Open Plan Kitchens: Design Ideas and Is One Right for Your Home?
Open plan living has shaped British home design for the better part of two decades, and it is not hard to see why. Knock through the right walls, and you can transform a dark, divided Victorian terrace into something light and genuinely sociable. Do it without proper planning, though, and you end up with a space that feels chaotic, smells of last night's dinner and costs a fortune to heat.
This guide is not a one-sided pitch for open plan. It is a practical, design-led look at what really works, what the challenges are, and how to get the layout right, whether you are planning a full rear extension or simply knocking through to the dining room. If you are in Sussex or Surrey and weighing up your options, the projects and principles below are drawn from the kind of kitchens we design every day at The Kitchen Store.
What Counts as an Open Plan Kitchen (and What Is a Broken Plan)?
The term open plan covers any kitchen that shares its footprint with another living area, most commonly a dining room, a sitting area or both. There are no dividing walls, and sightlines run freely from one end of the space to the other. In a typical terraced house, this is achieved by removing the wall between the back reception room and the kitchen, often combined with a rear extension to add depth.
A kitchen diner is the most common version: a combined cooking and eating space, usually running along the back of the house, that opens onto the garden.
Broken plan is a more recent evolution. Rather than one completely open floor, the broken plan uses low walls, half-height cabinetry, changes in floor level or structural posts to create visual separation without fully closing off rooms. The effect is a sense of defined zones that still feel connected. It has grown popular precisely because it keeps the light and sociability of an open plan while solving some of the practical problems, which we will come to below.
The Pros and Cons of Open Plan Living
It is worth being straight about this, because too much kitchen content glosses over the compromises.
The genuine benefits
Light. Removing internal walls, especially in a north-facing terrace, can be transformative. South-facing glazing at the rear floods the whole ground floor rather than a single room.
Sociability. Cooking while still part of the conversation is the single thing clients mention most often when they describe what they want from a new kitchen.
Space. A combined kitchen, dining and living area almost always feels more generous than three small rooms, even if the total square footage is identical.
Property value. In the Sussex and Surrey market, a well-designed open-plan rear has become a near-universal expectation among buyers in the family home segment.
The practical challenges
Cooking smells. Without walls to contain them, smells travel freely. Good extraction is not optional in an open plan kitchen; it is the single most important appliance decision you will make.
Noise. Hard surfaces and open volumes amplify sound. Family kitchens can become very loud, very quickly.
Heating. Large open spaces with high ceilings and glazed rear extensions are harder and more expensive to heat than smaller rooms. Underfloor heating is almost always the right answer.
Tidiness. When the kitchen is visible from the sofa, there is nowhere to hide the washing up. Good storage and a considered layout matter more in an open plan than in any other kitchen type.
Designing a Successful Open Plan Kitchen
The difference between an open plan kitchen that works and one that frustrates comes down to a handful of decisions made at the design stage. Getting these right is where a specialist designer earns their fee.
Zoning
Even without walls, a well-designed open plan space has clear zones: cooking, eating, living and, increasingly, a homework or working from home corner. The kitchen zone anchors one end of the space, usually against the external wall where services already run. The dining zone sits in the middle, and the living area takes the light end nearest the garden.
Floor materials are one of the most effective zoning tools available. Running porcelain tiles through the kitchen and dining zone and switching to engineered oak or carpet in the sitting area is a simple, cost-effective way to define each area without a single wall.
The island as a room divider
A kitchen island does more work than it gets credit for. In an open plan layout, it functions as a room divider, a social anchor, a breakfast bar, additional storage and a prep surface all at once. The key is scale: an island that is too small becomes a visual island rather than a functional one. If you are considering one, our guide to kitchen island design covers dimensions, seating and workflow in more detail.
Lighting layers
Open plan kitchens demand more thought about lighting than any other room type. You are designing for three or four different activities at once, each with different requirements. Task lighting at the worktops, ambient lighting across the dining area and a statement pendant or two above the island or dining table are the minimum. Low-voltage LED downlights on separate circuits give you the flexibility to shift the mood from functional to relaxed without a major change to the room. Our dedicated post on kitchen lighting design goes into the specifics.
