Open Plan living
A large Moroccan rug cozies up and defines the living room space. The mix of textiles and textures includes the woven stools and handmade wood coffee table base. The armchairs are vintage, re-covered in a gray and cream fabric. To the right is the kitchen, and the outdoor space visible here is the private front courtyard, which creates an atrium. Past the courtyard is the home office. The house opens on three sides to the courtyard, which offers a delightful outdoor spot for coffee in the morning.
Large, flat, hard surfaces can amplify sound, so adding texture will help reduce this effect. Lining one of your walls with wood, as seen here, not only creates an interesting feature, it does the sound-dampening job. It’s as simple as using flooring material on the walls instead. For a more traditional look, painted wood paneling works equally well. Often, walls aren’t completely flat, so you’ll first need to add wood battens to the surface onto which you’ll attach your paneling. A good flooring contractor or woodworker can do this, or if you’re pretty confident at DIY, you could tackle it yourself.
If you can’t bring yourself to divide the space with something permanent, a nice alternative is to introduce a screen as a buffer between zones. It won’t be as effective as a solid structure, but it will help diffuse the noise slightly. The louvered screen seen here allows a glimpse of the living space beyond.
Add a storage wall. The wood-paneled wall in the middle of this large room works beautifully to separate the kitchen from the living area. This kind of feature can be a free-standing structure or a custom piece of furniture, making it a relatively easy and cost-effective solution to break up the space, since you won’t require any structural elements.
If you can, try to break up your open-plan space to create zones. This will also help contain the noise. Here, the fireplace in a free-standing wall maintains a visual connection with the space beyond while breaking up the room to create a more defined living area. If you want to incorporate a feature like this, bear in mind that you’ll need to position the fireplace so you can create a flue, which will need to go through the ceiling or an external wall.
Another way to deaden sound is to cover hard floors with rugs. Here, the use of a rug in the living space both minimizes noise and helps define the seating area, making the room feel more intimate. When it comes to rugs, the thicker the pile, the better the soundproofing, so a cut-pile rug will tend to work better than a flat-weave design.
Large areas of glass, such as big windows and glass doors, act as bouncing-off points for sound to travel in an open-plan room. Introducing curtains will help deaden the noise. A sheer fabric works especially well, as it won’t totally block the light or views. For maximum muffling, curtains work better than blinds, simply because there’s more fabric involved - that can be pushed back to make the most of the light when needed.
The narrow library shares a double-sided fireplace with the living room. Built-in bookshelves with customizable shelving flank the fireplace, which is faced with manufactured ledge cut stone. Tucked into the space are a classic Eames lounge chair and ottoman. It’s a great spot for curling up with a good book in front of a fire on cool evenings.
Use an island to give purpose to individual spaces. Kitchen islands are probably the most common device for defining zones within an open-plan space, and this is one of the main reasons they are so popular (although many people do not realize that this is why). By clearly signposting where the different zones within an open-plan space are, you get the benefits of the openness and daylight penetration while retaining a comfortable domestic scale. Well-defined zones are not just functional, they also help people feel more comfortable. In a room with a kitchen island, for example, visitors will subliminally be aware that as long as they stay away from the kitchen side of the island, they will not be in the way of the cook.
Aim to “read” spaces more than once. A great way to give the impression of more space is to set things up so that you see — or, in architectural terms, read — the same space more than once from different viewpoints within the house. The aim is not just to set up one layered view, as described earlier, but to set up several layered views that use the same spaces but are seen from different perspectives. This works particularly well in double-height spaces with a landing, where you see a space as you come in, then you see it again from above.
Think about angles of light. As well as using daylight to create focal points, as previously described, another good tip is to think about the angle from which the light is coming and how that light illuminates the different spaces and zones in your views. Daylight from a high angle is generally more intense and will reach farther into an interior than that from a low angle, so use roof lights and position windows and glazed doors as high to the ceiling as you can to maximize the airy feeling. Avoid heavy curtain valances above windows, as these block out useful high-angle light.
People often think they must have either separate rooms or an open plan. The reality is not so black and white, as the relationship between different zones can be manipulated by varying degrees, to emphasize their separation or integration. Changes in floor level, floor finish, ceiling condition, furniture arrangement and many other devices can all contribute to this fine-tuning. In the example seen here, there is a strong sense that you are entering the living space when you come down the steps, despite the area’s being one open-plan space leading to the kitchen.
Great combination of textures and colours xx
Q