Clever open plan living room ideas from the House & Garden archive
Whether you live in a small flat where the kitchen and dining room all have to be part of the same space, or you have a generous extension where you want the whole family to be able to gather, the challenges of creating a really good open plan living space tend to be the same. How do you create distinct zones for each activity so that the room doesn't feel too cavernous (or too squashed), while preserving a sense of coherence and flow? Divisions are good, but people still need to be able to move around the space easily and sightlines need to be maintained, otherwise what's the point of open-plan living?
The easiest open plan living room ideas work by creating a general sense of coherence with the same flooring used throughout and the same colour on the walls, while the zones are defined by rugs on the floor, the art on the walls and the lighting choices, for example a pendant hung over a dining table or over an island to demarcate the space vertically. Each zone should have its own lighting that reflects how it will be used: task lighting in a kitchen that can be dimmed when you're not working there, soft wall lights and table lamps to create a gentle glow, and reading lights by the sofas and armchairs.
While furniture can be really helpful to encourage a sense of division – such as a console table behind a sofa or a kitchen island that functions as a bar – bear in mind how visually heavy these will be and how much they might seem to block off the space. Could that island also work as a bookshelf? Does the console table and all the stuff on it actually clutter up your view of the rest of the interior? If you really do want more of a sense of division, we're enjoying the many glazed and half-glazed doors we've been seeing on our pages lately. In a reasonably large space, they're a brilliant way of letting light move through a large space while still encouraging the idea of different rooms.
Owen Gale1/9If you're able to play around a bit with the architecture of your space, installing glazed doors is a great way to divide off a kitchen from a living room without creating two separate rooms. This kind of ‘broken-plan’ layout is becoming more and more popular. Lishan Tham of Studio Shan has done it beautifully in her Holborn apartment, where the colours flow easily between the kitchen and living space, but you certainly wouldn't feel like you're sitting in the kitchen when you're trying to watch TV.
Simon Brown2/9Suspending decorative elements from the ceiling, whether that's a pendant light or something more unusual, is a brilliant way to reinforce different areas in a large open plan space. Here in a 17th-century barn by Caroline Riddell, this generous room contains the kitchen, a sitting area and a dining area. The latter each have their own Calder-esque chandelier, a bespoke design by Caroline.
Simon Brown3/9For tiny flat inspiration, you can't get much more stylish than this bijou Paddington flat by Beata Heuman, where the smallest of spaces has magically become ultra luxurious. The sitting room and the kitchen lead onto one another, and although there is no room for a dining table in this space (there is one behind the camera in a small extension), the island has become a neat breakfast bar. The half wall and archway mean that the kitchen and living room don't feel entirely like one room, but in fact you can see all the way to the bedroom and light flows in from the back of the flat.
Paul Massey4/9One of the problems with modern open plan extensions at the back of a house is that they tend to lack a focal point. Designer Kerry Franses fixed this issue in the London house she designed for her mother, adding in a modern fireplace which immediately gives the living area a point. Although the entire space is clean and contemporary, warm natural tones and textures of parquet by Oak Artisans and a sisal rug by Tim Page soften the lines, and create division from the minimalist kitchen.
Line T. Klein5/9In many flats, the kitchen looks straight into the flat with little or no division, but some kind of room divider can create a much cosier effect. Here in Karl Erik Halldén's house in a remote part of the Swedish countryside, a bookshelf and sofa on a partial dividing wall has helped to create division between the sitting area and kitchen.
Dean Hearne6/9If you're lucky enough to have a large, high-ceilinged space that you want to divide into separate rooms without losing the airiness of the interior, then a more substantial partition wall could be the answer. It may sound obvious, but walls are excellent places to hang art or attach bookshelves, and in many open plan rooms, especially those with large french windows on one side, there isn't much wall space to work with. Here in the award-winning Amento house in Suffolk, designed by James Gorst, a Douglas fir partition wall divides the living space from the kitchen, with a polished concrete floor running throughout the whole space to unify it.
Boz Gagovski7/9It can be easy to give in to the idea that open plan spaces have to be quite clean and minimal, but we think antiques dealer James Jackson has walked a clever line between traditional and modern in his conversion of this old bakery in Fulham. Salvaged parquet flooring provides a beautifully characterful link between the sitting area, dining space and kitchen, and an antique table neatly plays off the minimal, modern kitchen. Simple pendant lights strung from the ceiling mark the division between the different areas.
Simon Brown8/9In her former London flat, Emma Burns designed an elegant L-shaped space predominantly taken up by a sitting room, which then transitions neatly to a dining space, with a banquette nestled under a bookshelf, which then transitions to a smart kitchen (to the left – see below). The glass dining table is a good touch – it doesn't carry too much visual weight, so the sitting room still feels like a sitting room.
Simon Brown9/9"From the sitting room, it looks more like a bar than a kitchen," explains Emma, of the kitchen in her former London flat. "And the bits where the mess happens are hidden behind the wall, so you don't feel that you're sitting in the kitchen when you're on the sofa."
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