If you’ve recently watched an episode of any home improvement show, you’ll know that the current trend among homebuyers is an open-concept floor plan. While this way of living has its major upsides, you may want to consider whether it is truly the right concept for you. Below are some pros and cons to an open floor plan. Check it out and see whether an open floor plan is a good contender for your home.

Pro: Making a Small Space Feel Larger

This is probably the biggest challenge that open-concept living solves. Small spaces can feel so much smaller when they’re cut up by walls that delineate one living space from another. Adding more square footage comes at a cost and isn’t always an option. Whether you’re in an apartment that can’t be expanded or adding on a room is cost-prohibitive, open-concept can be a perfect solution. A not-so-tricky way to trick the eye into thinking that you’ve got more square footage than you really do is by tearing down walls and opening up your rooms to each other.

Con: A Large Space May Feel Too Big

On the flip side, if you’ve got square footage to spare, having an open-concept layout can make an already big space feel far too big. A warm, cozy home can be hard to achieve when there are no walls. The feeling of an echoey, warehouse-like living space is even more amplified if you’ve got high ceilings. And let’s not forget that heating and cooling a huge space can be costly depending on the climate of your hometown.

Pro: Being a Part of the Family

If you’re in charge of family mealtime, you may be quite familiar with the feeling of isolation that comes with that culinary responsibility. While the rest of your household is watching a show, or playing in the living room, or doing homework at the dining room table, you’re toiling away in the kitchen. You miss out on conversation and togetherness simply because living spaces are cut off from each other. An open concept is a very neat fix for that problem.

Con: A Messy Kitchen is Always on Display

Kitchens can be the messiest part of your home. The work of making a meal is inherently chaotic: bowls cover the countertops; pots and pans in various states of use are out and about; veggies and meat needs prepping. Unless you’re a master of clean-as-you-go there invariably will be visual clutter in your kitchen at some point. You can’t hide from a messy kitchen for a few glorious minutes or hours with an open-concept layout.

Pro: Eliminating Underused Spaces:

Maybe your grandmother had a room that the kids weren’t allowed in. In fact, you may not have ever seen anyone in the perfectly kept formal living room. Maybe in your house, the formal dining room only gets some love on major holidays. If a large percentage of your house is taken up by rooms like this that are underused and you’re craving more usable space, then open-concept living could be the answer.

Con: Load-Bearing Walls

When you look at a compartmentalized house and imagine an open flow from space to space, your first thought should be: is that a load-bearing wall? Knocking down one of these key walls can come at a huge cost and requires a professional. In many cases, those load-bearing walls can be replaced with beams that displace the weight of your home, but they’re not cheap. The cost can easily run into the thousands of dollars.

When it comes to deciding whether an open-floor plan is for you and your family, you have to do what feels right to you. If the pros out-weigh the cons and you have the funds, then go for it. If you’re on the fence about it, take some more time to figure it out. Here at PlumbTiles, we can help you make that decision. If you decide to go ahead with the open floor plan, we have flooring options that will bring the whole house together to complete the open floor concept.