well I've had both open and closed and they have their pros and cons..i went from closed floor plan in an old victorian farmhouse that burned, to a completely open floor plan where I am now..One of my worst complaints about the OPEN floor plan is fewer walls to use to hang things on, I had a lot of art and now it is nearly all gone as I have given it away.

However, there is more light and air in the open floor plan.
I do appreciate that the family room is on the opposite side of the house from the living room at the front door, as my husband has a serious head injury and needs the privacy and he has the family room nearly all to himself.
If guests come and I don't want them to deal with my husband, they don't need to.

We had my mom stay with us for a while after a fire at her apt building, and she seldome went into the family room where Ron was, but they got along well in the other rooms when they were together, my husband would have never been able to handle having her as a guest for months had he not had the separation, so we needed at least that much separation.

another open floor plan con is the noise will travel, and your color scheme must coordinate throughout as generally the ceiling flows from room to room, our ceiling is the same color as our carpet, a nestle quick color, so it flows with the floor plan, but does dictate color schemes.

the cats love to run from one end of the house to the other chasing each other..guess that is good cause they are cute as a bug.

as noise travels it is hard to clean with a vacuum or whatever when husband is resting in the family room..

i actually however do believe that i honestly prefer the floor plan we have...you walk in front to the living room and the guest quarters are to the left (2 bedrms one is a gym and a bath) the dining room is across the home from the living room..basically same room..and the kitchen to the right with the hall to the bedroom off the living room..with the master bedroom and bath down that hall.
family room and laundry room are at the far end family room being on the kitchen side..therefore the separation from the house...but still open to kitchen dinette area.

I prefer an open plan, but I'm moving into a more traditional space in that the kitchen is cut off pretty much from the rest of the house. There are no doors closing it off but the placement of walls keeps you from seeing into it from other rooms. I've forced myself to consider the positives to a kitchen not being the in the living area:

1. Possibly less eating since it isn't as accessible (I haven't moved yet so this is an untested hypothesis)
2. Dinner party guests don't see the huge mess you've created while they are eating, won't be jumping up to help with the dishes when you really want people to just sit and enjoy themselves
3. If you ever have meals catered you don't have to listen to or see the caterers
4. You don't have to coordinate your appliances with your couches and you could have a bit more fun with decorating
5. If you burn something or cook something stinky you won't be smelling it all night

That said, I'm going to miss being able to see the tv and watch the kids play at the dining table or just chat with people in the family room while I'm doing dishes or making a snack, etc. Your L shaped example doesn't sound as closed off as a lot of older kitchens at least. Could you knock down the wall in any of these houses?

I like more of a closed plan because of lack of walls in an open plan - I also like art on the walls, too much noise and you can't hide any kitchen mess in an open pan, you can decorate each room differently in a closed plan.

Unless the living room is really big and has floor outlets, I prefer the closed.

You can play around so much more with closed floor plans. And it's easier to put a Christmas tree up! lol

I just like going from room to room while each one is unique in it's own way, but still flows together decoratively speaking, with each other.

And I do like privacy when I'm cooking...especially if I want to watch the TV in the kitchen or listen to the radio.

In fact, not long ago we did a topic about current trends that really don't work, and an open floor plan was one of them. lol

I also prefer the closed. I like each room to have a distinct purpose, an everything has a place feel. Also, wandering through a more traditional floor plan gives one places to discover and nooks to enjoy.

I laughed when I saw the mention of the mess in the kitchen being a factor when choosing an open or closed plan. We have been in our house over 20 years, and about ten years ago opened up the walls from the kitchen to the FR and also expanded the opening to the DR. I'd say the pros outweigh the cons, but one of the cons is definitely the "mess in the kitchen" problem. I'm perfectly happy to let dishes soak and have guests sit and visit, but it never seems to happen with the kitchen so visible. Someone always hops up from the table, and then others feel guilty if they don't. So I need to devise a plan to keep people seated when entertaining. But otherwise, open is great. My house was so dark before, now the light can travel from room to room, and everyone loves to gather in the kitchen.

