Open floor plan houses: Your thoughts on them?

[Alan Rutherford]

The house we moved into 6 years ago has a "great room" on the first floor encompassing kitchen, living, dining and entry areas. We didn't realize how much the lack of walls would limit our choices in storage, placing furniture and hanging pictures. We love the place but we have boxes of pictures we'd like to hang up and stuff that's in storage because there are no closets, shelves or cabinets to put it in and no easy way to add them.

[Brian Elfert]

The house we moved into 6 years ago has a "great room" on the first floor encompassing kitchen, living, dining and entry areas. We didn't realize how much the lack of walls would limit our choices in storage, placing furniture and hanging pictures. We love the place but we have boxes of pictures we'd like to hang up and stuff that's in storage because there are no closets, shelves or cabinets to put it in and no easy way to add them.

Was the open floor plan really the problem, or simply a poor open floor plan that didn't incorporate closets and storage? My first house which had an open floor plan should have had a mud room between garage and kitchen so stuff could be dropped there instead of all over the kitchen and first floor. The initial draft of my house plan included a 1st floor office that would have helped with clutter somewhat, but the city nixed that plan by saying the house was too big. The office got dropped in the final revision. (City had to approve size and exterior design due to lot width issues.)

The issue with current house isn't really the need for an open floor plan. It is more about possibly adding a space for eating that isn't part of the tiny kitchen. It would not be very practical to add on due to design of the house. An addition would be way more than I would ever want to spend anyhow.

I was doing some major cooking this morning in my kitchen and now realize it really isn't the best layout for major cooking either.

[Alan Rutherford]

Was the open floor plan really the problem, or simply a poor open floor plan that didn't incorporate closets and storage? ...

That's an interesting question and I had to think about it. To incorporate closets and storage it would have been a very different house. The house is roughly 42' square with a covered porch on all 4 sides. The great room has 3 exterior walls and those walls contain 2 big exterior doorways, generous windows and the kitchen cabinets and appliances. You couldn't add to the depth of those walls for closets or anything without changing the character of the space inside or out. The other wall divides off a bedroom/office and utility space. It has 2 doorways and is partly blocked by the spiral staircase. What's here works very well for what it is but it's limiting and not very flexible. Adding to it would also take something away .

Your question was about open floor plans generally and my point is that it's not free space - you lose something in return for what you gain. Aside from the privacy issues and the ability to keep cooking smells contained, look at whatever you have now which is located relative to a wall you might remove: TV, china cabinet, kitchen cabinets and counters, sofa, shelves, extra chairs, pictures, wastebasket, phone, computer, coats, small table with a project of some sort.... There has to be a balance between space and utility and it's not the same for everyone.

[Brian Elfert]

I'll bet there could have been a design for your house that is open yet incorporates those missing features. The design may have been radically different, but I still bet it would have possible. If you have lots of more traditional furniture like a china hutch it might be a hassle to find enough wall space for everything with an open floor plan.

My previous house with open floor plan didn't lose any kitchen cabinets with the open floor plan. You might say the kitchen was not 100% open because it had cabinets over an island. A wall could have been added to the kitchen and all I would have lost is the breakfast bar.

[Ian Moone]

Open floor plan = Lovely to live in, but expensive to heat and cool.

In an ideal world - Open plan, but with bat wing/concertina doors or something where you CAN close rooms up, in the dead of winter for heating or the dead of summer for cooling - but in spring and autumn when its pleasant temps, can open the house right up!

Best of both worlds is what you want!

[Brian Elfert]

The only reason I can think why open floor plan would be more expensive to heat is if you normally close doors and don't heat/cool some rooms. The open floor plan on my house was simply great room, kitchen, and eating area. Most houses those rooms don't usually have doors anyhow. The bedrooms and bathrooms on 2nd floor floor were not open floor plan. I thought my heating/cooling bills were very reasonable.

