If HGTV and the last fifty years of architecture have taught us anything, it’s this: people hate walls.
In any reality television show where a couple is looking to renovate a home, the first mandate they have is for a wall to be knocked out to create an open concept. So they can watch the kids. So it can feel more open. So that they get more light.
And these are all great reasons to have an open floor plan. But since about 2018, there’s been more and more pushback to the idea of an open floor plan, and it seems this year we’ve reopened the case for having more distinctly separate rooms. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated that many of us take on work and school from home–the siren song of the open floor plan is togetherness, after all, and it may be that people are finding themselves pursuing…a little less togetherness.
What makes a great home rests solely on how well the home meets the needs and desires of the inhabitants, though. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of an open floor plan, and evaluate whether it’s right for you before you start building, or break out that sledgehammer.
Pros
Maximizes Natural Light
In our recent blog, we explored the nearly-magical effects of lighting on a space. This is certainly a big benefit of the open floor plan–light travels from room to room, brightening your home as a whole. While window and door configurations as well as furniture arrangement and the inclusion of skylights can enhance the presence of natural light in the home, nothing is quite as effective for maximizing lighting as an open floor plan.
Makes Spaces Look Larger
…that pretty much says it all. If you have any degree of claustrophobia, an open floor plan might just feel better to you. Or, if you’re really striving for a minimalist look, an open floor plan can accommodate that aesthetic nicely. The space looks larger, but also, it is larger. Walls take up square footage, and with an open concept floor plan, you can have more room for furniture without making it look cluttered or busy in the room. There’s a caveat to that clutter point, but we’ll get to that in a moment…
So Much Togetherness
When Frank Lloyd Wright was making strides toward the concept of the open floor plan in the early 20th century, his motivation for the design was pro-social and pro-family. Fewer walls meant that people would have more interaction with each other, and we could move seamlessly from our domestic tasks to our social interactions–that is, you can talk to your family and friends while you cook and do the dishes. And you can watch the kids. And, ok, maybe this perk is focused on to a comically high degree in the world of high-stakes house-flipping reality TV, but it’s true that for parents with small children, babies, and/or more than one child, there is real value in being able to see what they’re up to while you cook.
Easier to Sell Your Home, and Increased Resale Value
All predictions and recent criticisms aside, open concept floor plans have been sought after in the marketplace for a long time. In fact, between 50-70% of buyers request an open floor plan. It’s hard to pin down exactly how much more a home with an open floor plan is worth, but the estimated ROI on a home that’s been renovated from closed concept to an open concept is about 54-60% (build-review.com, “How to 8 Smart Ways To Increase Your Home Value In The First Year.”)
Cons
Less Privacy
The dark side of So Much Togetherness is Too Much Togetherness. Maybe you’d like to read your recipe in the kitchen without the noise of the TV. And while being able to watch small children is great, the ability to regularly go around a corner for a moment and take a breath might actually give you more parenting stamina. Once children are not-so-small, it might be possible to actually take your eyes off them for the time it takes to load the dishwasher–but you won’t be able to turn down the acoustics on their tiny feet as they race through the living room or completely tune out your spouse’s Zoom call at the dining room table. More connection is more connection, for better or worse.
More Visible Messes
Every photo you find of an open concept home looks beautiful, because it’s supposed to look beautiful. Those carefully staged and manicured photos are obviously not what most people’s lived-in homes look like. If you’ve just had a dinner party, you’ll have a stack of dirty dishes to deal with. In a closed concept home, it’s easy to shut the door on the kitchen, get back to your guests, and take care of the dishes later. But in an open concept home, if your kitchen is dirty or cluttered, you are in a dirty, cluttered space. And this won’t bother everyone, especially with the option to physically distance yourself from the mess, but it can get a little challenging to manage all the little pockets of chaos in a space that really contains three rooms. You can’t escape the puzzle on the coffee table or the kids homework on the counter or the baby’s messy high chair tray in the dining room just by closing a door. Sure, we try to clean up after ourselves, but that’s not always possible right in the moment. The degree to which this bothers people varies, but if you do happen to be the type of person who is distracted by disorder or messes, you might want to consider a closed concept home.
Less Separation Between Work Spaces and Social Spaces
This con is a little more philosophical-seeming than the rest, but nevertheless, it’s important to consider. It’s commonly held that you shouldn’t have your home office as part of your bedroom, or take your work laptop to bed with you, or balance your checkbook from bed, and so forth. The reason is because the mind creates associations between actions, moods, and places. Of course some people still take their laptops to bed, but ask them how well they’re sleeping. If you don’t separate your work space from your relaxation space, your brain will have a hard time settling down because it’s conditioned to be in work-mode in that space. Similarly, if you never really leave your kitchen, you might find yourself having a harder time relaxing in your living room.
A really interesting examination of the open concept home in the Atlantic Monthly discusses the way open concept homes have “combined leisure with labor,” and not in a good way. The article’s author, Ian Bogost, says that in the end, if you combine your relaxation space with your work-space, you make all your space work space. Your mind never relaxes.
There may be more than just a lack of walls to blame for this, of course, but when you are planning your home or planning to remodel, it’s worth thinking about what kind of a person you are. Do you have trouble winding down or shifting gears? If so, more physical separation between work spaces and recreational spaces might be great for you.
Work-Arounds
If you still find yourself drawn to an open-concept home, but hesitate because of the drawbacks, there are some clever work-arounds. It may be that you need a space to do work that you hold yourself to, like a home office. Or you might create and designate spaces for personal relaxation away from family, like a man-cave or she-shed. Home theaters add a space for media viewing that isn’t in the fully public center of the house. And, most interestingly, some folks have started including a second kitchen in their open concept homes, tucked behind the “public” kitchen. The smaller kitchen can get messy and be a quiet, set apart place, while the public kitchen is still perfectly functional but perhaps used more lightly and cleaned quickly when there are guests. The sky is really the limit in terms of how you want to design your space–”closed” and “open” concepts are really only a starting point for deciding how your home will be laid out. Maybe you don’t hate walls. Maybe you just want to put them in different places than other people do.
We hoped this helped you consider what kind of layout is right for you. If you’d like more industry expertise, or you’re ready to get started building a home that’s right for you, contact us today!
