One way to make the space feel cozy yet spacious is to use color to help define the separate spaces. It helps make each area feel more like a room, yet seeing into what color defines as another room helps make it feel spacious.

My lower level has an exercise room that's open to a music nook and the staircase. So I selected coordinating colors that I liked and defined the music nook with the beige wall and ceiling and the exercise area with the paladian blue wall and ceiling. I used the architecture and trim color to help define the tray ceiling and the column to help separate the spaces. The art helps tie the color scheme together. This way they relate, coordinate, but each provide their own separate purpose...cozy yet spacious.

My mother's condo had a DR and LR open to each other so we picked a drapery fabric that had blue and orange accents in it against a taupe background. So we painted the whole area the taupe, and the lr wall opposite the dr a terra cotta, and the dr wall opposite the lr a blue. So again, with color the two rooms coordinated but the color scheme helped define each area making the coziness of two rooms with the spaciousness of one large room.

I have my FR and kitchen and breakfast nook all in one open area, but in order to define the spaces separately to make the function clear and to lend more coziness, I again used coordinating fabrics and paint colors to define the separate areas. The FR and breakfast nook are in the beige/gold paint while the kitchen is in the rust. The valances in the kitchen and the breakfast nook contain both colors, but more rust in the FR and more gold in the kitchen. This way the color story gets told in both rooms, but in different proportions to define the spaces. The architecture of the soffit also helps to define the spaces. The arch in the soffit was repeated in the shape of the island and in the flooring which again are more visual cues to define separate cozy spaces while still having that spaciousness of a larger room.