[Mike Berrevoets]

I'm in the middle of converting the first floor of our 1975 two story into a more open floor plan. This will combine the separate kitchen, dining and living room into more or less one big room. I'm taking out a good portion of the load bearing wall between the kitchen/dining and the living room. I designed around leaving some of the load bearing wall in place because the heat ducts were running up through that wall and I didn't want to move them to exterior walls. I had a plan all worked out until I opened the load bearing wall last weekend. After taking off the drywall I discovered that the bulkhead in the kitchen was serving as the collection point for the cold air returns which ran down the load bearing wall.

im in the process of reworking my plan. So, my word of warning is to verify where all the heating and returns are located before forging ahead with the plan to open things up. I thought I did that sufficiently but obviously I didn't. I'll make it work but I am having to get creative with a few things in order to keep the HVAC system working as intended.

[Steve Peterson]

Open floor plan = Lovely to live in, but expensive to heat and cool.

An open floor plan is ideal if your primary source of heat is a wood stove. We had a pellet stove in our last house with an open floor plan. I loved that feature, but didn't really care for the open floor plan the rest of the time. Most house designs today do not work very well with a wood stove. One room would be way too hot and the bedrooms would be way too cold.

Steve

[Mel Fulks]

Some good points in this thread, would make a handy pamphlet. Most who use open floor plan for "public rooms" have to save some money with small bedrooms,and architects often push that to make everything affordable. One possible result ,that I've heard complaints about is everyone wanting to listen to or watch their own entertainment. And no one wants to be in their own room designed for sleeping.

[Roger Feeley]

+1 on open. BUT, we only had one child and didn't need all that much privacy. My wife and I are empty nesters and like the flexibility of the open plan. I can easily see a family of 5 or 6 wanting a little more compartmentalization.

We are getting ready to sell our house of 20 years and build another, smaller house. I think I've mentioned elsewhere that we are embarking on a grand social experiment. We are building an in-law quarters (think pool house) on our daughters land. Our house will be 900 sq feet not including a small loft. There will be a 1200 square foot basement for my shop. The bride will be doing day-care for our grandson due in January. I will continue to work for a while and then just putter around fixing things and building things.

The poolhouse will be open plan. Kitchen and living in one half and the bedroom and bath in the other. A spiral staircase will lead up to the loft (my office) and down to the basement. There will be a separate staircase to the basement from the outside for moving big stuff in and out. The inside staircase is just for people.

[Roger Feeley]

Steve, I'm kind of interested in a stove but we will have a vaulted ceiling and loft and I'm worried about stratification. Can I mitigate that by just running the fan on the HVAC? The one bedroom will be on the first floor.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

My only dislike of an open floor plan is when they don't have bathroom doors. After searching for a house & property for 5 years that met our needs, we had to settle on a house we weren't thrilled with. The master bedroom has no bathroom door leading into the large bathroom area & walk-in closet. There is a tiny room with a door that has just enough room for a toilet, but the rest of the bathroom is wide open. The problem with that? The first person up, or the last person to bed blinds the person still in bed with a bright light when they need to go into the bathroom or walk-in closet. There are several things we intend to redo in this house and adding a bathroom door will be one of them!

[Brian Elfert]

There is a trend towards master bedrooms with at least the vanity and sinks as part of the bedroom with no walls. My open floor plan house had a standard 2nd floor. Nothing open on the 2nd floor and everything had walls and doors including the master bath.

My house had an open floor plan, but it still had generously sized bedrooms on the 2nd floor. The smaller bedrooms seem to be more of a cost savings thing in general. I looked at some new or nearly houses last summer and I noticed most of the low end ones had tiny bedrooms, but the living room wasn't that big either.

[Rick Potter]

Some open plans go to extremes; for example, there is a new tract of homes being built near me with wide open downstairs culminating in a 16' wall of glass doors opening to the outdoor patio. These doors all fold open to become a 16' wide opening to the outdoors. It sure makes the inside of the house look bigger, but my first thought was about how useful that would be, since there are no screens on the opening.

The same model house had an island between the dining area and the kitchen which was literally large enough to park a car on, about 8' wide, 16' long. Very impressive, except for two minor problems. 1: You could not reach the center of the black granite island to clean it, and 2: 128 sq. ft. of floor space, and it included a total of one cabinet door to access under counter storage. I have lived in houses with a bedroom smaller than that.

On the other side of the coin, of course, are some of the older and very popular 1920's Spanish style homes that are near me. Very stylish outsides, but the insides are so chopped up with tiny individual rooms and hallways, that they are simply not practical for modern living. Small windows of course, tiny bathrooms, and closets that probably were not there when the home was built.