Chronicles of an Architect: The PROS and CONS of an Open Plan Kitchen

An open plan kitchen is defined as a kitchen area that has no barriers such as walls and doors that traditionally separated distinct functional areas, in effect combining the kitchen, living room, and dining room into a single great room.

Even though the concept is not new, most Kenyans consider it a novelty and it is slowly gaining traction as a design idea in many modern homes. A discussion on some of the pros and cons would help in deciding whether this concept works for you or not.

Some of the PROS include:

Explosion of space

By eliminating the barriers like walls that would enclose the space of the kitchen, there is a spillover effect visually. This spillover effect makes the kitchen area look bigger. Moreover, the adjoining dining area and sitting room will also look and feel bigger.

Visual Continuity

Imagine being able to see your guests arriving as you prepare a meal in the kitchen or having the ability to see your child sneak out of the house as you wash the dishes. Wouldn’t that positively affect you? I guess it would.

When you increase your visual range in a space, there is a subconscious feeling of security. One feels like they are able to have surveillance over their immediate surroundings and therefore the ability to feel secure knowing that you could see far without having to move from one room to another.

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Enhanced Interaction

There is an increasing need to perform a lot more tasks simultaneously.  With an open plan kitchen arrangement, one can hold meaningful conversations with occupants in the sitting room or dining area while still performing tasks in the kitchen.

Better still, one can still watch TV while cooking. In addition, there is an increasing demand for recording YouTube video shows for cooking and an open plan kitchen is mostly preferred because of the space flexibility.

Saves on circulation space

The swing of the door and its clearance would normally take up space that is really needed in the kitchen or dining area. By eliminating the door and the walls of the kitchen, we save some space that would end up in the corridor or kitchen. This space that is saved is reallocated to the kitchen and dining areas thus increasing the usable area.

Saves on walling material

If you ever wanted to make some savings in the construction of your project, the elimination of the walls in the kitchen area is one of the ideas you could implement. However, it should be noted that walls can be both structural and partition elements.

It would have to be clear from the design stage, whether the walls being eliminated are structural or mere partition walls so that appropriate measures are taken to avoid structural failure.

Ability to use borrowed light

Even an open plan kitchen should be well ventilated and should have access to a window which will provide natural daylight light. In the unlikely event that the design of your kitchen puts the kitchen quite far from the window that would provide natural daylight, the open plan kitchen would “borrow” light from the sitting room or lounge.

In essence, the natural light that would be meant for the sitting room would have to be shared by the kitchen which is further inward.  The walls in the kitchen area will have to be eliminated for this to work. This happens in long and narrow buildings which do not have the luxury of space.

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