10 stylish open plan kitchen-living room ideas from the House & Garden archive
Open plan living is easy if you have sweeping expanses of space to play with, but it can also bring a more spacious feel to tiny houses and flats by opening up the rooms to create a much larger, brighter space. Although the sense of openness is highly desirable, and makes it easy to socialise, to have dinner parties, to cook for the family while they do homework or watch television, it's still important to create zones within an open plan space. This helps to encourage a sense of cosiness, or a sense that one space is designated for a particular function.
While keeping the walls and floors the same colour and material can help to unify the space, zoning an open plan room can be done in lots of different ways. Most obviously you can create separate areas through the arrangement of seating and furniture–large sofas, islands and shelves can be helpful for blocking off sitting rooms from kitchens, while maintaining the flow of light and sound. You can also zone the space through different styles of lighting (pendant lamps over a dining table, table lamps in the living area), or by using rugs to delineate the different areas. More and more, people are opting for ‘broken-plan’ layouts when they have an open plan kitchen living room to deal with – this involves using glazed doors or curtains to create a sense of separation while still allowing light (and people) to flow between the spaces.
If you don't want to be crammed into one room at a time, take a look at some of our most popular ideas for bringing the kitchen and living room together.










