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Original poster

What do people prefer - open-plan kitchen diner thing with doors into a living room or separate rooms?

76 replies

Tinker · 08/09/2007 20:13

Spotted open-plan a few times on the list of things people hate about their houses. Our kitchen is too small and needs to be extended. I'd hoped to combine it with extending teh dining room and making them in to a big kitchen-diner.

Good idead or bad idea?

OP posts:
FrannyandZooey · 08/09/2007 20:15

I love my open plan house

love it love it

it is a smallish house but this makes it feel more spacious and airy

Chirpygirl · 08/09/2007 20:17

I love my open plan as well, we have open plan sitting/dining room and separate kitchen.
I would LOVE to knock through into the kitchen and have one big open space!

My fave thing is on rainy or crappy days there is enough room inside to have proper games of football and chase...

heifer · 08/09/2007 20:20

Open plan EVERY Time..

We moved our kitchen into another room which was already open planned (and gave us a utility room)..

We are moving away, so I will have to say good bye to my dream house but had no problem selling the house so if that is what you want I would go for it!

BUT when you come to sell, don't forget to mention that they could put doors in should they wish...

OPen plan, open plan...

chinwag · 08/09/2007 21:22

We had small kitchen and we made it open plan. (Knocked into the dining room.) It's the best thing we ever did. It is so much more practical.

expatinscotland · 08/09/2007 21:23

Open plan

SnollyGoster · 08/09/2007 21:26

Ours is open plan, I'd hate to have the rooms seperate now.

SnollyGoster · 08/09/2007 21:27

...I mean, just think of the mess!!

Bdum-Tish!

Original poster
Tinker · 08/09/2007 23:46

This is reassuring

OP posts:
ComeOVeneer · 08/09/2007 23:51

I loved our old house with its open plan kitchen dining room (which we did by knocking through) as we spend a lot of time having people over for meals so it is great to have it all together. Wenow hae a combined living room and dinning room and seperae kitchen (prefer the latter but now we have almost double the house size sohave gained in a lot of ways).

WendyWeber · 08/09/2007 23:55

When we bought ours (Victorian terrace) it was knocked through front to back, with sliding doors.

We bricked up the sliding door part to make a separate living room, and knocked through back-room-to-kitchen - it has a large square doorway (with no doors)

Honestly, Tink, when the kids get older and louder you really need to be able to shut yourselves away from the buggers

Original poster
Tinker · 09/09/2007 00:10

Hmm, good thought. This is a knocked through living room/dining room thing with double doors between the 2. Was intending (all very eventually, btw) to knock through dining room and kitchen and have a square arch. Oh, god, why do we have kids!

OP posts:
LoveAngel · 09/09/2007 07:55

Open plan does seem to put a lot of people off. When we were house hunting, estatae agents would often say 'We've got a great house for you...just oen thing, though.. pensive look on face its got an open plan kitchen-diner'...as if they were telling us the house was the scene of an axe murder or something...!?

Personally, I don't mind open plan kitchen/diners. I hate dining rooms, to be honest, and they certainly don't suit our lifestyle. The house we are about to move into has a kitchen that's big enough to eat in, with a separate room next door that is probably supposed to be a dining room - we're going to use it as a play room instead. I always find dining rooms a bit stiff and uncomfortable.

chocolateteapot · 09/09/2007 08:00

We have knocked our kitchen together with another room to make a kitchen dining room. It now has the table, a sofa and a toy cupboard and we spend loads and loads of time in there.

But we have a separate living room and I would hate not to have that. One of our options was to knock the kitchen into the room on the other side of it which has double doors into the living room, so that you could have it open into it. I felt that was going to be too open plan and am glad we have done it how we have done it.

Pruners · 09/09/2007 08:07

Message withdrawn

potoroo · 09/09/2007 08:19

Open plan without a doubt. We are in the process of doing it right now

Bouncingturtle · 09/09/2007 08:22

Absolutely - open plan.

My mum has an open plan kitchen diner and I really like it. We have a separate kitchen, dining room and lounge, and I would prefer an open plan kitchen/dining room - though if we did knock through would have to find a new home for our 7 bookcases!!!!

Nemo2007 · 09/09/2007 08:28

Tinker we have just done exactly this. We knocked down wall between kitchen and dining room and it is absolutely fab!!! It makes a small house feel soo much bigger and more family friendly. We use both the kitchen and dining room 100% more than we did. We are having doors put on between living and dining room bit so we have a seperate living room. Everyone who has seen it has commented on how much better the layout is.We considered doing the seperate rooms but I dont think it would have been utilised half as much as it is now.

StarryStarryNight · 09/09/2007 08:28

2 rooms.

  • Keep cooking smells away from the living room
  • Keep mess from cooking, dirty pots, etc out of dinner guests view
  • Be able to cook a meal, or do the dishes without the kids interrupting / guests watching
  • Be able to enjoy a cup of coffee and a newspaper in the kitchen for a bit while the kids play in the living room

Bear in mind your kids will soon be at an age where they bring home play dates, you dont want to be in the middle of that carnage all the time. Unless you have a conservatory, dining room or a study, anywhere to escape being at the centre of children playing ALL the time.

Nemo2007 · 09/09/2007 08:31

Tinker we even had your same prior layout. We have a small 3 bed semi and had a through dining living room but it wasnt being used properly and the kitchen was a galley kitchen. It feels so much more spacious now and at the minute is completely open plan but we want the doors to be able to have somewhere to hide..lol Although we are getting 3/4 glass doors so will still feel spacious but will give us a optional living room so we can open or shut the doors.

WendyWeber · 09/09/2007 12:02

Our neighbour doesn't have a doorway/arch - she knocked the entire wall down (except for a breakfast bar on top of the bottom of the wall (iyswim) - oh, and an RSJ to hold the ceiling up )

I think that way works better as a family room when the kids are smaller, but we now have a TV in the back room and you can't have kitchen radio and back room TV at the same time without volume issues.

PrincessGoodLife · 09/09/2007 12:15

ours isn't so much open plan as just one very big room - kitchen one end and living area the other end, leading to the balcony. It works really well for us and I prefer it to lots of smaller rooms. However it is a modern house and the proportions (ceiling height, width of room(s), window sizes etc), seem to make it work. Converting victorian houses to do this doesn't always work imo and they look better in their original condition.

tasja · 09/09/2007 12:18

open-plan, open-plan, open-plan!
I don't know why all the houses I've seen in the UK has tiny rooms for everything! In SA most houses are open-plan and everything is BIG. I love it and miss it here in the UK.

ivykaty44 · 09/09/2007 12:22

Smaller rooms are easier to heat and therefore cheaper. I gues in SA it isn't as cold in the winter as it is in the UK

LaDiDaDi · 09/09/2007 12:28

Ours is completely open plan downstairs other than utility room and loo. We have living room open to dining room in turn open to extension part where pc etc is which is open to large kitchen.

It works really well for us as often one of us in on the pc whilst the other is in living room or kitchen and we can still chat. If we had separate rooms I'm sure we'd feel isolated.

DD loves running round in a big circle too!

TinyGang · 09/09/2007 12:33

Dining rooms do seem rather formal these days.

I'd love a big kithen/dining room combined. It seems more socialble. My kitchen is too small and I have to keep shoo-ing the dc out and they really want to help me cook etc I'm in the kithchen a lot of the time and it's quite isolating.

We don't use our dining room as a dining room now - it's more a computer, books, games type room.