I prefer a modified open floor plan. Our U-shaped Kitchen is open to the Family Room but the two rooms are separated by a wall with a large pass thru with counter seating. Dirty dishes are somewhat hidden because the sink is located in the U of the kitchen.

The Dining Room is a few steps away from both rooms and the kitchen is out of view from there.

I love the fact that guests can move from room to room without feeling crowded or trapped in any space. The draw back is that noise does travel and I don't have the wall space to hang all of the artwork from our previous home.

I love our open because I can be part of what's going on in the living room when I'm cooking, or cleaning up.
Thing I don't like, is decorating. Right now I'm trying to coordinate my cabinet paint to my couch, and it kind of sucks.

The biggest con, to me to open floorplan is the noise - I seem to be extremely sensitive to it, and prefer those quiet, each room designated types -
The other issue that adds to noise, given the open plan is relatively new - it is almost always sheetrocked with 1/2" rock - another huge noise conductor

I think the noise issue with open floor plans has more to do with the plans with the two story FR with an open balcony staircase upstairs opening up to a two story foyer. Those high open spaces are lovely and light filled, but are very noisy.

The more I think about it, I could live without the kitchen being open to the FR, but now I struggle with the kitchen design. Both of these houses have dark cherry cabinets and black granite countertops. They just feel so dark and heavy to me. I always pictured my next house being one with white cabinets. I could live with the dark countertops if the cabinets weren't so dark. But these are large kitchens - and very nicely done with high quality cabinets etc. maybe I could just get new cabinet doors and paint the frames??? Maybe I'm talking myself into these houses...

Our daughter's ktichen has only one small corner window with dark cabinets and granite.

Our kitchen also has only one window and a pass thru to the FR.

I don't find either kitchen too dark, but perhaps it's because they're not real small ktichens.

I'm a traditionalist - sort of. I like different rooms for different functions. Specifically, I like a formal dining room so that I don't see the kitchen when I eat. An eat-in kitchen is one of my many ideas of hell. I do like to have people in the kitchen when I cook, so my fantasy kitchen would have lots of comfortable seating. After dinner I want to be in a room with books, favorite chairs and music. That's the living room in my current home. I live with someone who loves television, so I want that in a separate room, too, because of the noise. I also like knowing that it's possible to change the look of one room without necessarily having to redo the whole main floor.

I have never had an open plan which is why I would say I prefer closed.

The one thing I like about the closed plan is that when I am in the kitchen with the family there is NO TV in site. We sit down as a family for dinner every single night and there is no distractions just family.

I can see the attraction to open living but I think there is somethign to be said for the cons of it also.

I prefer a closed plan. I like that noise does not carry. I like the feeling of being able to get away from everyone else because there are separate rooms. When we sit down to diner in the dining room we are not looking at the mess in the kitchen.

I'd say I like a mix. love that our kitchen is open to our dining room. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking meals, packing family lunches, etc and I love that I can see/talk with my young kids while they are sitting (eating, crafting, etc) at the dining table. But, the dining room is a separate room, so when you are sitting in there, you can't see what's in the sink, etc., the view is blocked by a kitchen island, and the room can be dressed up a bit and you don't feel like you are dining in the kitchen. I definitely like having a closed-off living room, study, etc.

I prefer different rooms for distinctly different purposes, and even more so now that we have a child in the house. The library is sort of our "off limits" (to toys, not kids) space...and is one room I can always go to and escape from the caos of thomas the train, rory the race car, and a pile of other plastic crap which looms in every corner of the family room. DH and I also enjoy the fact that when he wants to watch "cartoons" (he calls golf cartoons in the wild hope that he'll trick DS into loving it) I can be upstairs sewing in peace (or watching some horrible show like top model in secret...cuz I don't want anone to know I'd watch that crap) :o)

I also like to be able to close the doors on rooms I don't want to see (again the family room) when we have drop by guests. And the biggest issue...I want the dining room to be a true dining rooms, elegant and intimate, which you just can't acheive in a big space (I don't care what ya say).

