Open plan do you regret it.

[Lonecatwithkitten]

We have bought a house in a lovely location with planning permission for extension. The layout of the extension despite only being drawn up last year is quite dated- lots of poky rooms. It has been suggested we go for one big open plan room, it would be huge (approx 75sq m).

For those of you with totally open plan spaces are there things you wish were different? We do plan lots of storage.
One of the reasons is that the room would then be East:West and for the SE we have amazing views and skies. The one below was 2 nights ago and this what we would like to capitalise on.
I am home alone a lot with my dogs as DH travels very regularly so I really do only live in one room. DC is 18 and off to Uni. We do host my family a fair amount so regularly have 7-9 people around the table.

Hiya, fantastic view!

We're open plan downstairs and love it. In a large space like you will have you'll have scope to "zone" the space with furniture, so a reading corner for example, which keeps the open feeling but makes it cosier... Perhaps a statement rug and some large plants too?

Good luck, it's going to be gorgeous 👍🏼

I love our open plan kitchen/dining room/sitting room. I like everyone being able to chat, it’s friendly and we like being together. It’s great for a party or if I want to do yoga or Pilates. I wish we had a tv in another room for when DH wants to watch sport or the DC annoying American kids programmes - but if it’s mostly you you won’t have that problem. The only thing I’d think about is heating - although if it’s an extension I imagine the insulation will be good so it won’t be too expensive to heat.

Insulation will be upgraded as old part of house roof has to come off. We intend under floor heating downstairs and are also looking at solar panels on parts of roof as we are oil central heating.

We inherited a big L shape open plan kitchen, dining and living room from the previous owners. It would have been 4 small pokey rooms otherwise. And it's largely great but we are contemplating a set of interior bifold doors to help manage the noise and break the space up.

I hated open plan and when we bought our house, I made sure that the kitchen could be closed off.

Open plan is one of those scams that have been sold to us to make pokey little houses seem larger. If you want open plan then at least block off the kitchen otherwise the whole house will smell like cooking and food always.

I’ve never been in an open plan house that didn’t smell like cooking.

If you can budget for it, we hired a yacht designer to do the storage in our house. For our kitchen, pantry and bathrooms. It’s amazing how much storage you can find and zero wasted space.

It sounds like you might really like it. Personally, i hated it. We had open plan in our last house and the competition between talking, cooking and tv/radio/music was annoying, and there's no break from being "on" if you have company over. The cook might like to have music on, but the one sitting watching telly won't be able to hear properly.

We moved into a house with all original internal brick walls. The rooms may be described by some as pokey, but we think it's cosy, and the sound proofing is great. My OH can have a boys night while I get an early night or work in the next room.

Meant to say the designer cost us €2500 so not mad money on top of the renovations

We ripped most of our downstairs out and made a huge L shaped 75sqf open plan kitchen, living dining area with opening to garden. I love it. Especially at Christmas/birthdays etc as I can be cooking and still be with everyone. It's so social.

We are lucky as we have a separate living room too with a log burner which is our like adult room & we have a separate playroom so it means I don't have toys everywhere!

It’s horrid. Absolutely no privacy. People making noise and asking what you’re doing. There is literally nowhere to go to read your book, watch a non kid film, eat a sneaky biscuit. The worst part is people being near you and you haven’t heard them approach.

We didn’t do the changes ourselves but bought a house with an open plan downstairs and I wouldn’t do it again. Next house will be individual rooms! We don’t have any issues with storage but open plan is noisy and expensive to heat and redecorate.

We are open plan downstairs apart from a living room which I can either close off or open the double doors to. I wouldn't be without my closed off space when I want some peace away from the rest of the household.

I love our open plan but there are a few things which I think are key (not all of which we have but I wish we did!)

1. A separate snug/grown up TV room/quiet room
2. The ability to close the kitchen off from the hall/stairs/rest of house
3. Some form of separation, ideally a hall, for the loo from the living room
4. A separate utility. Washing machines can be noisy!

For your stage in life, it might well work. We have 2 primary school aged DC and one of the first things we did post-lockdown was put some more doors in! We'd been contemplating it already but all spending so much time together at home made us realise how much we like our own background noise... or, in my case, no noise and just peace to read it.

