Open Plan Living - the only option?

Ramona123

Open plan looks great but if you have kids and there are no walls or doors then all the sound travels upstairs and wakes the kids up constantly. Even putting a spoon in a cutlery drawer at 10:30pm vibrates around the entire house!

seven-day-weekend

I don't agree either about the kitchen being 'the hub of the home'. Who wants to spend all their time in the kitchen? And don't people need their own space?

It must be very claustrophobic for any family to constantly be together.

Hedgehog99

I too loathe open plan and hope it will go out of fashion.

The place I am hoping to buy has a lounge-diner and separate lounge, with double doors between. Perfect.

I would love a separate utility, but budget does not allow. Second choice is what I will have - washing machine in the kitchen. I don't like the idea of having it in the loo.

In my current place, the place next door has been made open plan (cheap DIY job) and they built a kitchen peninsular unit against my wall. I can even hear their mobiles vibrate. Horrible the way the sound ricochets round their place.

Ptolemyspuzzle

I prefer doors and walls.

It's hard to cook with a cat balancing on your head/shoulder.

Apart from that, there's the whole noise/heat issue.

zagubov

I've banged on elsewhere about how awful open-plan is.

Living room and dining room need to be separate. Two receptions is a godsend.

Kitchen/dining room open-plan would be quite practical.

Having laundry in a kitchen is impractical; it's already a busy room. A utility should be combined with a toilet and be upstairs. I don't believe bathrooms/shower rooms should always have a toilet. In Japan flats have to have them separate.

We've a downstairs under-stairs toilet shower-room and an upstairs bathroom/toilet. Our boiler's in our attic.

I'd prefer houses to have smaller bedrooms, all laundry/toilets/bathrooms upstairs. I know we spend a lot of time upstairs, but mainly asleep. We need more separate spaces downstairs where we /our kids can listen to or make music, watch the telly, do home office work, whatever.

There have been some new ideas about house layouts where the bedrooms are in the ground floor and the living areas are upstairs with nicer views. We could do with rational thinking about houses instead of these mad crazes for knocking down walls, or building garages the size of matchboxes while our cars are growing to the size of vans.