Dreaming of an Open Concept Floor Plan? Design Tips to Bring It All Together

With an open-concept layout, there are no walls between the main living spaces. In most homes with open-concept designs, the kitchen, dining room, and living room are joined in a continuous space.

Open-concept designs can make the same square footage feel larger and help families feel more connected. However, it’s important to consider the potential drawbacks of open-concept living before committing to a design. To make large, open spaces work for you and your family, here are some tips to consider to bring your plan to life.

What Are Open Floor Plans Good For?

The main benefit of an open concept space is that it makes different rooms in your home feel less isolated. The layout allows you to socialize, watch TV, and supervise children while cooking, making it much easier to entertain without feeling closed off. On top of that, open-concept floor plans can:

• Create the illusion of having more square footage. Open sightlines make the space feel larger because your eyes can travel across the entire main level at once.
• Make your space brighter. With fewer walls, natural light can fill more areas of your home without necessarily adding more doors or windows.
• Improve your home’s flow. Open-concept designs don’t just involve moving walls. They also let you reconfigure your entire layout, reducing bottlenecks and eliminating narrow halls and doorways.
• Boost resale value. While homeowner preferences are always evolving, better flow, more light, and a larger-feeling space are consistent selling points for prospective buyers.

Drawbacks of an Open-Concept Home

It’s easy to fall in love with the idea of an open-concept space, but it’s important to consider the daily realities of a design before committing to it. Open floor plans work great for many families, but you need to think about how the layout would support your family. Potential drawbacks to consider include:

• Noise may travel more easily. Walls and doors can make a space feel closed off, but they also help contain noise. If you’re concerned about how sound may travel, read our guide to home sound dampening.
• Cooking smells may spread. In an open space, it’s harder to contain cooking odors. However, having a high-quality range hood can help
• Messes are more visible. You may spend more time cleaning up clutter and doing dishes as you cook to keep your space looking neat from every room.
• Less vertical wall space. Taking down walls means you might have fewer options for kitchen cabinets and other furniture that needs to go against a wall. It can also mean less room for artwork and decor.
• More difficult temperature control. In a large, open area, it can be more difficult to heat and cool the space evenly. Read our guide to energy-efficient renovations for tips.

Planning Your Open-Concept Space

Opening up your home’s layout takes more planning than simply deciding which walls to remove. The layout needs to accommodate your family’s routines while also having enough structural support.

Bringing Down Walls

Virtually any wall can be taken down as long as there is enough support. If your design involves removing a load-bearing wall, you will need to plan for additional support beams. This doesn’t necessarily mean installing support posts in the middle of the room. Read everything you need to know about support beams, wing walls, and support columns in our guide to removing load-bearing walls.

Keep in mind that moving walls with electrical wiring, plumbing, or HVAC ducts will require additional work, even if these walls aren’t structural. Systems can often be rerouted to support your design. See how we handled mechanical system rerouting to create an open floor plan in this 1980s Apple Valley home renovation.

Creating a Floor Plan

When designing an open concept floor plan, homeowners typically want to combine the kitchen and dining areas and join them with the living area. Sometimes that may mean using the existing dining space and expanding the kitchen into it, or reconfiguring how the living room and kitchen are laid out to ensure the open concept makes sense and still includes everything the homeowners need from the space.

When planning a combined space, the goal is to create a layout that feels open without sacrificing the function of each zone. Here are a few things to think about when creating your floor plan:

• How the spaces connect. If you want to talk with guests or watch the game while cooking, think about where you place the counters in relation to the living room. Likewise, if you want guests to eat in the kitchen instead of using a large dining table, you’ll want to think about the placement and size of the kitchen island.
• Furniture and walkways. Make sure you think about how chairs will pull out when they’re used and how you might place living room furniture to allow foot traffic without bottlenecks. To keep the kitchen from becoming crowded, think about how people will walk through the spaces without needing to go through the main cooking area every time.
• Storage space and counters. Removing walls can limit your options for overhead cabinets. Make sure the new layout will have enough room for dishes, appliances, and food storage. This may mean incorporating storage into a kitchen island or renovating a pantry to create more space.

Making it All Come Together

From a design standpoint, you want to make sure that the spaces feel cohesive. Keep in mind that you’ll see your kitchen, dining area, and living room all at the same time. Here are a few ways to make the spaces feel coordinated:

• Use a consistent color palette throughout the whole space. If your kitchen island has a stained wood finish, consider using the same stain on your fireplace mantel or an accent beam in the living room. Or if you have an area rug in your living room, you can use a runner in the same style in the kitchen.
• Coordinate your hardware. Use the same color and style of cabinet hardware and drawer pulls throughout your kitchen and living room. You can even carry this through to your light fixtures by using the same finish for fixtures in each space.
• Repeat architectural details. Aside from surface-level finishes, it’s important to think about the structural style. If your living room has arched doorways, look for ways to incorporate arched designs in your dining space or kitchen. Likewise, using coordinating trim and molding can make the spaces feel more intentional overall.
• Try to create balance. If you have a large kitchen island, bulky living room furniture, and a large dining table, these pieces may compete for visual attention. At the same time, a couch that seemed large in a closed-off living room might actually feel small once it’s in an open-concept space. Thinking about the proportions of each piece will help create balance.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember with open-concept spaces is that not everything has to match. In a large space, designs can actually feel too repetitive if every finish, fixture, and piece of furniture matches perfectly. The goal should be to create enough consistency that the space feels connected while still giving each space its own purpose and character.

Design Your Open-Concept Home with James Barton Design-Build

Opening up your floor plan requires structural changes and careful design planning. Working with a design-build firm gives you both. Our design-build model means our in-house contractors and designers work together to make your renovation project a team effort from start to finish. Whether you’re looking to connect your kitchen and living room, make better use of your main floor, or create more room for family and friends to gather, we can help you explore the possibilities for your home.

Ready to rethink your floor plan? Contact our team at James Barton Design-Build to talk about your renovation plans.