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Adding walls to an open concept plan

last year

We are moving into a house that was opened up.. the foyer, LR and DR are one open space and we tend to like cozier spaces that give you privacy. (Learned this can be important during the lockdown!) I think creating a foyer would be nice and also considering putting a wall between the LR and DR. Thoughts?

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Comments (8)

PRO
Patricia Colwell Consulting
last year
You need to post the floor plan showing all measurements for sure and also the plan needs to be able to be enlarged . My advice usually is to live in a house for at least 3-6 months before changing anything major. As for your plans mayny things are affected when adding ot taking away walls like the HVAC for instance .
PRO
User
last year
I wouldn't completely close it off but would consider a cased opening between the living and dining room:
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Thanks for the feedback everyone! A little more information, we live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the local building department allows us to only have an engineers stamp, it isn't required to have an architect. Additionally, our builder (while not an architect) has a lot of experience drawing up plans, and if we could find a floor plan that only needed some modification then he could draw up the plans. Maybe we will end up going to an architect after all, however at the moment I'm just trying to collect some floor plan options to see if we can avoid it. Ideally, we are looking for a single story home that has a large great room, windows in the kitchen, 3-4 bedrooms and about 3000 square feet. We don't need a seperate dining room, or formal living room, though if a plan has a dining room we will turn it into an office, or some sort of other "flex" space. Thanks!!
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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.
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"oak trim clashes with everything". why is painting it now not an option?? it's the one thing in that room that doesn't go w/anything. painting all that baseboard white, as well as the trim, will look so much better. The staircase could also look 10X better with either a new stain, or paint it black. at the very least, do the risers in black or white. Using your rug as a jump-off point, here are some other decor elements. you could use your camel leather sofa, ottoman, and just add some other black/white elements. Gravity is a purple gray. you need to find more of a neutral gray shade that works w/the flooring. (but you'll still need to paint out that trim! ) . Crushed ice is a nice gray, but very light. I love these color combos in your room. they would look great w/your wood ceiling and white trim if you feel you have to have orange trim work and baseboards, try a warmer gray in this color family. bring in some other warmer shades, as long as they work w/the gray floor. also, if you want to keep all the wood along the stairs, it might be worth stripping off the clear coat finish. over time, the clear coat yellows, giving you the orange tint. if you took it back to raw wood and finished it in the same tone of your ceiling, it might look a bit better. but I'd still do the baseboards in white. Here they are against a polished concrete. so much better looking. notice the oak in more of a natural finish. your could look like this.
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Comments (11)
I am so sorry for you and your family experiencing such a traumatic event. I see in your Ideabooks, exterior elevations that seem to lean to a two story farmhouse kind of style. Of course, you need a licensed architect to bring your new hopes to fruition. However, you can do some good homework first. Start a collection of pictures from Houzz, magazines, home tours and get a large 3-ring binder and save as many hard copy pictures as you can to help “communicate” these looks to an architect. This is very helpful. Your architect will need a survey of your property and a trip to your site to help determine “siting” and then h/she can begin designing rooms and overall layouts for your new home. There are a thousands of decisions you will be making over the span of many months so having as much definition as possible will help ease that crunch. Start also interviewing architects and vetting their references. You want some competent but also someone compatible with your personalities. You will be spending a lot of time with him/her so make sure it feels right. I have developed a document I call “New Homebuilders Checklist” that I would be happy to share with you. It will give you a kind of roadmap of how many items are coming toward you. Just email me at manganflo@gmail.com and I will send it to you. Hope it can help.
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felizlady
last year
Your floorplan is pretty small, doesn’t enlarge well and lacks measurements. If you are a neat cook, having a door or wall between the dining room and kitchen is not necessary. A cased opening between the living room and dining room (instead of what seems to be a single post?) makes a dining room a bit more formal. Are the other dining room walls all glass? If the kitchen island has bar seating extending into the dining area, the effect is much more casual. Do you have a place to put a buffet/storage piece in the dining room? A nicely decorated dining table looks welcoming if seen from the living room.
kandrewspa
last year
I think judiciously placed cased openings as shown above can be more attractive than wide open spaces. I don't see a good way to create a foyer, but you could definitely have a cased opening between the LR and DR. I think all open is more consistent with a modern style. Did the previous owners favor a different decorating style than you have?
Karen W
Original Author
last year
thanks all! These are the only drawings I have at the moment, but drew in some possible partial walls and penciled in the dimensions. I could imagine pocket doors between LR and DR. I like modern and transitional, but just find this space too open for my taste. thanks!
Kendrah
last year
I am a huge fan of closed rooms. None of this open concept business for me. We purchased last year an apartment with an open concept kitchen, living, and dining room and before moving in enclosed the kitchen and made two entrances with pocket doors. Love it.

When I read your original post, I immediately thought walls with pocket doors. However, after seeing your picture, I might rethink my love of separate spaces. Your view through those windows is rather spectacular. This space seems to call for openness - a statement I rarely say. So two questions:

1. Privacy: Is your house large enough for you and others to find private space when you need and want it for the activities and times of day you wish to have alone time?

2. Visual separation: Would it suffice to create a sense to two separate areas within the space to add more of a cozy, two room feel? There are tons of ways to do this but will that be enough or are you really after total sounds privacy and total visual privacy?
Karen W
Original Author
last year
The views are amazing, but they are visible from all the windows so we wouldn't lose the view from any room if we did divide it somewhat. The question you ask is key... when it is just the 2 of us we can probably get away from each other, but the house is meant to be a place to have guests and grown kids and some day grandchildren. Then the noise might become an issue. Fortunately the kitchen isn't open and so there is some privacy there for the cook and/ or a place to have a snack and a private conversation even if others are in the house. I also think someway to create a foyer or sense of a foyer would be great. I kind of hate walking in the front door and seeing the entire house.
Shasta
last year
Your could use mid-century modern as a model. They do such a great job of providing separation without totally enclosing spaces.

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