OT (a little because someone brought it up) if a guest wants to do the dishes we tell them we don't allow it and then refill their wine glass. Occasionally I have had to reassure someone more than once that this is a firm rule no matter how many dishes they see piled in the kitchen :) But I'm always firm and they always give up happily. I think some folks just want to make the polite offer, and would of course help, but they don't mind being refused either :o)

We've had both, and I prefer an open plan, hands down.
I really hate being away from the family and guests and being "stuck" in the kitchen. I love an open plan and the flow of it. I love that if everyone is in the family room, that I can still be in the kitchen and still be a part of what's going on.

I don't care for a formal dining room at all. To stuffy for my taste.
I would like to have a formal living room, which we don't right now. Mostly to put a piano in there. I don't think we have many guests that we would stuff in the formal living room. Even unexpected guests, I just feel more comfortable with them in our family area. True, sometimes it isn't at is best, but really, I would feel dumb shuffling friends into the formal living room.

The more I think about it, I've always had an open floor plan in any house I've lived in as an adult. I do like the spaciousness of the open plan, but can see the pros of the closed off kitchen. Many houses we've seen the DR is the most open room - pretty much a pillar or two separating it from the foyer. Ironically, the most closed room in my current house is the DR - it's in the far back corner of the house off the kitchen and behind the LR. What I love about this room is it's my project area, I can do sewing on the DR table and no one can really see the mess. It's also the hockey bag and snow board storage area during the winter!!

What I should really be looking for in this next house is an area other than the cold garage where all this sports equipment can go.

Mona, your and your daughter's kitchen is very similar to the ones in these houses. I have to go back and see them in the afternoon, I need to figure out the light pattern. They do have alot of windows, it's just the kitchen is more to the inside of the house with the eating area surrounded by windows - there's no kitchen window over the sink :-(. Funny how you get used to certain things. I think many kitchens are setup this way now with the sink positioned more in the middle of the kitchen or in a peninsula area looking out into the eating area.

I think it may be a "stage of life" thing.

When the kids were smaller, I much preferred an open plan. We remodeled our last house to open it up. Then the kids turned into teenagers, and we HATED that open plan.

Our current house has a closed plan, and I LOVE it. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

I love:

-being able to close the doors and cook noisily and messily by myself when the living/dining rooms are clean and quiet.

-being able to let the kids and their friends make popcorn, chat around the island, fix snacks, etc., while DH and I can be watching a movie in the room. (Unheard of with an open plan.)

-being able to decorate it as it's own space without having to coordinate it to the rest of the living, dining, den furniture.

-did I mention the quiet of being able to close the doors when the teenagers are in there rooting around and I'm watching a movie? LOL!

Maybe when they're grown and gone we'll want to open it up again, but I doubt it. Every time we go to an open floor plan house, we leave with a headache because of the chaos and noise of everything being all together.

Reno
So true!

I have a VERY open floor plan. A great room concept. It works best for me. I cook at home every night, so I want to be included in what others are doing. I like being able to see the TV from the kitchen also. I don't want to be closed off. I also have a gorgeous view of the mountains out the wall of windows in the livingroom......seen from the kitchen.

Totally agree with renofan--it has to be a stage-of-life thing. And maybe with a bit of how formal your life is added in.

I have three little kids (5, 3, 1) and an old-fashioned Victorian--that in no-way will ever have an open-floor plan. Just can't the way it's configured. The back third of the house is the kitchen and formal dining room, separated by the back stairs. The center 1/3 of the house is the living room and the front 1/3 is the parlor and foyer. Two entrances into the dining room from the kitchen, around either side of the staircase (if that makes sense). I love that part of it. We don't have the doors up--but I can almost envision having swinging doors like in a restaurant with "in" on one side and "out" on the other. Accessible from the kitchen, the dining room is HUGE (we have a 12-person table and there's plenty of room).

However, I wish I could see the kids in the living room when I'm in the kitchen. It's a real pain. I feel like every "Mommmmmyy....." call, I have to leave what I'm doing in the kitchen and go running. And then run back into the kitchen. And back again. Over and over.

I guess I could see how later in life one might enjoy this more closed-off floorplan. But it's hard to envision right now!! I would love to be able to be prepping veggies or chopping whatever and be able to see the TV and my toddlers. Having guests see the mess of my kitchen is the least of my worries right now!!! Not even on my radar. Making sure the kids don't hit/push/bite/break stuff is more immediate and pressing right now.

