Advice needed: open plan sitting rooms?

Hi all,

Our current layout is a hallway with stairs through the front door, to the immediate right is a door into a long narrow sitting room, 9'3" x 15'.

We are thinking of changing layout to a more open plan one where we would have a small lobby at the front door with access to stairs and door through to a new larger sitting room 12' x 15', which incorporates the old sitting room and hallway.

The open plan layout allows for a more practical size sitting room but it becomes a walk through into the back kitchen/diner. This layout is popular in other countries but I haven't seen it much here in Ireland.

Any opinions would be appreciated?

It's fine if you never have extra people staying over and sleeping on the couch. I came across this years ago, but the stairs led up from the sitting room, and it was impossible to heat as all the heat went up the stairs, but it doesn't sound like you will have this problem.

Its a good idea to keep a small lobby as doing away with the hall completely IMHO is not a good idea. Too many draughts etc. Make sure that the wall you are thinking of doing away with is not a load bearing one.

Not too sure about the idea of eliminating the route through to the kitchen though.

I'd say it'll work but one minor problem to watch out for is if the sitting room is cluttered with furniture etc it might not make a good walkthrough to the kitchen - it wouldn't feel right to have to navigate furniture to get to the kitchen I think.

We moved our kitchen wall out into the hall similar to your plan and its a much better use of space than just wasted hall space.

We have a similiar(ish) layout and its quite common here. Our Kitchen/Lobby/Living room are all open plan with stairs leading from the lobby to cellar rooms and upstairs bedrooms.

Things to bare in mind:
* Do you have another eating area other than your kitchen? (ie a Dining room) - does this mean you have to walk through the sitting room to bring food to this room?
* Smells from kitchen will carry into sitting room and further up the house so you need to invest in an excellent fan for the cooker and perhaps make sure you have good window positions to allow for circulation air.
* Noise, If the TV is on in the sitting it can be very distracting if you are on the phone in the kitchen etc.
* No doors, while obvious it does mean that you cant close the door on anyone/thing. Someone here mentioned guests on the couch, for us it was inconvenient that we couldnt leave the cat in the kitchen/livingroom area at night she just wanders up to the bedrooms.

That said we love the layout and its v stylish but it did take getting used to.

Thanks for the replies.

There will be a wall dividing the sitting room from the kitchen/diner. We will just have to walk through the siting room to get to the door to kitchen/diner.

I like the idea of the openplan but it is more hassle/expense to take down walls, re-plaster etc.

I suppose the question then comes to: Is 9'3" x 15' too narrow for a sitting room?

I'd say plan out the furniture you want to put in there and see what space will be left around it - what are the dimensions of a standard sofa etc, if someones sitting on it watching tv it'd be a pain to have people walking in front of it alll the time to get to kitchen/hall etc.

terrysgirl33 said:

It's fine if you never have extra people staying over and sleeping on the couch. I came across this years ago, but the stairs led up from the sitting room, and it was impossible to heat as all the heat went up the stairs, but it doesn't sound like you will have this problem.

Click to expand...

Even so will any existing heating system/radiators be capable of adequately heating the newly enlarged space or will this need changes too?