How to decorate an open floor plan
An open plan gives you one large room and asks you to make it behave like three. The hard part is not choosing furniture, it is drawing boundaries the eye accepts when there are no walls to draw them with - and doing it without ending up with a furniture showroom where nobody knows where to sit.
Interior design
The problem an open plan actually creates
Walls do three jobs at once: they tell you where a room begins, they stop noise, and they give furniture something to sit against. Take them out and all three problems arrive together, but only the first one is a decorating problem. The other two are worth naming because people try to solve them with cushions.
The decorating question is boundaries. In a room with walls, the eye knows where the living room ends. In an open plan you have to say so, using floor covering, furniture backs, lighting and ceiling features - and you have to say it consistently, or the space reads as one large corridor with objects in it.
The good news is that the moves are few and they are cumulative. Two or three of them applied to the same line will define a zone convincingly. Applied to different lines, they will fight each other, which is what most unsatisfying open plans have going on.
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Five ways to draw a boundary without a wall
Ranked by how firmly the eye reads them. Use two or three on the same line rather than one on each of five different lines.
| Device | How strong | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| A rug sized to the seating | Strong | The living zone - the single most reliable boundary in an open plan |
| The back of a sofa as a wall | Strong | Separating living from circulation or dining |
| A change in ceiling or lighting | Strong | Dining, where a pendant over the table anchors the zone permanently |
| A console, bench or low shelf | Medium | A soft edge that still lets you see and walk through |
| A change in flooring | Very strong, and permanent | Kitchen versus living, when you are renovating anyway |
Stack devices on one line
A rug edge, the back of the sofa and a pendant above all agreeing on the same boundary reads as a room. The same three devices on three different lines read as clutter.
The rug does most of the work
In an open plan the rug is not decoration, it is the floor plan. Get it wrong and no amount of furniture arrangement rescues the zone.
- Size it to the seating, not to the room — At minimum the front legs of every seat sit on it. Better, all legs. A rug the seating floats around defines nothing and makes the zone look accidental.
- One rug per zone, and leave gaps — Bare floor between zones is what makes them read as separate. Wall-to-wall rugs in an open plan erase the boundaries you are trying to create.
- Align the edges with something — Run the rug parallel to the longest wall or square to the kitchen island. A rug at a slight angle to everything makes the whole level feel unresolved.
- Different rugs, related palette — Zones should read as different rooms in the same house. Wildly different rugs read as different houses; identical rugs read as one undefined space.
Arranging the three usual zones
Most open plans are some combination of kitchen, dining and living. Each has one decision that carries the weight.
One palette, across the whole level
In a house with walls you can paint each room differently and nobody sees two at once. In an open plan you see everything at once, so a palette that changes by zone reads as a mistake rather than a decision.
Pick one background - walls, trim, and the large surfaces - and carry it all the way across. Then let the zones differ in their accents: the living zone can be warmer, the dining zone darker, the kitchen cleaner. Same family, different member.
- 1
Backgrounds match, accents vary
Walls and trim identical everywhere. Cushions, art and smaller furniture do the differentiating.
- 2
Repeat a material
The same wood or the same metal appearing in all three zones ties them without making them identical.
- 3
Watch the sightline from the door
Stand where a visitor stands. Everything visible from there is one composition, whether you designed it that way or not.
Why accent walls rarely work here
An accent wall in an open plan usually ends mid-air, because the wall it is on does not correspond to a room. Colour changes want an architectural edge to stop at.
The two problems decorating cannot fix
Worth naming so you spend on the right thing.
Open plan examples
Model-generated reference frames rather than photographs of real homes. Useful for comparing approaches to zoning.
Sofa back as the wall
The living zone defined by turning the sofa around, with a walkway behind it.
Make one like thisPendant over the table
Dining anchored by light rather than by furniture position alone.
Make one like thisRug edges doing the work
Two rugs, bare floor between them, and the level reads as two rooms.
Make one like thisOne palette, three moods
Same walls throughout, accents changing by zone.
Make one like thisDraw it before you rearrange it
Open plans are heavy to experiment in - the furniture is large and there is a lot of it. Ten minutes drawing the level to scale saves an afternoon of pushing.
The whole level at once
Draw it as one space with the openings where they really are, including the island and the stair.
Zones you can see
Place the rugs and the seating and look at where the boundaries actually fall.
The route through
Check the walk from the door to the kitchen is clear and about 36 inches wide at its narrowest.
Two arrangements side by side
Copy the layout, turn the sofa around in one of them, and compare rather than argue.
3D at eye level
An open plan is judged from the doorway. Walk it and see what the visitor sees.
Free to draw
Layout, 3D and the furniture library cost nothing. Only the photorealistic render is paid.
Decorate an open plan in three steps
Runs in the browser; nothing to install.
Photograph it from the entrance
One wide shot from where a visitor comes in. That view is the composition you are designing, so start from it rather than from the corner you like.
Say how many zones and where
Tell the model what the space has to do: living plus dining plus a desk, seating for six, a route to the deck. Specific beats stylish.
Draw the winner to scale
Once you have a direction, put the level into the planner at real dimensions and check the walkways. Open plans fail on circulation more often than on taste.
Common open plan mistakes
Each of these is reversible, and each shows up in most first attempts.
All the furniture against the walls
The instinct from smaller rooms. In an open plan it leaves a large empty middle and no zones at all.
One rug covering everything
Erases the boundaries. Separate rugs with floor between them is what makes zones read.
A zone parked in the main walkway
Draw the route first and keep it clear. Everything else arranges around it.
Different paint per zone
You see all of it at once, so the changes read as errors rather than decisions.
A sofa with an unfinished back
If it will be seen from the kitchen, it is a piece of furniture with four visible sides. Check before buying.
Too many focal points
A fireplace, a television and a view competing for the same seating means the seating serves none of them well.
See your own level rearranged
See your own level rearranged
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Questions about open plan decorating
How do I divide an open plan without building walls?
Should the sofa float in an open plan?
Can I paint zones different colours?
How big should the rug be?
How do I deal with noise in an open plan?
Start from the entrance view
Start from the entrance view
Try it on my space