Open Plan Living: 4 Considerations You Need To Factor In

Once upon a time, houses were formed quite consistently, and the idea of merging rooms together to create open plan environments was practically unheard of. 

Suffice to say, the game has changed. This is now incredibly common, to the extent where some new-build developments are even marketed with an open plan design. 

However, opting for this route isn’t simply a case of knocking down a couple of walls (with the correct respiratory equipment of course) and hoping for the best. This is a complete design change to your home that needs several considerations. 

As you may have already gathered, today’s post will delve into some of these considerations to reveal the real truth about open plan living. 

The furniture-factor 

In some ways, this first problem borders the ridiculous. After all, it’s something of a luxury to be scratching your head about having such a large space to place your furniture! 

However, this is the type of consideration that open plan living brings about. You now have one huge space and while you may have had a wall or two to once separate it, now you don’t have anything. 

It means that you need to think more carefully about how to place this furniture. What will you use to separate the space? Remember, you now have fewer walls to play with and like it or not, this can make interior design a lot more difficult. 

How do you make your space personal? 

Again, this next point revolves around the fact that you now don’t have as many walls at your disposal. In the so-called “traditional layout”, you were able to hang photos and pieces of art on the walls which could add a certain degree of character to your rooms. 

Now, this is suddenly more difficult. It means that you need to think strategically about which walls you are going to use to add that personal-factor to your room. 

What about the storage? 

As you may have already gathered, there is a common theme that is running through this article and it revolves around your lack of wall space. This time, the issue it affects is storage and without these walls, you are going to find it more difficult to store items. Quite often, this can result in these open plan spaces becoming cluttered – which is surely the exact opposite of what should be happening! 

Let’s talk about sound 

This last point is something that a lot of people don’t even consider but trust us, if you happen to live in a busy household, you will quickly realise the sound implications of open plan living. 

Again, with fewer walls at your disposal, there are less things for sound to bounce off. It means that your home has suddenly become a whole lot noisier, but there are ways to manage this. These include upholstered chairs, plants and even various wall coverings which can all absorb sound and just make your room a little quainter.