Anyone else hate open-plan architecture?

[olwyngdh]

We are looking at houses near disney for retirement (21 months!!) and i hatehatehate open floor plans so we are having a hard time finding something we like. The Army housing we are currently in is the first open plan we have had and that has sealed our hatred. I want kitchen cabinets. I want walls. I don't like cleaning cooking grease off of my TV and cooling smells out of my furniture. I hate that so many "kitchens" in the houses we look at proudly proclaim "We Eat Out" because there is not enough space for dishes, pots and pans, and food in the sparse number of cabinets. When we do get ready to buy the real estate agent is going to hate me.

 

[quandrea]

Not a huge fan of open plans. Also don’t like anything too closed in. What I do love is my house. It’s a hundred years old and the rooms lead into one another. Kitchen and foyer off the front entrance. Living room dining room right next to those rooms. Family room and library lead from the living room and dining room. No wasted space. Nice flow.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

When we built our home we purposefully added a wall in between our kitchen and the great room, we also made short walls in the dining room instead of columns (this area is load bearing). These were to help ease that open concept. I like some openness because otherwise it can be way too closed in but I don't like too too open concept. As odd as it may sound I really dislike light glare on a tv and that would have been the case with open concept where the couch is towards the kitchen with the tv either mounted above the mantle or off to the side so we just reversed it. I also didn't like the idea of seeing the light from the kitchen when I'm watching tv so that wall helps with where I sit on the sectional. We have a dual sided fireplace though but that does not add too much kitchen light in.

This is an early picture of the wall (view is from the kitchen):

 

[DLgal]

I like them, but there are MANY ways to design an open floor plan and some are just terrible. The best ones maximize space so that nothing is wasted. I've looked at a lot of floorplans and new construction homes online lately (just a fun hobby, but also wanting to keep up with what's trending in homes being built nearby for a possible eventual home purchase). I can very quickly give an open floor plan a thumbs up or thumbs down, depending on a few simple layout features.

We rent a home and it is about 5 years old. It is a semi open plan home. It is only 1800sq feet, but feels much larger because the floorplan is SO well thought out, there is a ton of hidden storage space, and it just flows so well.

We have an entry hallway (very wide, about 7 feet and about 18 feet long) that leads into a "great room" but that has a "conservatory room" and a dining area branching off it. The dining area is beyond the kitchen, with a sliding door out to the patio. It's more like a breakfast nook but it fits a full sized dining table with room to spare. The Conservatory room is a large room (13x20) that is connected to the great room but then surrounded by floor to ceiling windows on all sides. The great room itself is the kitchen + living area. The kitchen has a large island with seating and is about half the space of the great room. The living area is just the right size for a huge couch, recliner, storage bench along one wall, coffee table, and end table in a corner. We have a HUGE (110" wide) media center that fits perfectly on the largest wall. I can watch tv while cooking, which I love. The couch separates the kitchen from the living area and functions like a wall, as it is 96" long.

Our kitchen has 23 cabinets that go all the way up to the 9' ceiling. 4 of the cabinets are floor to ceiling, so they are the pantry. In addition, it has 9 drawers, 5 of which are deep storage drawers. I have a huge amount of counter space too. There is a very powerful range hood that eliminates odors from cooking. It's never been an issue. Our appliances are all whisper quiet so we can do things like run the dishwasher while watching tv.

We have a half bath in the entry hallway, and it has the coolest feature. There is a door in there that leads to a HUGE closet that utilizes the space under the stairwell. It's our own Harry Potter room. Actually we use it as a combo linen closet (put 2 short bookshelves in there against the wall)/suitcase storage. We also have a very large coat closet on the landing of the stairwell that uses the empty space along the wall where the front door is. There are no windows on the front of our house on the lower level. All the light comes in from the great room, which is awesome. It feels very secure that way, as our windows all open to a gated/walled off back patio.

I have seen a lot of open floor plans where the front door just opens directly into the great room. There is no entryway (dealbreaker), no coat closet/storage closet downstairs (dealbreaker), too many windows (an issue if you have bookcases or a large media console), etc. I also cannot stand when the dining area is located between the kitchen and the living area, rather than in a separate nook.

