The end of open plan?

[Cloudesley]

Every estate agent who came round to value our house said, "oh yes people will probably take kitchen wall down and open it up here". Fine, do what you want when you buy our house, but whilst I'm here I really really appreciate having separate spaces in the house. With lockdowns etc and people at home more, what on earth is the appeal of a sitting room where you can see, smell and hear the person cooking in the kitchen?

Admittedly my kids are grown up and I don't need to have one eye on them whilst I cook supper, but even so, I don't recall that ever being a problem when they were younger! I just used to yell at them from the kitchen, or have them strapped in a high chair.

Can anyone explain why they would view a house and mentally "open up the kitchen/living area"?

I think in a big house it’s less of dilemma. I actually have three areas we can eat. Kitchen, end of big lounge and the formal dining room. Most people don’t have that luxury. DH is now using the formal dining room as an office and if we sold, clearly another family could do this. However I can seat 8 elsewhere.

We have a separate family room with the tv. I do like talking to people when I’m cooking and the kitchen has two sets of French doors going into the garden. One is great for morning coffee and the other for lunch/supper as we have yet another table on the terrace and another one by the pool. So a variety of options.

In smaller houses, having a well specced kitchen with ample storage incorporating a decent dining area makes sense. A bigger kitchen/diner gives so many more options for family life. Families and friends should talk and not shut themselves away. Women were always shut away in the kitchen and it’s much nicer to chat. Who cares about a bit of mess? Decent ventilation quickly gets rid of smells. I think in smaller houses it’s a no brained to do a kitchen/diner. Keep the lounge separate if you don’t have room for sofas elsewhere.

Love open plan great for family living you can cook whilst hanging out with kids too. Mil has this weird set up of passing food through a serving hatch!

We have a separate living room as well though

I love the fact that we have a kitchen, dining room, living room , tv room, sun room (where the decent music system lives) a separate office and our own bedrooms

Well I never! That's a lot of rooms! Do you actually use them?

We are just buying. Not as far as knocking down walls, but we were doing mental minor adjustments to make the house work for us. Rehanging a door, taking wardrobe doors off in a bedroom, removing a bath in favour of a walk in shower were examples. We have kitchen with breakfast bar, living room-dining room (L shaped) and conservatory (which will be a bar/library) So space to seperate, and space to join together. Although with DH weekly commuting, there are more than enough rooms!

I wouldn't want open plan if it my only living space. We do have a big kitchen/ diner/ sofa area that looks out onto the garden and has a snug/ tv area open plan off it. We also have a separate lounge that is never used and a waste of space really. We do have a utility also so no noisy washing machine etc.

I'm with you OP, I think lockdown will change our priorities and separation will be more valued. I dislike being cut off when I'm cooking but I don't think things would be improved by having Peppa Pig or Hunger Games playing in the background.

We have an old-fashioned lounge diner, a separate kitchen with a small table, and a little garage conversion with a second TV. We had an agent round to value and he said "of course no one would ever design a house like this these days.". It may be out of fashion but it's brilliant for us. I can see why people would knock through a formal dining room & galley kitchen into a bigger, more sociable kitchen but knocking into an existing lounge diner works less well I'm my view.

Yes I do think estate agents can be a bit behind the curve when it comes to trends - I don't know why but it has been my experience. Perhaps because they go by what has sold, so it's always quite a few months behind.

PS
Don't talk to me while I'm cooking!!
I listen to the radio whilst I'm doing that. Which begs the question how can someone watch TV or whatever with LBC blaring out?

Open plan living is great for small flats / when you live on your own or with a partner, you like to have guests around and you're okay with keeping your kitchen tidy.

It's quite often the only way to have a space where you can eat, sit and cook.

I live on my own and both my partner and I have open plan living in our small flats.
Otherwise we would have a really small kitchen and wouldn't be able to have a chat whilst cooking.

My sister and her husband's lives changed when they moved to a place with open plan, they're both great cooks and spend a lot of time in the kitchen, they host(ed) a lot of dinner parties and sunday roasts and spend hours cooking so it's just made total sense for them to have that big cooking / living space.
Again, they live in a flat. And no kids.

Thank you for this thread! I honestly thought I was one of a bout 3 people who like a room...with walls and a door I can shut between me and anyone else in the house!

Do you wanna come sit in my lounge kitchen dining room that smells of kitchen cleaner and the dogs food? you can talk to me while I'm cooking, cleaning, changing the bin?
Nope. Not for me.

I’m desperate for open plan! My dream is a big kitchen diner with space for a sofa, separate utility and separate grown up living room. I’d like to be able to keep an eye on the children while I cook, not have to trudge back and forth for every meal time because I forgot someone’s cup then stress because I can’t leave the baby alone with food and have to take it away so I can leave the room, not be tripping over laundry baskets trying to get to the sink etc. I guess needs will change when they’re older and want to do their own thing but it’d make my life a lot easier right now.

Many people have tiny kitchens. Even houses in the 60/70s had very small kitchens. What’s great about being shut away for hours on end?

I actually like being shut away cooking and listening to the radio. It is relaxing and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I hate open plan. Our current house irritates me, you come straight into the living room from the front yard and the stairs are in it too, I want a bloody hallway and doors. But everyone else seems to like it, DH would even knock through to the fecking kitchen to make it one giant echoey food smelling heat wasting space if it was up to him. I like walls and doors and rooms. I am definitely channelling Eva Khatchadourian when it comes to house layouts.