I guess ideally (if I could build a house right now) I would be one of those people that would like a kitchen open to an informal dining area (small table) and family room, but have a separate living room and separate formal dining room.

That's not going to happen, however, so I'm just appreciating how fleeting these times of "Mommmmyyy....come quick!!!!!" are. Really trying, anyway!

:)
Sarah

My previous home had a fairly open kitchen/dining/living space, and after having lived that way, I much prefer the feeling of closed (smaller) rooms. I like the intimacy that closed rooms offer, and now find the "great room" concept distracting.

I have an open plan but a separate dining room.

DH like the feeling of being connected when I'm in the kitchen. Some of the meal prep is time consuming so the ability to chat while I'm cooking is nice.

I do agree with the OP about losing wall space.

I have lived in both open plan and enclosed rooms homes but designed our current house as a mix of the two, really because I decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"!

In my former home that had enclosed rooms, I tried to have the kitchen largely off limits to guests, especially when trying to cook for 25 plus guests at dinner parties. Despite my best efforts, our guests insisted on crowding the kitchen, glasses in hands, chatting to me. Having to repeatedly move them out of my path to the stove, and trying to respond to them while juggling a multitude of cooking tasks, made for exhausting times.
When I designed our current mostly open plan home I deliberately chose to make the kitchen large, open and at the center of the house! There is a 10 feet long island with seating on the opposite side from the long galley-like cooking area. This works extremely well for everyone! Our guests automatically stay on the far side of the island, there is plenty of room for them so they tend to gather and talk to each other as well as to me, and my cooking space is never invaded, even when some of them help me with prep! I think I am a far more gracious hostess now, certainly less stressed!

We use our 'family room', which is only semi visible from the kitchen as the room where we entertain our guests as it is very large, has lovely views, and opens to the pool. Our dining room, also visually separated from the kitchen, is airy and opens through two sets of French doors to a private tropical courtyard, so we dine to the sounds of birds and the splashing fountain (as well as to chatter and laughter).
What could be a formal living room can be completely enclosed and is used as our TV room in the evenings or sunny reading room in the mornings. We don't consider TV viewing to be a particularly social activity so this smaller fairly soundproof room that comfortably seats 6 TV viewers serves this function really well. (We could always put a large TV in the family room if we were ever to host a SuperBowl party.)

Honestly, this open house does transmit some sounds more than our previous homes that had closed off rooms but we insulated every floor and ceiling and installed solid doors. We find that noise is not an issue, even with a houseful of vacationing guests!

No two families use their home in exactly the same way and climate also has an effect on our choices. In our sunny, warm climate our open and airy home works perfectly for us.

If I were designing a house, I'd do it with lots of double wide doorways with either pocket or french doors. I love the flow of an open floor plan, at the same time there are definitely times I'd like to be able to close it off.

In our house, we have the great room concept with our kitchen, breakfast nook, family room all open to one another and facing the backyard. Then in the front of the house separate DR, entry, and LR--which are all more formal. It works for us with 3 kids (2 teenagers) because we have both a formal and informal area, though I do wish we had a bonus room that could be closed off for the teenagers to use. It can be a distraction when someone is cooking (and say using the blender) and someone else watching TV--but this was the best solution for us to get the largest amount of kitchen space which is where our family spends the bulk of our time together--even the teenagers who love to cook.

As for guests, they all love it since everyone can be together. I thinkour house has become the traditional spot to spend Thanksgiving just because everyone can all be together and be a part of the activities. With the location off the backyard, it also works very well for barbecues.

I will say though if I did not have my separate formal DR and LR in the front of the house, I would not care for it at all. There is one house in our neighborhood like that--all one big great room that opens up to the front and back with no trasitional space to welcome guests and hide the clutter (or get away from the chaos) of daily family life. I hate it and it took a long time to sell even though it had been extensively remodeled and took what was before 3 separate rooms and made them all one great room.

