which never would have happened if the walls were still there.

It looks huge now, and our lounge is now a formal room with no toys as before.

I agree, I don’t see this as open plan either, open plan to me is when you don’t have a seperate living room. In this scenario you do, as well as a seperate laundry room, so all th usual issues with open plan..,washing machine noise, cooking smells, are not applicable, you’re just creating a more usable space.

For me I would MUCH prefer to have a big open plan kitchen/diner/family room PLUS a separate living room.

However, you now how your family lives and you might prefer more rooms e.g. if you need to have a music practice room, lounge etc.