Having cats I can see the appeal of a separate dining room. I could lay the table for Christmas for example and it not get ruined. But, I would really love a dining room which is connected to the kitchen in one big space. I think having a separate living room is really important, as you need to be able to shut out other noises when you're trying to watch or listen to something.
But, everyone has different living needs and what I want isn't what someone else wants.

We extended our kitchen a few years ago and now have a large open plan kitchen diner with two sofas at one end. Everyone says "wow" when they first see it. I wouldn't go back to a separate kitchen and dining room.
However we also have a separate living room and study, plus a utility room. I wouldnt want a totally open plan downstairs

In our previous house we had a small kitchen and a small dining room next door. We knocked it through and made a lovely kitchen diner. It made such a difference and it was a much more sociable space. All our friends loved it when they came over. I love open plan. We still had a separate living room.
In our current house we had a small kitchen with a small entrance hallway and opposite it a small utility/cloak room. Next to the utility/cloakroom was the dark dining room. We knocked all the walls, got rid of the utility/cloakroom and now have a big kitchen diner with lots of light flooding through. The only downside is that our front door leads into the kitchen. We don’t live on a road so it doesn’t really affect us. We are currently in the middle of extending to build a utility and cloakroom at the side of the house. When we bought the house I didn’t actually like the house because I think the original owners who built the house had designed it all wrong or had an architect who didn’t have a clue for design.

It depends where you spend your time in the house.

I've got young children so we spend all our time in an L shaped kitchen/diner/ playroom. We've a separate utility room that I'd like to knock through and make a square rather than L shape as this would make it brighter and more spacious.

I do like my separate sitting room which is a child free zone and where we relax in the evening.

I guess I missed the memo on the child free space too. We have a playroom but our children have always been welcome in the main living room. It becomes an adult space when they go to bed. I have one friend I've known for 13 years since NCT, and I've never sat in her living room. Because we tend to visit with kids, we are always invited into the playroom. Our children are at secondary school. She is lovely but I just don't get it.

I lived in a beautiful open plan house in New Mexico for a while. It looked gorgeous, all sleek white lines and lots of light.

It was a nightmare. If the kitchen was untidy it was visible from other areas. Cooking smells got everywhere. Because of the open plan arrangement, there was only one door between the open spaces and hallway and the bedrooms, so even the bedrooms smelled of cooking.

I've been in the market to buy flats in the last few years and developers proudly show off integrated living spaces, with the kitchen open to the living room. I would not buy one of those in a million years! Just a way to make a small place look bigger.

I think open plan works best with small children who want to be with you all the time.

I think it doesn't work well for older families where different people want to do different activities - eg 2 people want to watch different programmes on TV.

In general I have issues with the smells and noise of open plan. I also don't get the "being locked away in the kitchen for hours" complaint - I cook from scratch and definitely don't spend hours on my own in the kitchen!

I would always want at least one extra reception room as open plan kitchen/diner/lounge and no other rooms is my idea of hell! I love my family but don't want to be in the same room as them all day.

@2Zebras

I love the fact that we have a kitchen, dining room, living room , tv room, sun room (where the decent music system lives) a separate office and our own bedrooms

Well I never! That's a lot of rooms! Do you actually use them?

Yes. All get used most days.

Kitchen for cooking. Dining room for eating. Sun room for cup of tea and reading, browsing internet, listening to radio/music. Study for working. Lounge for all chilling together and the TV room tends to be if someone wants the PlayStation or to watch a movie or sports.

I love my open plan house. The kitchen, dining room and living room are a wonderful bug space with so much light, it feels spacious yet cosy and very practical. I have a separate utility room and study and when my children are older and want to do their own thing I'll extend to create a separate reception room/ snug. Plus they have their bedrooms if they want privacy.

I wonder if all of the people who hate open plan actually have spacious rooms already? I grew up in a pretty big house, with a kitchen that fit a table that could sit 6 or 7, a separate living room and a more formal sitting/dining room. That was great because they were all spacious rooms, but we spent the majority of our time in either the kitchen or living room.

I currently live in a small house. It had a tiny galley kitchen and separate dining room and a separate sitting room. You could barely fit one person in the kitchen (so small it didn’t even fit the fridge) and trying to cook with a baby/toddler who wants to be in the same room as you was challenging to say the least.

We’re in the process of extending and doing a partial knock through to the dining room. It will create a big kitchen-diner with a sitting area too. We will keep a separate sitting room and hallway, But I am looking forward to being able to chat with my husband or to keep an eye on my child while cooking and for it to be a more social space.

Depends how you live I think. We are moving to semi open plan & I’m really excited. The kitchen is blocked off so we won’t see the mess! But it has an arch that flows through to a living room area which flows through to what will be a playroom area. Once the kids grow up, that area will become a reading area (or probably staring at a mobile phone area) with a couple chairs that we can separate out a bit. I can’t wait to be near the family while I’m cooking or cleaning & not shut away in a separate room. I hope it gives us a lovely family space while the kids are young & as they get older, they might still occasionally sit near us. We do also have a room that will be a separate cosy lounge/office in one corner.

We are sociable as a family & pre-pandemic has family or friends round for dinner or lunch most weekends. Not a party or anything but just a meal! So we hope it’ll feel really sociable in that way too.. again, currently I’ll be cooking in the kitchen & miss out on the initial chat etc! I hate it.

We are selling our house which has a large open plan area in "zones" - kitchen with island and dining area leading to a lounge. Some people asked when we'd left any walls in the space. Never mind that it would be 9m across (requiring major beam work and reinforced pillars), I do wonder how people live quite so open plan!

We have a similar decision to make on our new house. I can't see me going totally open plan either there.