We spent 4 years living in a traditional colonial house in VA that had a formal living room, dining room, and family room downstairs with a semi closed off kitchen. For the entire 4 years, the living room remained empty. We just did not care for that space and found it completely wasteful. We used the formal dining room a handful of times. Again, a wasted space, as we ate in the breakfast nook daily instead. The living room was huge but had windows all around that prevented us from being able to effectively use our bookshelves. We had to cram them all onto one wall and it looked awful. That house was 2500 sq feet but felt more cluttered and cramped than the 1800 sq ft one we live in now, with all the same furniture.

Floorplans really do have a huge effect on how spacious and usable a house is. However, I am much more a fan of more current construction trends that favor more open layouts, provided they maximize space well.

 

[NeedMoreMickey]

Before we had our house built in 1999 I went to as many new model houses as I could to get ideas. One thing I saw and really liked on a house the door at the top of the basement steps was removed. The basement steps are under the steps going to the second floor so part of that wall was replaced with a railing. The other wall is against the foundation so that wall is where I have my Disney art. We put a door at the bottom of the basement steps.

 

[RamblingMad]

I prefer open plans. I like don't like houses with lots of hallways.

 

[Karin1984]

Where I live only the old and cheap houses have closed kitchens. New houses are almost always build with an open floor plan and an open kitchen. If you have the money to flip your old and cheap house, most people go for an open floor plan.
In the older houses with closed kitchens, the kitchens are usually incredibly small, ugly and outdated. To me, I wouldn't call a closed kitchen a sign of poverty, but it makes obvious that you're not rolling in money with a closed kitchen.
Or that you do not care about it

Yes, it was nice when I had a closed kitchen, I didn't have to do the dishes if I didn't feel like it. An open kitchen helps me to make sure I keep cleaning and take care of my house (and therefore myself), because anyone could see it. And cooking becomes more social, because you can keep in touch with the people in the living room.

Open floor plans feel bigger, more spacious, lighter. More walls than necessary make me feel closed in and trapped.

 

[MataHari22]

I'm not the biggest fans of open floor plans, either. I tend to love older homes mostly Tudor revival, Normandy Tudor, Victorians, Second Empire, Italianate ...... It hurts my heart when people buy one of these homes and rip the charm right out of it by making it all modern inside and also making it an open floor plan. Restoring, is ok, but man, kills me to see some of these houses that are so gorgeous outside and are HGTV cookie cutter inside!

 

[georgina]

We live in a Cape Cod built in 1954. Five years ago we redid the kitchen, completely changing the layout and taking out the wall between the dining room & kitchen, adding an island there with seating. I LOVE it. So much more light, cabinet space, better overall layout.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

We moved just over a year ago. Our old house did not have an open floor plan and I didn't like it. Although it was over 2000 square feet, I always felt boxed in. There were all these little compartments where two people could barely walk past each other. All five bedrooms were too small. I would rather have had three larger ones. Our new townhouse has less square footage, but is more open. The kitchen is separated by a wall, so it's out of sight from the living areas. I much prefer this more open design to our old house.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Where I live only the old and cheap houses have closed kitchens. New houses are almost always build with an open floor plan and an open kitchen. If you have the money to flip your old and cheap house, most people go for an open floor plan.
In the older houses with closed kitchens, the kitchens are usually incredibly small, ugly and outdated. To me, I wouldn't call a closed kitchen a sign of poverty, but it makes obvious that you're not rolling in money with a closed kitchen.
Or that you do not care about it

Yes, it was nice when I had a closed kitchen, I didn't have to do the dishes if I didn't feel like it. An open kitchen helps me to make sure I keep cleaning and take care of my house (and therefore myself), because anyone could see it. And cooking becomes more social, because you can keep in touch with the people in the living room.

Open floor plans feel bigger, more spacious, lighter. More walls than necessary make me feel closed in and trapped.

Yeah new build homes around here are always open concept even in low cost home.

I've never seen someone actively close a kitchen off with walls and doors on a new build (unless someone is going off of old plans) but I have seen adjustments here and there. The only closed 'kitchen' I've seen is butler's pantry which often have a second oven, maybe another microwave or a wine/beverage cooler.

 

[disykat]

I've lived in both and prefer having my kitchen open to my family room. Like others here I still have a living room that is NOT connected so it is the best of both worlds. Partially open, but with space to separate. Sometimes when I entertain I wish we had one bigger space, but other times it's nice to have two spaces to separate activities.

We moved to this house when our kids were 3 and 5 and it made night and day difference being able to see them where they were playing while I was cooking.

