Do you think lockdown will make open plan less fashionable?

[PawPatrolOnARoll]

Just curious, personally I'm not really keen on the all open plan thing anyway. I wonder if being locked down in our houses for a year will make people move away from it. I personally have been very thankful for separate spaces in the house so I can get away from others

I'd have open kitchen diner but separate lounge.
Ideally a separate wfh office would be wonderful. Working from the dining table is easier with oh in lounge on his xbox. I would've battered him if we had open plan.

Architect here - domestic market is very very busy at the moment. The trends I have noticed over the past year is for separate home office spaces but still getting lots of requests for open plan extensions or refurbishments that knock through. I tend to work on larger homes though so they usually have at least one separate living space which I encourage them to retain or at least be able to use spaces flexibly (doors, sliding panels)

I think the mentality of the majority is that lockdown is over and normality is returning so they are not thinking about future lockdowns. Personally I am more pessimistic than that but I probably would still think that in the long term things will become more normal again so I would not make a big decision such as house layout on a lockdown lifestyle. If I was renting for 6 months to a year then I would take such things into consideration but not when planning any house remodelling or a house purchase.

Personally I like the look of open plan but as children get older they will definitely want a separate space to hang out with friends or just to not feel 'watched' by parents. My DS (13) spends lots of time in his bedroom these days or shuts himself in the living room which is not open plan in our house. We have a big kitchen/diner which I like and I spent a lot of time in that room in the lockdowns with my youngest doing home schooling. The drawback in home schooling was that the kitchen table had multiple uses - for schooling and eating and there were times when DH or DS would be distracting coming for snacks etc when my youngest was trying to listen to her lesson.

I think there may be an increased demand for study/home office space in houses going forward, mainly to cater for an anticipated increase in flexible working arrangements.

@Awmum42

Think the trend (thankfully) is on its way out, there was a stage when everyone was doing the same thing with islands and bifold door but with all fads it’s on its way out. Lived in an open plan house with a small living room two years ago much nicer now with a proper sized lounge, kitchen, office, dining room and play room. As for bifolds half of them don’t work properly may suit Florida but not rainy Manchester where I’m from.

Is it on its way out? I always thought it was a trend, it was so widespread in home makeovers that I wasn't sure. I'm also in NW where the weather isn't the best for bifold doors, and have seen lots of similar houses with extension at the back and a huge kitchen/dining room with island and bifold doors. I have a Victorian house with side return and have been holding out as it's far too expensive for the amount of space you get and I'm happy with current setup. Although it does look amazing with the extension, I was wondering if it would date one day.

@whyhell0there

^ ...does nobody retreat to their bedroom to do study or work?

Bog standard Victorian terraced house here and my bedroom has room for a bed, a row of built in wardrobes and a chest of drawers and that's it. Plus it doesn't look very professional taking a Zoom call perched on the corner of the bed! Teenage DC's rooms do have a desk in them but that makes them too small for entertaining more than a couple of people at a time (I'm talking before Covid of course). The house when we bought it was largely open plan and when the kids were little, it was lovely that they had space to run around but we put some of the walls back in when they turned into teens and we realised there was nowhere for them to shut themselves away with their friends. We've lost space for big family parties but gained spaces for day to day life and it works sooo much better for us.

I think open plan works really well when there are also other spaces on the same floor.
All open plan - no.
A mix - yes.

I've got an L shaped kitchen/diner/living room, plus a separate front room. The "L" wraps around a separate utility room that is accessed from the hallyway, not the kitchen. I'd like to remove the utility walls to make that all open, but keep the front room as it is. The children aren't really allowed in there so it's just nice to have a cosy space for the evenings.

Each to their own, but I have really appreciated having our separate dining room over lockdown.

It helps that it is a nice big room with windows overlooking the garden. It's a quiet space, so no telly and no cooking noises. It's where I've been working and where DD makes her art work.

I'm guessing the dining room is the first room that melts away in an open plan layout but it's my favourite room in the house.

Plus, I like privacy when I cook in the kitchen so I can listen to music/podcasts and have some time to myself

I've lived in true open plan years ago and absolutely hated it. I could go for kitchen/diner but that's it. Unfortunately DP seems to think open plan is a great idea having never experienced it...

I love having separate rooms. My worst nightmare would be having to move and finding all available properties were open plan.

I'd love to be a bit more open plan. The downstairs of my house is all separate rooms, and some of them are so cold. Even today when it's bright and sunny (south-east), I'm still freezing in my office and in the kitchen/diner because they don't get any sun at all. If there was a way to open it all up, I feel like I would benefit from more natural sunlight and warmth. Practically, the layout of the house makes open plan almost impossible, and I need to have a separate office for work anyway.
We bought recently and the house had been on the market a while. I believe that it would have been snapped up quickly had it been open plan, because it's more desired/expected in family sized homes.

I don’t know what is good about open plan. Kids running into the kitchen every five minutes, cooking smells everywhere, the noise of the kitchen and TV in one room...

I cannot see small separated downstairs rooms ever making a comeback really. If houses in the UK were bigger maybe, but most of them are quite cramped and the only way to make them feel more spacious is by extending and opening them up.

