Build.com for Pros: Pros and Cons of Open Concept Homes

Today's home building trends have shifted toward creating open concept homes. Before building or customizing open floor plan homes, it's important to understand the pros and cons this floor plan presents. Fortunately, there's some simple tricks that will help you minimize the cons of an open concept home so you can enjoy all the benefits they have to offer.

What Is An Open Floor Plan?

An open concept house is one that has minimal walls and visual barriers separating living spaces from one another. These homes typically provide an open flow from the front door through the kitchen, living room, and dining spaces. In most cases, you'll have a view from the front door straight through the back of the home in an open concept house.

Pros of Open Concept Homes

Let's start by looking at all the benefits an open concept house has to offer, such as:

Ideal for Entertaining

For clients who love to entertain, open concept homes make a great choice because their guests can spend time in different rooms of the home while all feeling as if they are together. One conversation can carry on comfortably around the kitchen island, with another in the living room, and all the while the host can keep everyone within eyesight and possibly even talking distance of one another.

Makes a Home Appear Large & Inviting

Walls tend to separate a home into a lot of smaller rooms. With an open concept house, the whole space appears to be larger and more inviting. Without walls making rooms appear smaller, the space feels brighter and can utilize natural lighting from well-placed windows. It invites guests to walk throughout the space without feeling as though they are invading their hosts’ privacy or need separate invitations to enter different rooms of the home. 

Keeps the Family Together

Open concept homes help the whole family spend more time together because people in different rooms of the home are all still within talking distance of one another. One person can be sitting at the dining room table while another is working in the kitchen or hanging out in the living room.

Provides Versatility of Design

Because there are minimal walls breaking up a space, you're able to determine how much of each area you want to use for a designated space. This provides the freedom to extend a living area into a dining space or extend a dining space into a living area a little, or even incorporate a home office without the isolation of walls. It also makes it easy to rearrange furniture to accommodate guests when there’s a party or other special event.

Cons of Open Floor Plan Homes

As with anything, there are also some downsides to consider when deciding whether a modern open floor plan makes the right choice for your clients.

Kitchen Mess Is Visible

With an open concept home, any mess in the kitchen is visible to the surrounding rooms as well. In fact, a mess in any room is visible from other spaces, from the kids’ area to the home office. As such, it is important to keep an open concept home clean and tidy. 

Installing a large, farmhouse sink will help your clients keep counters tidy, even when there are a few dishes starting to pile up. Other solutions to this problem could include incorporating barn door room dividers, or using free-standing shelving units to allow the room to remain open and airy while still obscuring tricky problem spots. 

Kitchen Odors Can Affect All Rooms

The kitchen can be a source of some strong odors when you're cooking at home. Those odors can waft from an open concept kitchen to the dining room, living room, and even the home office within an open concept home. Installing ceiling fans and range hoods and vents, and decorating with wax melt burners, candles, and oil diffusers will help tackle odors.

Noise Travels

Eliminating walls between rooms is also inviting noise to carry from one space another. Even the sound of the refrigerator, or running the dishwasher in an open concept kitchen can be audible from the living room. 

One of the best ways to combat the noise from carrying from one room to another is to add plenty of soft surfaces for sound absorption. Decorating with carpet, rugs, draperies, and soft furnishings will help to dampen the noise that can be problematic in an open concept house.

Tips for Decorating an Open Concept House

Now that you understand the pros and cons of an open concept home, it's time to learn some tips and tricks for decorating these spaces.

Choose a Design Theme

With modern open floor plans for the kitchen and living room, it's important to choose one overall design theme and color scheme to use in the home decor throughout the space. This will help the entire home look cohesive and provide a visual continuity as you walk from one space to the next. When selecting furniture to decorate each space, look for pieces that delineate one space from another while all working together to create a full design story.

Keep Lighting Cohesive

As you style your client’s space, consider that the lighting included in one room will be visible from the other rooms, as well. The shade designs, colors, or even the metal finishes of the light fixtures should match the metal finish of the kitchen hardware and other elements in the room, as well.

Shop for lighting pieces that the client will love that also offer an entire coordinating collection for chandeliers, pendant lights, and island lighting solutions. These will then all blend effortlessly between different areas of the same room. 

Find Creative Storage Solutions

Because open concept homes often offer minimal storage solutions, it's important to find creative storage solutions with furniture. Bookshelves, buffets, and pieces with integrated storage will help to manage the clutter and make the home look neater. This is especially important in the kitchen or office where clutter can be a bigger problem.

Now that you understand the pros and cons of an open concept home, it's easier to determine how to plan the space to create the best fit for your clients’ home. If they have an existing home and would like to convert the space into an open concept kitchen and living area design, it is possible to remove walls and open things up. When trying to modify an existing space, it's important to make sure the walls you plan to remove aren't load-bearing walls.