Want to maximize time with family and friends while you’re cooking—all while embracing a modern aesthetic? Open-concept kitchens may be right for you.
An open-concept kitchen is a kitchen with no walls separating it from the rest of the home. By removing these barriers, you can easily interact with family members and guests while you’re making a meal. It can also make serving meals easier, giving you a plethora of options for hosting.
Embracing the Open-Concept Lifestyle
Why do people love open-concept homes? There are a lot of different reasons:
- They allow people and conversation to flow from room to room.
- They make smaller spaces feel bigger.
- They give you the opportunity to make interesting design choices, like adding a kitchen island.
To fully embrace the open-concept lifestyle, you need to think of your home as a cohesive whole. Your kitchen’s design should flow seamlessly into the design of your living room or dining room; after all, they’ll all be one space.
At the same time, you’ll want to use techniques to integrate areas while still maintaining their distinct functions. We’re going to help you embrace the open-concept lifestyle in this guide:
Planning the Perfect Open Layout
Defining Functional Zones
A kitchen typically has five to six functional zones:
- The Preparation Zone, where food prep is completed—think counters or kitchen islands for chopping, mise en place, and more.
- The Cooking Zone, which will contain stoves, ovens, and other cooking appliances
- The Cleaning Zone, which includes the sink, the dishwasher, and areas for drying dishes
- The Storage Zone, which includes spaces for storing perishable and non-perishable foods—think refrigerators, freezers, and pantries
- The Dining and Serving Zone are sometimes two different zones; these are the areas where you serve food, and where people eat. At this point, the zones between the kitchen and dining room or living room become blurred; kitchen islands, chairs, and even small tables can be part of these areas.
Achieving Seamless Flow
The ideal open-concept kitchen allows you to flow through the different functional zones quickly and efficiently—all while conversing with guests. To achieve seamless flow, keep the kitchen triangle in mind; there should be a triangle between your refrigerator (storage zone), stove (cooking zone), and sink (cleaning zone).
Your prep zone should be near your storage zone or cleaning zone to give it proximity to your sink or the food you’re preparing. The prep zone should also be near the cooking zone, which often makes the back half of the kitchen island a good prep zone. Your serving zone should be near your dining or living room.
Think carefully about your kitchen layout and how it will interact with nearby living spaces; carefully considering the layout of rooms and how people will move between them is the key to creating the perfect open-concept floor plan.
Designing an Inviting Open Space
Cohesive Colour and Material Choices
You want your kitchen and living room or dining room to maintain a cohesive appearance. Your kitchen might feature stainless steel appliances, quartz countertops, and white cabinets. While you won’t need your living room to match your kitchen perfectly, you should bring some of those colours and textures into your living and dining space.
You might opt for chairs with white backs to match your cabinets, and marble (depending on the style of your countertop) and stainless steel art pieces to match your appliances and countertops. On the other side, you might add a small herb garden to your kitchen to match the plants in your dining room. By introducing elements of one room into the other, you’ll be able to create a more seamless flow from place to place.
Maximizing Natural Light
One of the biggest benefits of having an open-concept kitchen is that natural light can flow through your kitchen, your living room or family room, and your dining room. Maximize natural light by incorporating large windows throughout these rooms; you’ll be able to enjoy the sun at all hours of the day and minimize the amount of energy you have to spend on lighting.
Proper Ventilation Strategies
A new open concept space will affect the way food odors, steam, smoke, etc… while preparing meals will carry through your new space. A range hood (properly vented to the exterior of your home) is especially important to stop unwanted odors from wafting over to your dining table.
Extending Your Kitchen’s Reach
Kitchen islands are the royalty of any open-concept kitchen; they give you a ton of counter space, and they can double as areas to prepare food—and as dining areas and serving areas. With a kitchen island, you have more room to do all the things you need to in your kitchen; more often than not, they’re placed between your kitchen and the other rooms in your open-concept home.
You can also opt to add open shelving to increase the amount of room in your kitchen, all while adding visual appeal by incorporating decor that’s aesthetically entwined with the decor in the rest of your home.
Integrating Living Areas
We’ve talked about how to integrate living areas aesthetically, but it’s worth taking a moment to talk about how they can be integrated functionally. The backside of a kitchen island can be used as a dining area; stools are a great addition to open-concept kitchens. Televisions can face the kitchen, giving the cook something to watch while they prepare food; so can other living room features.
Windows should provide light to the kitchen and the living area; speakers should be set up so that everyone can enjoy music. The basic principle here is simple: Keep all of the rooms in mind when setting up decor, electronics, and other features.
Indoor-Outdoor Transitions
Indoor-outdoor transitions can play an important role in designing your open-concept kitchen. Generally, you’ll want the transition to occur in a room that isn’t the kitchen, so the flow of guests doesn’t interrupt your cooking. There can, however, be exceptions to this, and many homeowners are creating outdoor kitchens with access points to their indoor kitchens.
Integrating greenery in the transition points between the outdoors and your home can really reinforce the open concept of your home, making guests feel like they’re moving seamlessly from the outdoor world to your home.
Bringing Your Open Concept Vision to Life
The team at All Canadian Renovations is here to bring your open-concept living dreams to life. We’ll help you turn your closed-off kitchen into an open one. No matter what your kitchen ideas are, our team is here for you every step of the way, from design to changing plumbing fixtures, electrical, walls, and more.
Get in touch with us today!