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

We eat in the dining room every day. If DH has cooked I would far rather be in a different room so I can't see his mess!
In our previous house we had a kitchen with a breakfast table, but we still are in the dining room quite often.

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?

You can lose a lot of storage space in both rooms if you knock through. You have privacy in the kitchen for making a mess/generating smells and peace for getting on with the cooking (a task I enjoy and want to lose myself in, not try to do while entertaining). We've now got a kitchen diner and while for normal family life it's fine (bearing in mind we also have 2 sitting rooms) our first Christmas here we had all of DHs family visiting (12 people for a week!) and they spent ages chatting at the dining table after every meal which was a bloody pain while I was trying to clear up and cook for the next meal. It would have been lovely to be able to shut the door on them .

i think as evidenced by this thread that people have different ideas about what open plan is!!

People with big houses that have a big open plan kitchen/dining/living space but then also have a seperate grown up lounge (to evening TV viewing away from noise of main room), plus a seperate utility room (to lock away noisy washing machine/dump dirty stuff/home for pet stuff and dirty wellies) and a seperate study (for working from home and zoom calls and home schooling) wiill have a completely different experience and opinion than those in smaller 3 bed semis that have had the downstairs knocked into one and the whole of the loving space for the family is in that one oopen plan area - children playing and cooking and laundry and computer and tv watching etc will find it a lot more opressive, noisy and cluttered!!

We have a lounge/diner, kitchen, study and large conservatory which has a lounge area for kids plus utility at the other. means everyting can be shut away in terms of noise etc.

What is the point of a separate dining room?

In my case I just like it.

I've got a kitchen/diner that we use on a day to day basis plus two other reception rooms (lounge/snug) and study.

When we have guests I like the kitchen to be my domain and that's one reason I don't want to eat in there when hosting. I enjoy cooking but I don't necessarily want to see people watching me do it (especially when cooking for a lot of people offering to help but actually just getting in my way).

I also love it when the dining room is set with the nice china/silverware etc that I've inherited. It just looks so pretty (and nostalgic for me at least) and it feels more of an occasion when we eat in there.

It's absolutely a luxury if I'm honest. It's the least used room in the house so no "point" other than preference and the space to indulge it I suppose.

I wish our house was open plan. We have an open plan kitchen and dining room, but the lounge is separate. Drives me crazy having to go back and forth between the kitchen and lounge leaving the toddler and baby together in one of the rooms! My friend has a fully open plan downstairs (well apart from the toilet) and I absolutely love it. Everything feels large and light in her house, but my house feels much more cramped - despite them being almost identical floor space!

When my kids were little I would have loved a kitchen/family room though actually mine happily played in the kitchen as it wasn't too small. But once they were teens I was very glad to have 2 separate living rooms. This meant the gamer could be busy in one room and my DD and I could watch a movie in the other. Or if they had friends round I could still be in a living room rather than being forced into my bedroom (though that could happen when they were both busy or with friends round). I much preferred this to the kids using their bedrooms for gaming/socialising as I think having a bit of sleep hygiene is good.

I think probably people will keep open plan but want to preserve a separate living room.

My ideal would be: kitchen big enough for table for everyday. Separate living room. Separate dining room for Occasions (that would double as music room / home office).

However sadly my house isn’t big enough to have these to be large. So for a smaller house having two of the rooms as one makes much more sense than having 2 tiny rooms.