Extraction
This cannot be overstated. A recirculating extractor that was fine in an enclosed kitchen will not cope in a large open-plan space. You need a ducted extraction vented directly to the outside, with a motor rated to handle the cubic volume of your room. Island hobs require either a ceiling-mounted hood or a downdraft extractor built into the worktop. Neither is cheap, but both are a much better investment than repainting and deodorising soft furnishings every two years.
Open Plan Ideas by Home Type
Victorian and Edwardian terraces
A common brief in Brighton, Hove and Horsham. The rear reception room wall comes down, sometimes the kitchen is relocated entirely to the back of the house, and a rear or side return extension adds the depth needed for a proper island and dining table. Period details like exposed brick, steel beams left visible, or original floorboards carried through from the hallway all work well.
The side return extension
A side return is the narrow strip of ground running alongside a Victorian terrace between the original back wall and the boundary fence. Glazing over it and incorporating it into the ground floor adds between two and four metres of width to the back of the house, which is usually the difference between a kitchen diner that feels cramped and one that genuinely functions. We cover the design implications in detail in our guide to side return kitchen extensions.
New builds and contemporary homes
New builds often come with open-plan ground floors already, but the quality of the kitchen specification rarely matches the ambition of the layout. Replacing a developer kitchen with a properly designed fitted kitchen, with full-height cabinetry, integrated appliances and a considered island, makes a significant difference to how the space reads and functions. Contemporary homes in Surrey's commuter belt, with their taller ceilings and larger rear glazing, particularly benefit from an island-led layout with column fridge-freezer units on either side of a larder run.
Storage and Keeping an Open Plan Kitchen Calm
The kitchen is visible at all times in an open plan layout, so the standard of storage needs to be higher than in a traditional enclosed kitchen. Clutter on the worktop reads across the full length of the room.
Full-height cabinetry with handleless doors and internal organisation systems keeps appliances hidden when not in use. Deep pan drawers rather than base unit shelves make everyday items genuinely accessible without needing to crouch and rummage. And a larder unit or a bank of tall storage near the transition between the kitchen and dining zone acts as both a storage solution and a subtle visual break between the two areas.
Open shelving can be used selectively in an open-plan kitchen, but it requires discipline. A single run of shelves above a worktop, styled with a small number of objects, works well. Shelves that become catch-alls for random items undermine the look of the whole space. Our post on open shelving in kitchens has practical advice on what to display and what to hide.
For freestanding pieces, a dresser or a sideboard in the dining zone can carry the visual weight of the room and provide useful additional storage for table linen, candles and the things that tend to accumulate near a dining table. See our ideas on freestanding kitchen storage for more.
Is an Open Plan Kitchen Right for You?
An open plan is not a universal answer. Here is a practical framework by household type.
Families with young children
Open plan works extremely well for families who want to keep an eye on small children while cooking. The challenge is noise. If your household is loud by nature, think seriously about a broken plan, with a half-wall or low cabinetry run giving a visual break that also dampens some of the sound travel.
Those who love to entertain
This is where the open plan is at its absolute best. A kitchen that flows into a dining area and a sitting room makes entertaining feel effortless. An island with seating at one end becomes the social centre of the house.
People who work from home
An open plan can be distracting. If you spend significant time working at home, a broken plan layout that lets you close off the cooking area or create a quieter work zone is worth considering seriously.
Couples or single-person households
An open plan can feel generous and modern, or it can feel like a lot of space to fill. Think about how you actually use the ground floor before committing to a layout that requires a certain critical mass of activity to feel right.
Featured snippet: Is an open-plan kitchen a good idea?
An open plan kitchen is a good idea for households that value light, sociability and a connected family space. It works best when extraction, zoning and storage are properly designed from the start. For households that want more separation between cooking and living, a broken plan layout offers the best of both approaches.
Talk to a Designer Before You Commit to a Layout
Open plan done well is one of the most transformative changes you can make to a home. Done badly, it creates a space that is noisy, draughty and impossible to keep tidy. The difference almost always comes down to decisions made at the design stage, before a single wall comes down.
At The Kitchen Store, we design fitted kitchens across Sussex and Surrey from our showrooms in Brighton and Hove, Horsham and Guildford. If you are planning a rear extension, a knock-through or a full replacement kitchen and want a design consultation with a team that has delivered hundreds of open plan projects in the region, get in touch and let us talk through what is possible.
