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I've lived in both and now live in an old Victorian about 140 years old. I love the floor plan and having separate rooms with 10 ft ceilings, large bay windows, and having a galley kitchen. When I want the rooms to be more open, I open up the large pocket doors. The design is brilliant.
I have a prairie design home. I love the tall ceilings, loads of windows, there is so much light, interior courtyard, porches on back of house. Yes a wood burning fireplace and no TV above it, it’s not an open floor plan but with arches you can see dining room from the kitchen. I love this home it feels bright and airy but cozy all at the same time. The kitchen is huge so people can gather and talk if they want too. It gives us plenty of room to bake around the holidays.
I absolutely HATE the open floor plan too, with visitors looking at the pots, pans, and dirty dishes staring them in the face. Connect the living and dining areas, sure. But keep the kitchen separate and unseen from the main living area.
That's also my biggest complaint about open floor plans.
My house is 111 years old and has an "open plan". I can stand in my kitchen and see all the way through kitchen-dining room-living room, I can even see the front wall of the front bedroom. I hung a painting there I like to look at.
When in the living room you cannot see the business end of the kitchen. Plus, the living room furniture faces the big bright windows.
But I have walls too. The ceilings are very low.
I love my old house with wavy floors and crooked walls! But an open-plan was a must, when I was house hunting.
I would take the first image of the beamed ceiling and wood over the second any day. The first is homey and comfortable. The second sterile and lifeless.
We had an open plan for our first home. Like everyone else we listened to the "experts" in magazines and TV. Reality was the open plan meant the kitchen noise, smells, and clutter were always on display. There was no separation between activities; everything was always front and center. It looked open and spacious in pictures, but lived small.
One of my favorite design books is The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka. Architect and designer who dives into the whys and why nots of open design vs individual rooms. One of her points is open design sells because it looks good and you see a lot of it in glamor shots in magazines and houses. But unless really well done it doesn't always live as well as it looks. For many of the reasons here and in the OP and more.
I like a clear divide in my rooms. Doesn’t have to be whole walls. For example in our current and previous home a snack bar/counter made the divide. In our current home there’s a very wide opening that separates the living room from the dinning room. It’s still open but offers enough side wall to create a sort of doorway to divide the space. As for high ceilings, no thanks. If I can’t touch the ceiling with a 6 foot ladder than I don’t want it.
I like a clear divide in my rooms. Doesn’t have to be whole walls. For example in our current and previous home a snack bar/counter made the divide. In our current home there’s a very wide opening that separates the living room from the dinning room. It’s still open but offers enough side wall to create a sort of doorway to divide the space. As for high ceilings, no thanks. If I can’t touch the ceiling with a 6 foot ladder than I don’t want it.
Those dividers are helpful! Even if it's not a whole wall, it's nice to have some kind of demarcation.
YOU only need 1 TV. How silly to think you know what other people need.
I don't think that poster was trying to tell people how many TVs they should have. I think the point is that if you have a wide open floor plan in the living space then you only need 1 TV for that space since you can see it from everywhere. For instance, I can see my TV from my foyer, office nook, living room, dining room and kitchen, since it's all one big open space. Putting another TV there would just be competing sound. We still have 4 TVs in the house, though--1 in the open living room and 1 in each bedroom.
I agree that most open plans are awful, but I've seen some that are set up to be more practical than others. One thing is the fireplace....if you have limited walls then maybe loose the fireplace unless you use it for heating they are mostly decorative and impractical. Maybe a high window + a door instead of a wall of windows/sliders. Half walls can work wonders as well. You can do open without having everything open in one giant space, but builders don't design for practicality, they design for profit and stick every trendy thing they can wherever they can to make it seem 'upscale'. It's usually cheap looking as a result IMO. Sometimes when it's real open the kitchen defines the entire house because it's exposed on multiple sides and surrounded by the counter/stools and whatever space is left over isn't furniture friendly.
I've lived in 50's, 60's, and 70's houses only and they managed to have walls and a good flow at the same time. Not everyone who designes houses should.
Forgot about the "wall of windows" - another peeve. If it ain't to capture a mountain view or similar, just don't do it.
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