Tips
You’ll often see open-plan spaces where the kitchen has no style relationship to the architecture of the house or the adjoining living area, interior designer Danielle Trippett says. Solution: Make your kitchen a considered part of the architecture of your home and the style of the living area right from the planning stage, Trippett suggests. When choosing elements for your kitchen — such as colors, cabinet styles and countertop and backsplash materials — ask yourself if they suit the design era of your home and the decor in the adjoining spaces. Repeating the same colors and finishes in your kitchen and living spaces can help create a sense of cohesion between the two areas.
Often when people downsize and move to open-plan living, they take their old furniture and decorating ideas with them. Many people don’t take into account the fact that open-plan layouts are quite different from closed-off rooms and that the space may be smaller than what they’re used to, says interior designer Agnes Sweijer, director of Sweijer Design. People often use the same color schemes they had in the kitchen, living and dining areas in their old home, despite the fact that these areas are now part of one continuous space rather than separate rooms. As a result, the new space can feel cluttered and uncomfortable and the decor can clash. Solution: Rather than trying to re-create the look of your previous home in your new open-plan one, look at the new area with fresh eyes. Start by applying a neutral color to the walls in the living, kitchen and dining areas, which will give you a solid base and create a sense of flow among the zones. Then add in one or two supplementary colors, which you can use in different strengths and shades for the finishes and furniture in the three areas.
Lighting plays a hugely important part in setting the mood in a room, yet it’s often not considered early enough in the design process, Ristevski says. As a result, it’s often not located where it will actually be used. This makes it difficult to create ambiance within the individual parts of an open-plan space. It’s harder still to create atmosphere when lights aren’t on dimmers or can’t be turned on and off individually. Solution: Plan lighting and electrical elements at the start of the design project, Ristevski recommends. Think carefully about furniture placement and make sure lighting is positioned where it needs to be. For example, if the sofa is in the middle of the room, an electrical outlet may need to be installed in the floor. Remember, there are fewer walls in an open-plan kitchen, living and dining space than in individual, closed-off rooms, so you need to be far more deliberate in your planning for elements such as electricity, lighting and television connections.
Furniture that’s too big for an open-plan space can inhibit the sense of flow and make the area difficult to walk through. Ideally, thoroughfares should be around 35 to 40 inches wide, Trippett says. Solution: Before you purchase furniture, see how it will look on a floor plan and make sure it gives you enough space to move around, Trippett says. If the open-plan room is small and you can’t find furniture to fit, consider having pieces custom-made by a designer to suit the dimensions of the space. Also, seek out furniture that does double duty; a large, round ottoman, for example, can be used as a coffee table and provide storage, freeing up precious space.
Mismatched furniture and decor items can easily overcomplicate an open-plan space and make it look busy. The different elements in an open-plan space need to “speak” to one another as though they’re from the same family, without being too matchy-matchy or feeling forced, interior designer Kirsty Ristevski says. Solution: Choose a style you love and that will work throughout your open-plan space, Ristevski says. Select furniture and accessories that vary in color and material yet still speak to one another visually (such as different shades of the same color). Tip: Open-plan rooms tend to be noisier than closed-off rooms. You can help reduce noise levels by adding in softening elements such as curtains, rugs and throws.
If you walk into a room and nothing — or everything — catches your eye, then it has no focal point. This much-used designer’s term simply means a primary place for the eye to rest before taking in the whole space. A room without one lacks life, balance and harmony. What to do: A focal point could be an architectural feature, a view, a piece of art, a fireplace (as in this space by 50 Degrees North) a statement furniture piece, a mirror, a textural surface or a stunning rug. It’s easier to start with a focus and plan the rest of the room’s decor around it. If you prefer to work with what you already have, decide what the focal feature will be and then arrange existing furniture to direct attention toward it.
Pick a Flow-Through Paint One simple way to create a cohesive feel is to use a consistent paint color on the walls of connecting spaces. “Particularly in homes that have more of an open floor plan, it’s best to choose one color that is going to serve as your main color or your neutral,” says Kelly Porter, an interior designer based in Washington, D.C. “That doesn’t mean it has to be beige or white or gray. But the foyer, the hallways and that main connector room should all be the same color because you want to have that dominant color in your space.”
Rooms out of the sightline of other rooms are good places for going wild. Master bedrooms, powder rooms, kids rooms and any other room encapsulated by four walls are great places to indulge, says Carl Mattison, an Atlanta-based designer. “If you turn the corner and go into a little powder bathroom, which you don’t go in all the time, who cares? Paint it black!” It works, Mattison says, “because it’s its own little box.”
6. Tie Rooms Together With Accents Accent colors can change from room to room, but continuing one consistent color throughout the home can help create a sense of continuity. “Let’s say you have green and blue in your living room,” Porter says. “Perhaps for the dining room, you use one of those two colors, maybe just the blue. Or you could do blue and yellow. So the blue is what will tie those rooms together.”
4. Work in Some Wood We can’t talk about texture without talking about wood, one of the top materials for bringing a sense of warmth to a living room. There are so many ways to add wood, any of which will make a space feel a bit more inviting. Consider wall paneling, side tables, movable stools, picture frames, sofa legs and carved pieces of art as just a few of the many options.
