Warm living room with striped sofa, leather armchair, green rug, and limewash walls looking through an opening into a connected room.

To Open the Floor Plan, or Not? A Case Study in Spatial Balance

Afshan Behnamghader

The open floor plan phenomenon seems to have been a trend for the past twenty-five years, but it seems to be slowing down, and honestly, I am glad.

I have a lot of hesitation when it comes to the open floor plan. I believe a certain level of separation (of sight and noise) is great in a house, especially when your house is not that big: we are bombarded with information every day, and our phones are already doing enough to give us noise. Do we need to introduce more into our houses? If you are in the kitchen dealing with cooking or dirty dishes, do you need to see or hear the TV room? Or the living room? Or vice versa?

But what do I practically mean?

Let's look at a study of a living room from a 1950s home, testing what happens if we remove the walls around the living room space:

When you enter this house, you land in a vestibule, not big, not small. From there, you can go straight up the well-lit stairs, or you can go into the TV room on the right. The TV room is adjacent to the kitchen, so this whole side of the house is more active. It is the casual and noisy area of the house.

Or, from the vestibule, you can go to the living room on the left. The living room sits adjacent to a bedroom and a garden room. It is a quieter zone, a bit formal, and deeply calming.

Okay, now that we know the existing situation, let’s run the tests starting with removing all the walls around the stair. Fully connecting the TV room and the living room.

What do we see?

The stair is like a sculpture now: exposed, beautiful, and very well-lit. And you could argue you can comprehend the whole TV room and living room at the same time, so the space looks bigger. But what else has happened?

First, we lost the coat closet in the entry, which was functionally very useful. We also lost the proper TV and bookshelf wall, so we now have to move the TV to the kitchen wall, meaning the sofa faces directly into the kitchen sink. Which is far from ideal.

But I think one of the most important flaws is that the barrier between the quiet and active zones is gone. The spaces are blended, carrying equal weight.

If you want to sit in the living room in peace, by the fireplace to read a book, focus, or write something, you are now exposed to more square footage and noise. You don’t feel as cocooned. The character of this specific room is significantly degraded.

Does that mean opening up the floor plan is always bad? Not necessarily. And I think we can find a balance with the third test:

Here, we kept the TV room separate, preserving the active and casual zone. But we opened up the stair towards the living room. When you enter the house, you still have the vestibule and the coat closet, but the space looks more open. The stair looks open and welcoming. The living room feels more connected to the rest of the house, but it is still secluded to a good degree.

So... the walls do not always have to go!

Always think about function and the experiences that you want to get from your house, and that can help you with wall removal decisions more than anything else.

If you liked what you just saw, I have put together the sourcing directory for the furniture, fixtures, and paint colors here:

Living Room

TV Room

Paint palette & finishes:

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Please note that these 3D renderings are created using Revit, Enscape, Photoshop, and AI tools as representative studies for layout, scale, overall feel, and concept. They cannot fully capture the true depth, texture, and nuanced beauty of objects, materials and finishes. I always recommend visiting the manufacturer's website or ordering physical samples before making a final decision.

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