7 Steps to Creating an Open Floor Plan

Establish a vision so you can supervise and design your remodel

The first step to a successful remodel is planning. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Putting in some research to decide what you want and how much you are willing to spend can keep your remodeling project on track and allow you to communicate intelligently with your contractors. Here, we’ve broken down the 7 major steps to creating an open floor plan in your home.

Step 1: Remove the Wall

Removing a wall or walls is the biggest step to opening up your floor plan, but its also potentially the most dangerous. It can be tricky to determine if the wall you want to remove is load-bearing or not. If you remove a wall that happens to be load-bearing, your ceiling can sag, and you can cause structural damage to your home. Professional help is required here. If you are lucky, the wall is not load-bearing and it can be removed entirely. If the wall is load-bearing, you can still remove it. It will cost more, however, because a beam or other structural supports will need to be installed.

When looking at a remodeled kitchen, you can tell immediately if the home owner decided to skip the extra expense of installing a beam. You can avoid installing a beam if you don’t remove the entire wall. Some contractors will opt for leaving columns or posts to provide structural support. This can compromise your design and break up the open space concept. Another design fail is the pass-through window. Instead of removing the entire wall, some home owners will cut a rectangular hole in the wall so you can see the living area from the kitchen. Try to avoid this outdated design. To truly take advantage of an open floor plan design, skip these compromises and install a beam if needed.

Step 2: Extend the Cabinets

Once you picture your wall removed and the floor plan opened up, you may realize that the foot print of the kitchen needs to be changed. Many homes built before 1990 have an eat-in area in the kitchen for a small table and chairs. Sacrifice the eat-in kitchen area. Installing an island can provide new seating for quick meals. Consider re-purposing the eat-in area into extra kitchen square footage by extending the cabinets or adding a floor to ceiling pantry. By giving up the eat-in kitchen area, you can gain additional storage and an island for a more functional, updated look.

Now that you have an idea of how many cabinets you need, pick out your design. Opt for traditional, neutral color cabinets. High quality dark wood or white cabinets are classics and will stay in style a lot longer than a trendier option. For most people, their home is their biggest investment. This is not time to flex your quirky creative side. It can decrease the value that you are trying to put into your home and be a turn-off to potential future buyers. Not to worry though, there are plenty of other ways to put your stamp on your kitchen remodel through light fixtures, accessories, and art. Cabinets should be your canvas. Accessories can be changed easily, but cabinets are here to stay.

Cabinets look pretty easy to install — its just like hanging a picture, right? Wrong. While it might be tempting to install cabinets yourself to save money, poorly hung cabinets can be unsightly, warp over time, and cause the doors to stay open a bit instead of closing smoothly. Cabinets are level, straight, and the corners meet at right angles. The walls in your home, however, are probably not perfectly square. It takes some skill to hang cabinets in a way that appears straight with imperfect walls and ceilings.

Step 3: Add an Island

Now that you have your cabinets picked out, turn your focus to the island. The island is the center piece of your open space. It provides a prep area, seating, and eating space that serves as a replacement to the eat-in area you sacrificed when opening up the design. An island is usually two base cabinets secured to a knee wall. Your island can be all one height, or you may prefer to have a two-tiered counter top with a higher counter ledge for the seating. The higher ledge should be wide enough to comfortable hold a dinner plate. Another advantage to a two-level island counter top is that the ledge can house electrical outlets for your appliances and phone chargers.

They key to designing a spacious open floor plan is to let your eyes enjoy long sight lines. Avoid anything that would obstruct your view. This includes adding fixtures to your island. It might seem convenient to have a sink or stove top installed into your island, but it breaks up the open space. If you plan to have children eating at the island, keep in mind that a hot stove top next to their dinner plate could be a safety concern.The same goes for installing a hood over your island. Its best to have big obstructions against the wall as opposed to suspended in the middle of the kitchen area. Your island can be a big expanse of space with clean lines that also serves to show off your beautiful stone counter top.

Step 4: Counter Tops

Your contractor can refer you to local stone dealers to choose your counter top. There is usually a stone dealer, that houses multiple slabs of stone in a warehouse, and a showroom that will process your order and install the counter tops. Bring your measurements so that they can make sure the slab you choose is big enough for your widest and longest counter tops.

