Open plan living often means the kitchen and living room occupy one space. While this can create a more spacious feel, especially in a smaller property, like an apartment, it can be tricky for those with limited interior design experience to tie the two spaces together. Read on for five tricks to help you seamlessly combine your kitchen and living room in an open-plan space.
It’s All About Illusion
In a square or rectangular space with no visual barriers, you can use furniture as dividers to create intimacy, around your television or fireplace, for example.
In a way, you are trying to create a room within a room by zoning areas. If you are in a small property, the odds are you don’t use a dining table, so simply turning your couch and sitting chairs in towards an entertainment space can create a sense of separation. You can also use accessories and fittings to create more contrast, like using different pendant or sconce lights in the sitting area and kitchen.
“In a square or rectangular space with no visual barriers, you can use furniture as dividers to create intimacy, around your television or fireplace, for example.”
If you have a more expansive open-plan home, then a dining table between the kitchen and the living area can create a transition between the different areas of your home. This can create a welcome division for people who associate the kitchen with chores so they can detach from the cooking space when it’s time to relax after meals and clean up.
Use Art to Create Unity
In smaller spaces, like apartments, where the kitchen is more like a kitchenette, creating a sense of separation can feel messy and cluttered, making an already limited space feel smaller.
Using matching art and accents, like rugs and light fittings throughout the kitchen and living room, can unify the spaces, allowing you to tie the compact area together, creating a more open, consistent aesthetic.
Add Textures to Shared Walls
Suppose you have a long wall between the kitchen and living area. In that case, turning that wide vertical expanse into a feature wall can bring your kitchen and living room into uniformity.
Don’t limit your ideas to just using paint and art. There are many other ways to create an interesting, eye-popping feature wall using textures. Examples could include:
- Long floating shelves
- Artistically configured display shelves
- Timber slats
- A timber shiplap wall or shiplap alternatives
- Textured or metallic wallpaper
- Photographic wallpaper
- Painted murals and more
Unifying a long wall expanse in an open-plan space presents an opportunity to get creative. Sites like Pinterest can provide endless inspiration for getting creative with large wall designs.
Flooring Can Tie The Two Spaces Together
If you have an older open plan property, there is a good chance the flooring in the living space is different from the kitchen; wooden floors or carpet in the living room with linoleum in the kitchen, for example. This can create a messy, dated feel.
Try running easy-to-clean flooring like:
- Polishing floorboards
- Floating floorboards
- Polished concrete
- Large tiles
- Ceramic floors
Search for some before and after images of floor renovations in open spaces. You may be amazed how uniforming your flooring can bring the kitchen and living room together, especially if there is no bench or island between your kitchen and living area.
Paint is Still The Reigning Champ
If you are on a tight budget, paint is still one of the most affordable ways to make a big change; you can achieve this in several ways. As previously mentioned, a contrasting feature wall can have a significant impact if you have a long common wall between your living room and kitchen.
“Unifying a long wall expanse in an open-plan space presents an opportunity to get creative. Sites like Pinterest can provide endless inspiration for getting creative with large wall designs. “
Another way to achieve a unified contrast is to create twin feature walls in the kitchen and living space. The ceiling is also another space to consider painting as a feature.
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