Until the pandemic rolled around in 2020 and we all spent so long locked in our houses that we really started to look at how we live again, it was the norm (and still is) to knock down as many walls as possible and create open plan living spaces. In these, kitchens and dining rooms jostle together, and often the living room gets involved too. We ultimately spend most of our time at home in one giant space, so how best to zone it out in separate areas that feel distinct?
Switch up the decoration
One easy method for creating rooms within rooms is to use rugs, lighting, shelving and even different paint colours or wall finishes to create a sense of division. If your aesthetic is a colourful one, then changing colour completely to define a kitchen, dining space or sitting area is an effective idea. We love what Octavia Dickinson has done in the London house below, contrasting the gentle sea-foam green of the kitchen cabinetry (‘HC62’ by Papers & Paints), with the more vibrant red of the dining room ('1-023', also by Papers & Paints). The decorative pendant lighting and the eye-catching rug also help to create a transition as we move into the dining room.
Rugs can also be incredibly helpful in more contemporary open-plan spaces where it might be desirable to have the entire room looking more coherent. In both examples below, a rug has been added to what is effectively the ‘living area,’ bringing a sense of comfort and disrupting the flow. It marks out that area as somewhere to hunker down. Dramatic pendant lights have also been used in both projects to mark out different areas.
Draw the curtains
Curtains are emphatically not just for windows. We adore spaces where a curtain has been used as a divider rather than a door – it's the perfect compromise between open-plan and separate rooms, and works well when you have some sort of architectural divide already in place. This can be a really good solution for a rented house, as you can take down a curtain pole when you move out and it's not a huge job to repair the walls. In their flat below, Olympia and Ariadne Irving have installed a reversible curtain made from a Carolina Irving & Daughters ‘Pink Tulip’ tablecloth stuck together with double sided tape. It's particularly helpful for the divide between a kitchen and dining space, as you can close the mess of the kitchen off from guests. Above hangs a collection of plates the girls have designed over the years which are ‘impermanent while still adding colour’.
Curtains can also be used to create a nook where none naturally exists. In the London house below, design duo d'Erlanger and Sloan have made a snug out of one corner of a vast open-plan basement which also houses the kitchen, dining space and sitting area. This large windowless bay, filled with a vast L-shaped sofa, can be screened from the rest of the room with a curtain. It features handmade Atelier Vime wicker panels on the walls and a tented ceiling in ‘Humbug Ticking’ cotton from Howe at 36 Bourne Street. ‘It’s a theatrical little gem that sits in contrast to the contemporary kitchen,’ says Anna Sloan.
Divide and conquer (with furniture and cabinetry)
For a more concrete divide between zones, furniture, whether freestanding or built-in, is your friend.Small spaces are undoubtedly hardest to zone, as there's not much room to do so. Beata Heuman has provided a masterclass in this London flat, managing to cram a kitchen, dining area and sitting room into one fairly tiny space. The key was creating a sense of different areas and moods ‘so the owners didn’t get bored with the one main room they have’, Beata says. Here, as the kitchen, dining space and sitting room converge as one, Beata and Fosca’s design scheme needed to satisfy the varied demands of cooking, relaxing, working and entertaining.
The trick they used was to differentiate between the cooking and sitting areas – previously all found in the one space – by installing a U-shaped kitchen. This immediately created an additional surface on which to serve food or use as a bar. ‘It also provided a wall against which to place a banquette, which was something the owners really wanted,’ says Beata. The living space then occupies the opposite corner of the room, with two sofas at a perpendicular angle to one another. A custom TV cabinet decorated with Fornasetti’s ‘Nuvolette’ wallpaper from Cole & Son hides the TV from sight and sits neatly in the alcove. The rounded edges of the kitchen cupboards and the dining table also lend ‘subtle welcoming touches that make it feel easier and lighter to move around the space’.
Most commonly, when dividing a kitchen area from the rest of an open-plan room, you'll find a breakfast bar as a divider. What Hubert Zandberg has done in the barn in Buckinghamshire below is rather more unusual. A wide, freestanding unit, topped with forged-iron shelving, gives the impression of separation from the dining area without carving up the space into rooms. The cabinet clearly marks out the kitchen from the dining space, meaning you can pile up unsightly dishes in the kitchen when you have guests round and they won't essentially be sitting amongst them.
