Open-plan living is the dominant aspiration in home design — but it's harder to plan than it looks. When the kitchen, dining area, and lounge share one space, the layout decisions compound: where each zone sits relative to the others affects light, noise, circulation, and how the room feels to live in every day.
Here's how to approach planning an open-plan space, and how to use Free Room Planner to evaluate your layout before committing.
Start with the fixed constraints
Before anything else, note the fixed elements that will constrain your layout:
- Door and window positions — windows bring light, doors dictate traffic flow
- The kitchen's services: gas supply, soil pipe (for sink), boiler position
- The position of the structural wall you may have removed (or plan to remove)
- Any RSJ (steel beam) position if you've knocked two rooms into one
Plot all of these in Free Room Planner first. They're the anchors around which your layout must work.
Define your zones before placing furniture
Think of the open-plan room as three separate rooms that happen to share one space. Each zone needs enough floor area to function independently:
- Kitchen zone: units, appliances, and a work corridor (minimum 1 metre wide)
- Dining zone: table plus 90 cm clearance on all sides for chair pulling
- Living zone: sofa group with enough separation from the dining table to feel distinct
In Free Room Planner, use labels to mark out the approximate zone boundaries before placing any furniture. This prevents the common mistake of placing the sofa before realising there's not enough room for the dining table.
Traffic flow is everything
In an open-plan room, people move through the space constantly. The kitchen is accessed during cooking, the dining table during meals, the lounge during downtime — and there are often multiple people moving simultaneously.
Plan a clear route from the main door through to each zone. The kitchen should be accessible without walking through the sofa grouping. The dining table should be easily reached from both the kitchen and the lounge.
In Free Room Planner, trace the likely walking routes between your furniture items. If any path is less than 90 cm wide, it'll feel cramped in use.
Where to position the dining table
The dining table should sit between the kitchen and the lounge — close enough to the kitchen for easy serving, separate enough from the sofa group to feel like a distinct zone. Avoid placing the dining table under a ceiling beam or directly next to the kitchen units with no breathing room.
Furniture scale matters more in open-plan rooms
In a dedicated room, furniture can feel intimate. In an open-plan room, undersized furniture looks lost. Draw your furniture items to their actual dimensions in Free Room Planner and compare them against the room scale. A sofa that's fine in a 4×3.5m lounge may look like a loveseat in a 7×4.5m open-plan space.
Using a kitchen island to define the boundary
A kitchen island is often used as the boundary between the kitchen zone and the rest of the open-plan room. It works well when the island faces the dining and living area — allowing the cook to face the room rather than a wall. Plan it in Free Room Planner and check the clearances on all sides.