For half my marriage I had closed and for half, I have had open. I prefer closed. I had to give up a lot of furniture and art work when we moved to open plan. There are just no walls and everybody knows everybody's business because acoustics can never be as good. I know it's not hip and cool but it's nice to have a closed plan.

My favorite apartment ever was a huge loft-style space. One big room for living room, dining room, bedroom and study. You can't get much more open plan than that. It was a great light-filled space with honey-brown hemlock floors, two fireplaces, a barrel-vaulted ceiling, tons of windows and lots of character (and not a level square foot of floor in the entire place).

However, the kitchen was a small galley kitchen in its own room, only visible from the dining room area from certain angles. And that's what made it livable for me. I'm house-hunting right now and mostly looking at condos. I've rejected almost all of them out of hand and I was driving my poor agent nuts. So I had to sit down and really examine why I didn't like so many condos, when they had features that I really wanted.

While I wouldn't mind a kitchen and family room combo, that's about as far as I will go with an open plan kitchen. Almost every condo I've looked at has basically had the kitchen in the living room. Take a corner of the living room, run cabinets and counters along two walls, stick a breakfast bar in front and call it a kitchen.

When I'm relaxing in the living room, I don't want to be reminded of kitchen chores. If I want to have a cup of tea after dinner before washing the dishes, I don't want to have those dishes staring me in the face. To say nothing of food odors everywhere and grease getting on the good furniture.

If the house had a separate living room and family room and the kitchen was open to the family room, that would be fine. But the kitchen/living room combination doesn't work for me.

So, while I can embrace a lot of open floor plans, I really like having the kitchen in a room of its own.

Currently, I'm renting half of a duplex until I find a place to buy. I've got a living room and dining room separated by an archway, then a walk-through pantry and then the kitchen, which is the largest room in the house. I wouldn't mind opening up the living room and dining room to each other, but I do like the way the kitchen is separated from them.

Fifteen years ago we moved from a home that didn't necessarily have an open floor plan but had a large kitchen that was open to the family room. I really thought I was going to miss that kitchen when we bought our current home. Current home has a "U" shaped kitchen which, initially I thought was a downgrade. It didn't take me long to love the new kitchen and appreciate the fact that it was no longer in a traffic pattern! It is cozy and quiet and guests never see dirty dishes!

Closed. I'll never have the problem of how to change colors in the middle of a wall that belongs to 2 - 3 rooms. I can close off any room if it gets messy. When I had a hubby I could close off my office and not listen to the many football games. I can decorate each room, and have 'flow' but changing interest in each room. I can change one and not have a chain reaction and have to change the others that might share the same space.

I enjoy seeing some open spaces, as they can be beautiful, but I prefer my cozy, closed off cape.

In the house that my ex-husband and I had built the rooms flowed into each other but were separated by French doors in the living area and a regular door closed off the sleeping areas if necessary. It was wonderful because you had the sight lines of beautiful rooms without the noise factor, and of course when they were open the house did have a basically open floor plan. It was the best of both worlds.

How interesting to read all of the replies! I agree completely with renofan, that one's stage of life and lifestyle figure heavily in these opinions.

First, to the person who is having trouble keeping the guests from washing dishes: One way to handle this is to get several large dishtowels and, after stacking up the dishes in the sink or on the counter, cover them up completely. Do the same with the food on the stove, if you have open pots and pans that need scrubbing. This prevents anyone from seeing what needs to be done because the appearance is at least neat. You have wonderfully helpful friends, btw :)

Open plan vs. closed: We've had both also. I like more of a closed plan with the caveat that every home should have one very spacious, multipurpose room. It really doesn't matter if this is the family room, kitchen, a combination of the two, a large basement tv area, etc. A room that can hold a crowd---or just your family doing different things in the same place----is a real plus, imo.

Our current home is unusual in that one walks in to a large vaulted formal living room and around the corner, visible from the LR, is the kitchen! The dining room is visible from the foyer and the LR through two double-width cased openings... but it (DR) functions and feels like a separate room. Our library, which doesn't contain a tv (we don't have one) but otherwise does the duty of a "family" room, is down a hall and down steps in its own area of the house. There's not much rhyme or reason to the room layout, imo. We like to say that it is the result of an unholy alliance between an architect and a lawyer :)

Although the rooms are good sized and there is almost 6,000 square feet in the house, we still lack one really BIG room that could function for teenaged parties, a kid's playroom, etc. We're trying to decide now whether to finish off a 38 x 24 foot room in the basement with outside access, just because we really MISS having that one unobstructed area.