With an open floor plan, you want to avoid a busy pattern in the stone. Opt for solid colors or stone patterns that involve long sweeps of color. While granite is the standard right now, there are other stones that are worth looking at like quartz, quartzite, and marble. Again, go with neutrals as they are timeless classics. If the stone has multiple color tones, its best that they not contrast too much. Most people don’t want black and white zebra stripes in their calming sanctuary. Invest in something beautiful that you will enjoy seeing every day.

Step 5: Lighting

Its easy to forget about lighting when planning your remodel, but it really makes the space. You can tell when designers don’t put thought into the lighting. The standard for open floor plans include can lights spaced evenly through out the ceiling to provide overall lighting. You don’t want dark corners. Depending on your space, it may be best to continue the can lights from the kitchen area to the living area. Continuing design elements throughout the open floor plan helps to give it a cohesive feel, rather than two separate rooms.Consider additional can lights and under cabinet lighting for work spaces. There’s nothing worse than cutting veggies in the dark.

If you haven’t bought a new ceiling fan in a while, you might want to take another look. Installing ceiling fans used to be a pain because the electrician would have to run a wire from the light switch, up the wall, through the ceiling, and to your fan. Not so anymore — ceiling fans can now be operated with remote controls, so there’s no need for running new wires. The remote control sits in a cradle that is mounted to the wall next to the light switch. It controls fan speeds, dims the light, and you don’t have to have unsightly pull strings hanging down from the fan.

Step 6: Continuous Flooring

Chances are, you have different flooring in your kitchen and living area. Once you remove the wall separating the spaces, you will probably be left with a gap in the flooring. This is a good time to replace and upgrade all the flooring in the space. Again, continuing design elements throughout the open floor plan helps to give it a cohesive feel, rather than two separate rooms. So opt for continuous flooring by choosing one material.

Ask your contractor where they get their flooring supplies, then go shopping. Consider hardwood, high quality laminate, and vinyl — yes vinyl. So what’s the difference between solid hardwood and laminate? Solid hardwood is just wood all the way through the piece of flooring. Laminate is a composite material with a thin layer of wood on the exposed side. You get the same look, but the difference comes in if you need to refinish the floors. Hardwood can be sanded down and refinished multiple times. Laminate, however, can only be sanded until you get through that thin layer of wood. If you go with laminate, check the thickness of the layer of wood. If it is only 1 or 2mm thick, you probably won’t have the option to sand and refinish the floor at a later time. You will just have to replace it. High quality laminate has at least 4mm of wood.

While you are shopping, check out the vinyl flooring. It comes in strips that have the look and feel of wood. It feels nice under your feet, its inexpensive, plus it is super durable and waterproof. If you have kids, pets, or live near a sandy beach, vinyl is a great alternative. In most cases, solid surface flooring is preferable to carpet in the kitchen, dining, and living areas, but it depends on the buyer.

Step 7: Living Area Rugs and Furniture

Up until now, the focus has been opening up the space and giving it unobstructed sight lines, continuous flooring and lighting, and a cohesive feel. Now its time to define the areas. You don’t want the spaces walled off and totally separate, but the design should give a gentle suggestion as to what to do where.

A living room rug can define the space, give a cozy feel, and compliment your new solid surface flooring. If you have an area near a window or in a little nook, you can define another seating area with a smaller rug, a book case, and a pair of chairs. Don’t push your furniture all against the walls. Pull the couches and chairs away from the wall and set them around the rug. Add end tables and a center coffee table.

Determine focal points of each space. It could be a fireplace, windows with a nice view, and the big screen TV. Each seat should have a view of the focal points. There’s nothing worse than having to drag a chair around to be able to watch TV with everybody else. Try to avoid mounting your TV on the fireplace. By placing it above the mantle, it is actually too high and can cause neck pain over time. The bottom third of the TV should be at eye level when seated.

All trim, windows, blinds, and other elements should be consistent throughout your open floor space to give the room a coherent feel, as if it was designed this way from the start. Choose an up-to-date color palette for wall and trim paint.

While this is certainly not an exhaustive list of all considerations involved in an open floor plan remodel, it is a good start to get you headed in the right direction. Take your time, make some calls, and do some research to flesh out your plans and find the right contractor. Develop a clear vision of your remodeling goals, but along the way, be flexible to unforeseen changes. Good luck with making an important investment into your home’s value and enjoy your project.

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