 

[loves to dive]

Our house has a semi open floor plan. The living room and kitchen are only divided by a sort of half wall. I hate it. Hubby has always worked from home and works from the couch in our living room (he has an office in the basement but never uses it). So if he's on the phone, I can't do anything in the kitchen, no running water, no getting water out of the dispenser in the fridge, no turning on the microwave, etc. because his clients will hear it. I hate if I'm watching TV and he gets up and goes in the kitchen and runs water I can't hear the TV. I don't need to see the kitchen. Here is a picture I took when we bought new furniture but before we put it in.

 

[Kittyblue]

I like the look of open floor plans. Mine is fairly open from office, kitchen/dining, and living room and has high ceilings. I don't like the noise factor - the kids playing games in the office or cooking in the kitchen interferes with watching tv in the living room.

 

[Colleen27]

I love open floor plans in an AirBnB but hate them in a house to live in. My current home is perfect, IMO - the living room and kitchen are at opposite ends of the house, with the formal dining room between them, so if I have a kid doing homework at the kitchen table she isn't distracted by the people chatting in the living room. If I want to listen to music when I'm cooking, I'm not stopping DH from hearing the TV. And if I have to take a phone call or a Zoom meeting, I can do it there without headphones or background noise. But I also have a HUGE kitchen - the house was built in 1880 and a previous owner knocked out the wall between the kitchen and butler's pantry to make one huge eat-in kitchen with a walk-in pantry - so I don't lose the feeling of spaciousness by having the kitchen closed off from the rest of the house.

Even worse than open floor plans are those homes with the soaring two-story ceiling in the common rooms and the upstairs hallway ending in a balcony above it. My inlaws' house is like that and it was impossible to put the kids to bed upstairs while the adults were still visiting downstairs because of the way the noise carries.

 

[VandVsmama]

I love open floor plans if they're done right. Our house has a great room that's open to the kitchen & dining area. I've found that we don't need an eat-in kitchen AND a separate dining room. Just the one place to eat is great because when we've had a separate dining room in the past, we hardly ever used that room....so it was wasted space.

I don't like open floor plans where you can see straight into the kitchen when you've opened the front door. I can't explain why but it just doesn't 'feel right.'

I don't really like homes where the kitchen is totally cut off from the rest of the house.

 

[Minnesota!]

We are semi-house hunting and I have found a few things that I didn't realize I hated:

Fireplaces
Open concept
Carpet in dining room
Split levels
Kitchens without an island
Double ovens/ovens in the wall

 

[mumto3girls]

We are semi-house hunting and I have found a few things that I didn't realize I hated:

Fireplaces
Open concept
Carpet in dining room
Split levels
Kitchens without an island
Double ovens/ovens in the wall

I am so curious—why don’t you like fireplaces? I love them. For me it is almost a must have. I don’t like split levels much either though.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I have semi-open. I love that my kitchen and family room are one space, so I don’t feel shut off from everyone else, can watch TV while cooking, etc. (But you also can’t see the sink from the front door.)

The other two rooms on the first floor can be closed off when needed. What was meant to be a formal dining room was DS’s playroom when he was little, and is my craft room now. It gets a decent amount of use, and even more so last spring, when it became DS’s classroom for a while.

We rarely spend time in the formal living room at all. It’s just a place to put stuff. We use it as a staging area when we’re packing for trips, decorating for Christmas, etc. and it also has several bookshelves. Someday I’d like to turn it into a proper library.

 

[_19disnA]

I am so curious—why don’t you like fireplaces? I love them. For me it is almost a must have.

Depends on the type of fireplace. Wood burning fire places tend to make your house smell like a campground. If a 2 story home, the temperature of the upstairs will be harder to control with the fireplace going. Have to store the logs somewhere near your home that tends to attract bugs. We never liked going to bed until the logs have burned out, just didn't seem safe to have a fire burning if someone isn't keeping an eye on it. There is also the issue of periodic cleaning of the chimney to eliminate built up residue to prevent a fire. You periodically have to clean out the ashes from the fireplace and make sure they are completely cold to avoid starting a fire in your trash can.

Our current home has a gas log fireplace we like MUCH better. You simply flip a switch to get it going. No smell of burning wood that tends to linger from a wood burning fireplace. You get the effect of a fireplace with none of the drawbacks. You simply turn it off when done and don't need to wait 2 hours for logs to burn out.

Open floorplan which this thread is about is mostly a matter of personal preference. Every TV design show tries to convert older homes into an open floor plan which doesn't always make sense to me.