I don’t like proper open plan, but we have a Victorian terrace and have opened up the dining room by taking down the hallway wall. It’s great because now we don’t have a dark poky hallway and the kitchen and dining room feel connected, but we still have a separate front room with a door.

I've spent the whole of lockdown planning our side return extension (as @wakeuptimes says, it's going to be ridiculously expensive, but still cheaper for us than moving in our even more ridiculously expensive area). We basically need a bigger kitchen/diner as DC are growing, and want space to entertain a bit. We are keeping a separate living room though (it's a classic London Victorian terrace), currently knocked through.

I am very interested in PPs talking about teenagers though - DC are 9 & 12 so we're just heading into that stage. We're planning to make the back half of our living room into a WFH/ flexible space (with a small table to act as desk/ games table etc) but I'm wondering if we should be future-proofing it. If you have teens, do they spend time hanging out with their mates downstairs or mostly stay in their rooms?

We are not open plan. We have 3 reception rooms so when the DC were teenagers we could hide away in our own living room. DC spent a lot of time in their rooms but having the extra space downstairs make entertaining their many friends easier. Our room was PlayStation, XBox and computer free.

If you have teens, do they spend time hanging out with their mates downstairs or mostly stay in their rooms?

I have 3DC. Only 1 is a teenager at the moment (but another will be soon, the youngest is 8) and they really like their own space. One is in the playroom, one in the sitting room and one in her bedroom most evenings although if they are playing bed wars there will be two of them in the playroom. When they have friends over then I prefer them to socialise in the playroom rather than going to upstairs, it is their public space. But the playroom was designed knowing they were moving into the teenage years so I decorated it with them to make it as 'cool' as possible so they'd want to spend time in there.

@Zinnia Mine is a bit narrow to have an extension, I think it would only gain 3 square metres and it would lose wall space for extra cabinets. Good luck with yours! It will look lovely. I'm also in expensive area and can't afford to move to anything bigger, the prices aren't as crazy as London but it is a bubble. I've seen some wider houses with the same extension and they have space for a utility room etc, mine would be a squeeze with a kitchen and dining table. Luckily it has a dodgy divider in the kitchen so is a bit open plan already, with a separate lounge. I would definitely recommend one separate room.

Belated thanks for the replies - oh to have a proper playroom! I'm thinking putting a TV ariel socket into the back half of our living room might be a sensible move, just in case we want to stick a sofa in there in future.

@wakeuptimes our extension will only give us +5.5m2 or so! Trying to think less about £££/m and more about stamp duty/ moving costs etc...

For me a million times yes, we have living room/diner and a kitchen attached with an open doorway and essentially having one living space has been shit especially when DP was working at home at the dining table. When we move I'm going for a separate living room and dining room with doors that shut lock

I'm totally anti-open plan having lived in one! Tonight I was cooking tea in the kitchen (which does not have a big white island ready to do an autopsy on) with radio blasting out, youngest was watching the sound of music with her dad in lounge, teenager was in the family/dining room and the dog was chilling in the study. Wouldnt swop that for anything! (and the furniture doesnt have cooking smells either!)

Unless a home has a room for me to escape to, I wouldn't be touching it. I wasn't keen on open plan without a snug before this. Now I wouldn't even look at a home without one.

Interesting how many are saying that they wouldn't like open plan with young children because of them going everywhere and pushing buttons.

We had separate lounge/dining and a tiny kitchen before recent renovations and it was an absolute nightmare with 2 young children - I could not cook at all while they were awake because they always wanted to be in same room as me and kitchen was not big enough for me to cook and them to play plus it was not safe for me to leave them unattended in another room whilst I went to cook.

We've been living in a house with open plan kitchen/dining whilst renovating (designed ours similar too), and it is a dream. I have their toys out in dining area whilst I cook or they sit and draw/colour/crafts at dining table whilst I am making food. There is also ample space for them to get involved and prep food with me. Lounge is separate here and will be in our house when we move back in. We will also have additional office space so disturbance whilst working won't be an issue.

One large open plan family area is definitely the way forward for us but we are lucky to have the luxury of separate spaces in addition to this

What is the point of a separate dining room?

Geninue question.

If you have enough rooms for a dining room why wouldn't you knock through and make it a kitchen dinner if the building allowed?

I understand why people are less keen on open plan kitchen lounge. My previous house was and personally I loved it, but there was only DH and I for the majority of the time we lived there and it was all on one floor and the bedroom got used as a living space simply because it was so small. It made the most of the space we had. If we'd had a child older than 4 it'd been awful though. It was great with a little one being able to keep an eye on them.

Personally I don’t think open concept is meant for small homes, which is why some people hate it. I don’t think the trend for something like a great room/multipurpose room will ever really go away, however, because as other posters have said, people tend to congregate together in those spaces when families and/or friends get together. It’s nice to not feel cramped in that scenario. However, in that sort of set-up, it’s important that the home is large enough for people to have other places to escape. We have one large open plan living/kitchen/dining area, but we also have a separate large utility, office, playroom, and a granny flat with its own living space and kitchen. Those spaces mean that the main room isn’t overburdened. If a house is large enough for that, then I think most people would prefer to have at least one large multipurpose gathering space in the house rather than an exceptionally large rabbit warren of poky rooms.