Taking down the wall . . .
On every home makeover show, every real estate show, they talk about how everyone loves the open floor plan. It’s the new black. Homeowners are forever busting through walls to open the kitchen to the family room and eliminating the dining room altogether.
There are two main reasons why the open floor plan is so so popular:
1. It is great for entertaining. People always end up in the kitchen anyway, right? This allows the cook to be in the kitchen puttering around and interact with guests.
2. It is great for parents of young children. It allows the parent to be in the kitchen and still keep an eye on the little ones in the family room. No more baby in a playpen or high chair in the kitchen while you make dinner.
Do you see the theme?
“STAY IN THE KITCHEN!“
The open floor plan negates any reason to actually leave the kitchen.
But there is a third reason: knocking out walls creates space, or at least an illusion of space within the same square footage.
When you think about it, the open floor plan has been common in apartments for years. Walk into an apartment and you can see everything except the bedroom. It was supposed to be a move up for an apartment dweller to buy a house and actually have separate rooms. This new open floor plan trend has essentially turned high-end palace homes into nothing but super-sized apartments, with a second floor.
Monica and Rachel’s Apartment in Friends
For those of you who don’t have the open floor plan, before you take out all the walls in your house, and before you feel badly because you have a wall that you can’t take down, consider this:
1. Your children won’t be toddlers forever.
Children tend to grow. And there will come a time where you don’t want to and don’t have to watch every move they make.
2. Yes, you can see your toddlers, but your toddlers can see you, too.
My husband and I used to go into the laundry room to shove a snack into our faces so that the babies wouldn’t see and start wailing for some. Sometimes, I’d drop down behind the island like I’d heard sudden gunfire in order to have a cookie.
3. You can see your school-age, tween and teen kids, but they can see you, too.
With an open floor plan, you can forget coming down to sneak a snack over the counter in your jammies late at night, or reading the paper at the kitchen counter/table in the morning before your shower. There’s nothing like hearing, “Hi. Mrs. Peterson!” when you’re bra-less in a vintage tee and boxers drinking coffee in your kitchen. And if you dare talk on the phone while cooking or cleaning, you will be shushed by someone — or perhaps worse, a child will be listening in on every word. And it is a truism, a simple fact of life, that as kids grow, parents spend a fair amount of time hiding from them. The open floor plan is antithetical to the natural course of child-rearing in this respect.
4. Your kitchen must always be spotless . . .
There’s no door to close. When unexpected guests pop in — yours or your children’s — and you haven’t unloaded and reloaded your dishwasher — everyone can see it. Suddenly you’re a slob. The rest of your house could be spotless, but under these floor plans, no one ever sees the rest of your house.
5. Your family (TV) room includes a kitchen– a noisy, smelly kitchen.
Imagine sitting down in a darkened room, ready to watch a great emotional or talky movie and — oh hello, there’s your kid or spouse or whatever, in the kitchen, talking on the phone, repeatedly opening the fridge, making bacon, arguing with someone. Go ahead and click pause, because you can’t hear whatever George Clooney is saying, not that you need to . . . . but I digress. Your quiet moment has been ruined.
6. Children’s Programming/Teen programming/Sports/News — Anything you don’t want to watch at any given time.
Your little kid is watching Dora. Again, and again, and again. You can’t get away from it. iCarly? I get it, but I’ve had enough. People are enjoying the big game, snacking, yelling at the screen, having a good old time. You are wiping the counter after having loaded the dishwasher and setting out food for them. Worse, you can’t even mutter to yourself or roll your eyes at the unfairness of it all, because you are on display.
Essentially, the open floor plan allows you to be in the kitchen and watch – other people watch TV. Humph.
7. “Oh my gosh I dropped the chicken!”
In a perfect world, no one would know. Open floor plan? Well, it’ll be tweeted in minutes.
8. When entertaining, sometimes you need a minute.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Guests in the next room are expecting dinner; Mary and Rhoda panic in the kitchen because they have no food.
Your mother-in-law is driving you crazy, your boss is bored, your husband/wife is saying something he/she shouldn’t, you need yet another drink, you just said something really, really stupid. With an open floor plan, THERE’S NO PLACE TO GO!!! I love all the classic TV shows where people could say, “Can I see you in the kitchen“ or “I’m going to check on the food,” followed quickly by, “I’ll help you.” (This is all code for “We need to talk.” ) With an open floor plan I guess you have to hide in the bathroom, and that’s just plain icky.
How many times did characters in Frasier run off to the kitchen to plot against some misunderstanding happening in the living room?
One big room is fine, it can even be intimate when you are alone or coupled up. But once there are people of different ages, interests and responsibilities, well let’s just say that all this open living can be downright oppressive.
I speak from experience.
I knocked out a kitchen wall in my old house and built a family room addition. Instead of looking out my kitchen window and seeing trees, I created a view of my family room. I had young children at the time. I fell for the “I can be in the kitchen and see the kids” trap. Well, the children grew, the husband left, and I downsized to a much smaller fixer-upper home.
When it was time to do the kitchen, the contractor asked,
“You gonna knock out this wall?”
I said, “No. I want my wall. I need my wall.”
Truth is, I need some division in my life.
Sometimes I watch a little TV or listen to music while cleaning or cooking. Sometimes I sit at the kitchen table on my laptop or the phone while my kids are in the family room watching something that literally makes me ill. I’ve even been known to channel my inner Beyoncé and dance to my heart’s content in my kitchen. With my wall intact, I can be unseen but close by, and still opt in or out of the children’s entertainment at will.
It’s the little things . . . Sometimes a wall is a good little thing.