I love "open" because I crave sunlight, or any natural light, and must have it for my mental health. Our very small home has been opened up (it was built sometime in the forties and added on to a couple of times) by removing walls until I can stand in the middle of the central room and see outside in all four directions! Anyone who comes to the glass back door (where most people enter) can knock, and wave, and we wave back from the LR. Welcome!

We are rural, with no neighbors across the road and no really close houses on either side, so curtains are seldom closed except when it's cold. I love sitting and watching the sky slowly lighten in the morning, and darken in the evening. Keeps my diurnal clock in the right place.

MY "open" plan is not for everyone. The DR, kitchen, and laundry are all in a straight line across the back of the house (it all used to be a porch, back in history) and all in plain sight. But most people who come here are instantly at ease and comfortable. We have the best kitchen-table talks!

I agree that it depends on stage-of-life and lifestyle.

We moved from a closed plan when our kids were grown and I love the open plan in our current home where it's mostly DH and me.

I spend a lot of time in my kitchen and love it being open to the sunroom/deck area. I spent 20 years working in a dark closed off kitchen space.

Holidays and family times when we entertain work out well with the flow the open plan allows.

I would have hated this plan when we had 2 teenagers at home, though. It just wouldn't have allowed enough private/down time for me when they had friends coming and going. I'm sure they wouldn't have felt as comfortable having friends over as often if Mom & Dad were sitting right across from them all the time.

We bought a house that had a combined living and dining room with a walled off kitchen (like the L design referred to by an earlier post). But we wanted an open plan. So we did an addition that involved removing one of the exterior walls and replacing it with columns. We took down the wall that separated the kitchen from the old dining room, enlarged the kitchen, and now have a large open plan kitchen, living, play, and dining area. I LOVE it! There is a ton of light, the kitchen is large and has a wonderful island, which means there is plenty of room for everyone to hang out in the kitchen when we have people over, and even though we have lots of defined spaces, it is all visible from every part of the space. I have two small kids and I love being able to supervise their play and prepare dinner at the same time.

Having said that, I have heard this setup called a "one function house". I don't think that's really the case, but I do agree that you can't easily combine a quiet activity like reading or TV watching with a loud activity. Whether this works depends on how many people share your space and how you use your house. If people engage in joint activities or you like to entertain, the open space is great and accommodates a lot of people and allows the cook/host to be part of the broader activities. But if people like privacy or want to do VERY different things at the same time, they will need to be in a different room. That could be a bedroom, a basement, or an office if you have an open plan, but if you have a closed plan, there are more choices.

Regarding the decorating issues, I agree that it is somewhat challenging to coordinate all the colors and tones in a large open space. There is less wall space for art. However, when we designed our open plan, we reserved a space on one of the walls for a large painting my husband did. We custom-designed a lovely shelving design that is mounted on the wall around our TV. And there is space over our fireplace for another large painting. So if it's done well, you don't have to give up art.

At last in the end years of our lives we finally got the house with a greatroom. The ceilings are 10 feet and not 25 so I don't feel cold. The diningroom is formal but never use it. Everything is there. Lots of counterspace, wall space, and a beautiful fireplace to dream in front of. I live in a planned Texas community and our whole subdivision has the same concept of easy everything for us older people. I wish I had this when the kids were young!

I'm another one who isn't really into the open plan - I've had a couple and they just didn't spin my beanie. I'm more of a "den animal", I guess. Really big greatrooms actually make me very uncomfortable, not dissing on anyone here but I end up feeling like I'm in a public space rather than a private home when I'm in a very large, open room, no matter how perfectly decorated and arranged with "conversational groupings" it may be.