Pay Attention to Sightlines San Francisco interior designer and color expert Jennifer Ott frequently works with clients who want more variety in their wall colors. When that is the case, she suggests considering sightlines. When you’re standing in the living room, what other rooms will you see? If you have a view into the kitchen, the dining room and the foyer, then the colors for those spaces need to work well together. “It can start to look really wacky if you have a different color scheme in each room,” Ott says
Has decor ennui crept in? You could just be tired of the same old, same old. We all have favorite styles, but it’s easy to get stuck in a groove. What to do: Shake things up. Reignite your passion and inject new energy and interest into your home by mixing up what you already have or adding some inexpensive new accessories. Change bedding and pillows and move houseplants, chairs, lamps and rugs around. Reposition furniture for a fresh perspective — it’s cheap as well as fun. This bedroom shows how a few well-chosen accessories can make for a pretty and inviting space.
Pillows heaped high on sofas, chairs and beds don’t always add much to a room. If you can’t sit on a sofa or lie on a bed without putting pillows on the floor, they lose their purpose. As in this living room by The New Design Project, try to restrict pillows to two at each end of a sofa, one (or none) on an armchair and three on a bed.
10. Consider Conversational Distances No matter how big your living room, there’s a limit to how large a seating group can be and still make sense for intimate conversation and cozy gatherings. A good distance between seats to facilitate conversation is about 8 feet, meaning if you have several sofas or a sofa and side chairs, the seating area should have a diameter of 8 feet, or 4 feet out from the center. A huge, 12-seat sectional sofa may look great and be perfect for a party, but if you’re looking to create a cozy living room, it’s usually best to use fewer, smaller seating pieces and push them a little closer together.
3. Play With Texture Texture is easy to overlook when decorating a living room, especially since we don’t see it so much as touch it. But it’s important for making a living room feel cozy, and that goes for plush textures that appeal to the touch and harder textures that add contrast. Include leather, cotton, wool, metal, stone, glass, plant life and as many other textures as you can.
2. Contrast Your Neutrals Beyond including some white and some black, decorating a living room with a variety of contrasting neutrals goes a long way toward making it feel rich and welcoming. In this example, the white walls, caramel leather, brass hardware, gray sofa and blue-gray cabinets all contrast with one another, which highlights their different finishes and undertones. This makes the palette feel rich even before other key elements, such as color, pattern and texture, are added.
1. Mix Light and Dark When a living room is all white and bright, it can feel too “clean” and unapproachable. When it’s all dark, it can feel like a cave. But mixing dark and light colors creates a dynamic look that has depth and balance. The design of any space benefits from the inclusion of at least a little white and a little black.
For a Well-Designed Look, Hire an Expert Designers have studied color and can offer invaluable guidance when you’re decorating or remodeling. You can hire one to take your project from start to finish, or simply as a consultant to troubleshoot a specific area like tweaking your home’s palette so that the colors flow well throughout your home. Porter, who does a lot of color consultations, says her clients tend to know what color they want to use but need validation that the shade they are considering will produce the desired effect. She did a long-distance consultation with a client who passionately loves orange. “The colors she was telling me about were very bright and childlike,” Porter says. The designer suggested a more adult rusty orange instead. “She tried it and loved it,” Porter says.
8. Consider Using Color-Planning Tools Those who love delving deeper into design principles may want to read up a bit on color theory — or at least ask your interior designer about it. “One of the main things I explain to my client is the color wheel,” Wardlaw says. “To keep that cohesive feel throughout your home, one of the main things you can do is consult that.” A basic rule of thumb is that using analogous (or adjacent) colors on the wheel will create less contrast and a more calm feel, while choosing complementary colors (across from one another on the wheel) will create greater contrast and a higher-energy room. Understanding the relationships between colors will help you see why certain combinations have certain effects on you.
7. Use the 60-30-10 Formula Another way to create a cohesive flow from room to room is to think of the palette for your home as a math problem. “Use a base color that you really like as 60% to 70% of what you’re going to paint for your interior,” Wardlaw says. “Your next color needs to be 25% to 30%. Then you can do your accents of 5% to 10%.” In this photo, which shows one of Wardlaw’s designs, gray is the 60% color, blue the 25%, orange about 10% and brown maybe another 5%. “I really try to make people only go with about three colors, four at the max — at least on the interior,” Wardlaw says. “Otherwise it just feels chaotic.” To pull the colors throughout the home, you might use a variation on the scheme in an adjacent dining room. The walls might be painted blue, and perhaps gray could be used as an accent, with a few small orange accessories providing the 10 percent dose of color. “As long as you keep it cohesive throughout your entire home, it’s going to make more sense,” Wardlaw says.
Common mistakes in an open plan space: No Zoning To be functional and visually appealing, an open-plan space needs to be zoned into separate spaces — for example, cooking, dining and relaxing areas. These zones essentially act as individual “rooms” within an open-plan space. At the same time, you want to have a sense of visual continuity among the zones, interior designer Kat Siketa of keta Interiors says. Often, she says, homeowners forget to include those essential anchor points that ground the individual areas within an open-plan space. As a result, an open-plan space can end up feeling like a giant hall. Solution: A simple way to define the individual areas is to move the sofa across the room to split it in half, Siketa says. Adding a rug under the sofa and a floor lamp or table tamps beside the sofa will give more definition to the living zone. Then, if you can, create a sense of continuity among the kitchen, living and dining spaces by using the same flooring throughout. Tip: Add interest to your open-plan scheme by incorporating vertical layers. The best way to do this is to create different layers of height using floor lamps, pendant lights and potted plants.
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