Just Me With . . . a divided floor plan and a bit of, well — if not sanity – at least a bit of privacy.
I have my kitchen wall, and still have this problem due to the “archway” aka oversized doorway I have no chance of putting a door on…
absolutely hate hearing/smelling the kitchen charades when the husband’s buddies are over.
Keeping the kitchen clean all the time is a difficult thing to achieve. That is one point not to have an open floor plan. But you have to admit that the spacious feeling given by the open floor plan is a perk.
I have lived in both open and not so open. I’m loving the not so open, but I do have one set of rooms I’d like to combine, but neither of them is a kitchen!!! I like being able to shut the door and not hear the football game or video game!
in a colonial. . . you can have a fix of the two. I have office space and dining room seperate, but the kitchen and family room is open.
[...] Image Source It may have been a TV show set, however, as you can see this city apartment had some great [...]
Heehee, you have just made me laugh out loud (annoying everyone in our open plan space, I’m sure). In the UK we have 3 separate rooms downstairs – kitchen, dining room and lounge. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time ‘suggesting’ (i.e. whining about) open-plan living to my husband – I had great plans to knock down multiple walls and create a massive big room downstairs where we could all work, play and eat in hippy happy harmony. Yeah right. Our new house in France is totally open plan downstairs, and it’s driving me mad! I now spend an inordinate amount of time ‘suggesting’ (ie whining about) putting up curtains and screens everywhere….
Ha! So you know just what I’m talking about! I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to have a big room for parties and such, but for everyday living I don’t want to be in the room with everybody else. Things are much more “harmonious” with a little separation. (I actually mean that literally as well — we have a piano, it cannot be in the same room as the TV and the kitchen, it would have to compete with the TV all the time!!!) I like having rooms for different functions and purposes — one being to get away from everybody else!! Thanks so much for the comment. Loved it!
So so so true. I am tired of kitchens/living room openness. If the rooms have to be smaller, so be it, leave the walls alone.
Yes, leave the walls, having separate rooms is good. I once looked at a house where the owners removed the bathroom walls in the master bedroom. Huh?
I thought I was the only mother who hid to eat cookies….no matter how big the children were. I would hate, hate, hate, and open plan. Every last room in my house has doors. The room in which I am sitting has 5. In 1902, they valued doors to close. When this was remodeled in the 1950s, they added a few more reasons to have more doors.
In the old days people valued having rooms for certain uses — a sitting room, a music room, kitchen to prepare food, a dining room to eat food. They acknowledged that there has to be some division in order to do different things. I think now, more than ever, there needs to be some division. There has to be somewhere to go to get away from the TV – to read a book, play an instrument, listen to music, have a conversation. I predict that there will be a change in this open floor plan trend in the future, but not in the near future.
Thanks for taking some time to publish “An Argument Against the
Open Floor Plan Just Me With . . .”. Thank you yet again ,Tyler
I’m in the leave the walls alone column. My husband is hard of hearing and can’t follow conversation in large open rooms. Am not the best cook/cleaner so like to hide the mess. Our separate dining room means that after a big Thanksgiving meal, all can adjourn to the family room or living room (yes, we have both!) to visit or watch football. I’ll keep our center hall design colonial just as it is!
Two great examples — the audio issue and the public mess. I grew up in a small bungalow type house with no dining room at all. It had an eat in kitchen which was fine for everyday dining. My mother always longed for a separate room to serve people in though, so they didn’t have to look at her kitchen sink and counters while eating — especially at Thanksgiving.
I don’t really like to cook in front of people either. I would think that some of the best cooks would like to be left alone to create a feast and then present it with fanfare. One of the things I’ve found weird when people talk about how the open plan is great for entertaining is when they say their guests can jump in and help while the food is being prepared. Do guests really want that? Plus I thought the well planned meal has many of the foods prepped and ready to go when the guests arrive. Did you ever go to a barbeque and arrive and the fire isn’t even lit? Ugh. I digress . . .
I big room is great for entertaining (I do miss having a big room), but it doesn’t necessarily mean the kitchen has to be part of it. Thanks for the comment.
[...] cons of open floor plan [...]
I am not a fan of the open concept either. I want a wall to not only close for the kitchen but to hang pictures on and to have a private conversation. Also one day we will be old and need things to aid us in walking the open plan is not designed for rails.
You raise a good point. I hadn’t thought about rails. The lack of space for artwork is a concern also. I’m realizing how important it is to have something pleasurable or thought provoking to look at. Having views only of a TV on one side and cabinetry and appliances on the other is not good. Designers should create plans that allow for art work, even for those who desire the open floor plan. It’s not enough to remove a wall, the remaining walls and interior soffits can be fashioned to allow art work because it’s an important part of life. And, though many people use e-readers, there are some books that people still like to display, along with photos. An open floor plan (one that just removes the wall and does nothing else) doesn’t allow for much shelving. Same with areas for private conversations — even with an open floor plan — perhaps an alcove could be incorporated so that there is some place on the first floor where people can talk — maybe a small sitting room or area off the kitchen. It just occurred to me — How do you bring out a surprise birthday cake when it’s an open floor plan? Sometimes it seems that the designs simply remove a wall but don’t make up for the loss of wall space.
Sometimes I wonder whether the answer is to move a wall rather than eliminate one. People seem to want a big kitchen. Big enough to hang out in and eat in and have your children in. I don’t think that necessarily means that people don’t also enjoy a separate room for movie viewing, music, reading, talking, etc. and yes, entertaining — sitting with drinks having conversation does not require a view of a dishwasher and it does not require the host/hostess to be in the kitchen.