I currently live in a ca.1900 "Victorian Lite" factory worker's cottage, I can't really see anyone with kids wanting this house these days anyway though. There's no family room, the One reason why I like the closed-off rooms is that I can turn the heat down and just warm the room I'm in with a space heater. Seems silly to me to heat up, oh, the guest room (which we can't close off completely because that's where DH keeps his clothes so he doesn't wake me up while getting dressed in the morning) when I'm down in the living room. We have those nice big Victorian-era windows so there's normally quite a lot of light but right now we have to keep the blinds closed because it's so cold... PO tore out all the original windows but the replacements are so cheap and thin that he might as well have left the originals and we could have used the storm windows we found in the shed! (But then he'd have to have fixed the clapboard-and-shingle siding instead of just dumpstering it and putting on vinyl.)

I had an open floor plan in the last house - no doors downstairs except to the powder/laundry room and the coat closet (across from each other so if someone was in the PR and trying to get out they'd hit someone trying to get a coat in/out of the closet - not to mention ds was always in there when I wanted to get things out of the washer/dryer!). It had cathedral ceiling in the FR behind the garage with loft above the garage (friend called it a FROG). But the small eatin area on the opposite side of the peninsula from the working part of the kitchen was halfway in front of the wide doorway into the FR. Just about 18" wall in that area was in my way when I was at the sink (back wall of the house) so I couldn't see the kids!

So I designed new house with back of the house combined kitchen/FR - 37x13 space with 8ft ceilings so I can actually see the kids. TV is in the LR which is off the foyer, has 4ft wide French doors (or will, once I finish and hang them) so we can close off that room. Even with no doors on we really don't hear the TV so someone can be reading in the FR while someone else is watching TV. The FR i for relaxing and visiting with family & friends, "guests" can be there w/o getting in the way of my cooking. LR is supposed to be a retreat for me and DH, and a more formal place with leather sofa, oriental rug, drapes (yet to hang) where we can "entertain" but the kids watch TV more than we do and we haven't "entertained" anybody so it's become "the TV room" as dd calls it. Hopefully as she gets older she'll lose interest in TV and be more into books like ds. She can't read yet but maybe next year...

The DR is open to the foyer which I really didn't want (would have wanted bottom 4 steps with wall along that side but builder messed up didn't see my markup) but came in handy when we moved the furniture in. The only thing I realized too late is that in my old house we had 3ft doorway near stove to get into DR. In this house we have 4ft opening directly across from the DW/sink. So when we finally finish the house and have people over for dinner in our formal DR, they'll be able to see the mess! Putting the DR where the LR is wouldn't work though - walk 11 ft from kitchen (more like 13ft from stove), hang a left past the PR before you go through the front door? So maybe I'll put bifold doors in my DR?

Our current house is open floor plan an we bought it for that very reason. We have lived in it for 7 years and recently added a second story because we plan on staying for many more. I love the open floor plan because when I am in the kitchen I can still be a part of the activities of the house.

But the key is having an "away" area that people can use if they don't want to be in the middle of everything. We added a separate family room for that purpose as part of our remodel and it is just perfect.

The thing I like most about the open plan is that it gives us great flexibility - last year we took out the furniture and brought in a band and dance floor for my 40th party, and then last week when my daughter had 14 friends over for a slumber party we pushed the furniture against the walls and there was plenty of room for all the sleeping bags. And we always have enough room to extend the dining table at Thanksgiving. Although my house isn't huge, I never feel that the size of it limits how we use it because the open plan lets us be so flexible.

Do you Prefer an Open Floor Plan?

Absolutely not.

The definition of a room is a space within a building or other structure, separated by walls or partitions from other parts. I like rooms.

I wish I just had a tiny little kitchen that I could close the door to. When people come over they always want to hang out in the kitchen. I hate it. My kitchen is never clean, at least not that clean. I don't like the noise either. If I turn the dishwasher on after dinner you can forget watching tv in the living room. You can't hear the tv! If someone is in the kitchen getting a snack (being noisy) you can also forget about watching tv. I love the way my open floor plan looks, but it's not functional for us. The only time it's really functional is when we have all of our family over for a holiday or birthday party. So 3 times a year. If we build again I will build more rooms that are smaller.

Open, definitely open....