Open kitchen or closed kitchen?

In our first apartment, we had a closed kitchen and a more conservative room layout overall.

In our current version, we have an open kitchen with a tiled transition to the living room and dining room. It was fine until the family grew and the requirements changed. We really miss our enclosed kitchen, so the house will have an enclosed kitchen again.

Sure, an open kitchen looks more stylish and can be modern/"in theme," but for us it already has one downside in every way. Now that we have a baby, the kitchen can only be used when the kids are awake. Even cleaning the dishwasher wakes the baby, and I can't even think about having coffee in the morning before work. It doesn't matter to us whether it's me or my wife in the kitchen, we want to have peace and quiet.

Choose the kitchen and home option that suits your routine and don't think about what others think about it or what they would do differently.

Never closed again...

Smells: no problem, powerful fan with exhaust ventilation, plus 2 large windows....

Neatness: for my wife/us, putting away dishes is a given, in a closed kitchen it also bothers me when I see used dishes lying around everywhere.

Been living this way for 1 year now, nothing bothers us.... Seeing only the benefits to us.

We've lived in the house for six months now, and we have an open kitchen there, just like in our apartment. I love it.

My baby girl is only 15 months old, she's learning to walk, and I love that I can watch her in the living room. I like it when I bake something in the evening and I can listen to TV and talk to my husband. Everything happens together, we like that.

But in the end, as some others have said, it's just a matter of taste.

I like to "immerse myself" with the people I care about, transitioning seamlessly from cooking, consuming, entertaining, music, looking, and space (volume). I don't understand this closed-kitchen lifestyle. I happily accept the flaws – for example, the fact that it doesn't look consistently tidy. Basic order is established in no time – even without a dishwasher.

Yes. I've had four properties for my own use in the last 15 years. One closed kitchen, then only an open kitchen. I would do it all over again. An open kitchen is sociable, it's cozy, it's easy to live together.

I don't see any real disadvantages – some say you can look at dirty pots, etc. or that there will be smells. The first is probably a matter of how you handle the kitchen after cooking, the second is a matter of planning and technique.

Our kitchen life consists of 3 closed kitchens in apartments, and 2 open kitchens in homes. For us, the advantages of an open kitchen outweigh the disadvantages, never closed again.

3x closed kitchen. 1x open kitchen. Never again closed kitchen. 

The open-plan kitchen came into our home with a terrace in 2001, and we loved it. We've taken openness to the extreme in our current home and... we love it. Of course, it's always a matter of inclination as well as a matter of approach.

If avoiding disadvantages is especially important to you when making decisions, you will also be guided by this: Smells, unkempt script, noise, people looking over your shoulder....

If benefits are more important to you, you will judge qualities differently. You might think about the feeling of having the kitchen as part of the center of your life together.

By the way, you can also plan for more than one kitchen – depending on how you conceptualize your home.

If 80% here advise an open kitchen, but you're in the 20%, does it benefit you? So to each his own.

Bought a house in the summer with a terrace and a separate kitchen (accessed from the hallway). Today we opened a wall in the living/dining room (1.15m wide). I don't think we will regret it. The kitchen is still clearly divided, but still "sociable" and with little spacing. Then we have a total of just under 40 square feet of living/dining/kitchen space. An added benefit: the kitchen faces north and is not particularly lit. We anticipate that the lighting situation will be much nicer/more friendly.

You can also use the loose room dividers and have a more "formal and enclosed" area.

I'm very happy to be able to work in the kitchen the way I like without disturbing others. And I'm glad I can enjoy the food afterwards without looking at the mess (which unfortunately happens :oops:) in the kitchen.

I hate open kitchens. I mean, really. I want to be able to work in the kitchen, but I don't want to look at bowls of fruit, kettles, toasters, etc. from the couch. The tendency to make all these things invisible for a heck of a lot of money, until the kitchen matches the beige-gray-black lacquered sofa-lounge combo with the TV, I'm dying of boredom.

We have a 22-square-foot kitchen and an extra room next to it as a living room. So you don't have to wipe kitchen fumes off the piano. Plus, the dog bowl is far enough away and doesn't necessarily fit into the design concept.

Definitely an enclosed kitchen.

We've lived with open kitchens ourselves for 10 years, and we have one every vacation, and I just find it annoying.

I don't even mind the supposed mess or smells. But it really annoys me when I'm sitting cozily in the living room with a cup of coffee and a book or a movie, and just then my husband or teenagers get hungry and turn on the stove, the noise of grunting and banging plates included, the open kitchen honestly annoys me depending on the mood of the day – closed kitchen, closed door and everyone is quiet.

Oddly enough, in our circle of friends/family all also cured of open kitchens, only one family consciously decided to do an open kitchen again in the new house.

Everyone chooses what works for them, you have to be happy with it yourself, regardless of what others say.

In my last two apartments and my parents' last two houses, I was terribly annoyed by the open kitchen. The worst was the layout of the penultimate apartment, where the open kitchen started right behind the short hallway, so you were always looking at the kitchen first. At the time, our first child was also still an infant, and the whole place was littered with baby junk. You could always hear the dishwasher or refrigerator running. The dining room table was right next to it and the couch nook was right behind it. It was noisy and always chaotic.

After that, the kitchen-living room became an L, which was a little better, but the kitchen was very cramped with the odd counter that was always only used as a shelf, and it was always noisy and chaotic at the time with two young children. And we were always looking for a magnetic child lock opener on the cabinet doors.

My parents in their current house (in Sweden) have a huge kitchen-living room with an island to dance around. It's normal, especially when the whole family is together and 20 people are huddled around it. With two old people and a dog, it's a little difficult.

We have a large room, but it is divided into 2 levels. The living room is sort of half a floor above and is connected to the kitchen/dining room via a gallery.

If I were building again, I would separate the living room more. Perhaps with a glass wall or something similar. I like the open feel, but the noise from the kitchen annoys me when I want peace and quiet in the living room. It doesn't matter if it's for reading/television/etc.