Each of the last 2 houses we have had, we have changed from lounge/diner to kitchen/diner and seperate lounge.
This allows 2 seperate reception spaces, and I like to cook listening to the radio.
Works better for us.

We recently moved into a house where the downstairs has an open plan living room and dining space but separate kitchen and a snug.

We had thought about knocking through the kitchen to have one large L shape open plan kitchen dining living room - some houses have done this already and some have not.

We decided to keep the kitchen separate in the end and I’m glad we did. It made the kitchen design easier and suits us better. If DD was still very young we might have been more tempted by open plan, but she’s 19 and we just felt this layout would suit is better. Also thought all that open space and then a closed off snug and loo would look odd!

We moved 3 years ago from separate rooms to open plan.
Dislike it intensely. Cooking smell spread. Can't leave cooking stuff out to clean them later.
Damn cold in winter cannot make it cozy for an evening. With cost of heating that will become more important.
Want to listen to nice music and not stop bloke from watching Westerns or History Documentaries.
Think Carefully OP

It really depends on your family make-up and lifestyle.

We do a lot of family entertaining, and having all the adults and kids across one big open space wouldn’t be tenable - we love the kids being able to head off to their own spaces to chat, watch movies, game, whatever - and leave us in peace to catch up, have music on, etc.

Open plan often looks great. It also needs to work well, as well.

We have a kitchen which has been made open plan from a dining room and galley kitchen and it is nice. But there is another small sitting room bit off behind a door and I am quite glad it does have that door often. We listen to the radio a lot but you'd have to switch it off if anyone was watching TV, for example.

Depends on what else you will have downstairs. In our old house, we had a massive open plan kitchen/dining room/sitting room/playroom and it was brilliant. We spent pretty much all our time in there. However, we did also have two other sitting rooms on the other side of the house, so there was also the option to retreat. We also had a utility room a fair way from the kitchen so we didn't have to live with a mountain of laundry!

We have a large open plan kitchen, dining room, and lounge. DH installed a large silent exhaust fan which extracts all of the smells, quickly. We also have an air purifier upstairs. Never had an issue with any smells. I think issues with smells come from insufficient air extraction

I think @FoxtrotSkarloey has it right in terms of the things you need to consider. We have a large open plan kitchen/living room/diner and while I love the light and space noise can be a big thing. I have to turn the subtitles on the TV if the kids are in the room as I find it impossible to filter out the noise, and it’s not fair on them to tell them to be quiet when they are playing nicely with each other. We do have a separate den we can send them to if it’s unbearable though.

For your lifestyle though I think it would be perfect.

I hated open plan with a vengenance, it's noisy when someone is cooking /washing machine or dishwasher is on and you're trying to watch tv and as someone else mentioned you can't listen to the radio in the kitchen area when someone is watching tv in the lounge area. Also I didn't find it very relaxing if the kitchen was messy - it's all one space and you're looking at dirty cups / plates etc so I was always tidying up. I think open plan works well if you're minimalist and don't have much stuff.

Now we're in a house with separate lounge / kitchen and utility room and it is so much nicer.

We have a kitchen/dining/living room, with plenty of room to sit round the table and a large sofa in the living end. We are usually there during the day. We have another living room though, so we can be separate if we choose. DH is the chef and he usually watches his dreadful road trip programmes in the kitchen, whilst I go and do my crafting and watch TV in the living room. I’ve got a small room upstairs with a sofa and shelves with all my craft supplies, so I can escape there too.

I have an open plan kitchen, dining, living area. About to extend it and add a utility.

I do like it, but also like having a separate sitting room where I can escape from the kitchen smells and mess. It’s also good for visitors who just drop in - I don’t have to bring them into my casual living space

Kitchen/dining/family room, yes. We have a big kitchen diner and I'd like it a bit bigger with space for a proper sitting area. We have folding doors into the sitting room and that works well enough though. We do have separate playroom, utility and study. With a younger family, the thought of having nowhere to be separate is very unappealing.