15 Distinctive Ideas for Living Rooms with Open Floor Plans

When designing an open-concept living room, think of the entire area, including adjacent spaces, as one large room. Your choices for paint colors, wood finishes, and furniture styles don't have to match exactly across spaces, but they should tie together for a pleasing overall effect. In this great room, wood beams overhead and a neutral color palette create a smooth transition between the living room, kitchen, and beyond.

Make an open living room feel cozier and more intimate with strategic furniture placement. Group the sofa and chairs in a close arrangement with the seats facing each other, instead of out into the room. This creates the effect of a smaller, more inviting room within a large open space. You can further distinguish the living area by laying an area rug underfoot.

A properly placed sofa noticeably marks a transition from one space to the next. For added impact, position a console table across the back to extend a sofa's presence and boost living room storage. Stow baskets holding extra blankets, TV remotes, and other necessities underneath the table to make the living room furniture arrangement appear more substantial. Intentional open-concept living room furniture placement is crucial for both aesthetics and functional purposes.

Open-concept plans are popular because they allow eyes and feet to move freely between areas. To make this work in your home, think through the measurements. Create walkways at least 36 inches wide that direct and carry traffic safely through the different spaces. Pay attention to furniture height and where hanging light fixtures fall to ensure that sightlines remain unblocked for a successful open floor plan design.

To make open floor plans work, each area of your home should carry one or more style elements over into the next room. For a living room, take your cue from the kitchen's features, which would be more costly to change. Repeat the kitchen color scheme with softer textures in an adjacent sitting area. This sofa's soft slipcover fabric repeats the grayish tones of the streamlined appliances and stone countertops. The area rug and throw pillows echo the kitchen cabinets' warm undertones and black painted details.

Decorating open floor plans between the living room and kitchen can be conflicting. Stylishly separate cooking and entertaining areas in ways that let views and conversation easily flow between spaces. Partial walls, strategically set islands, breakfast bars, columns, and dropped or raised ceilings can all help divide open areas. In this family space, knotty pine boards and timbers accentuate kitchen doorways and frame the breakfast bar to create the look of a large pass-through window.

Make sure that open-concept spaces read as one cohesive whole. Lay the same type of flooring in all areas and duplicate ceiling treatments whenever possible. When it wasn't feasible to add beams to the dining room ceiling, the homeowner carried the living room's tongue-and-groove board details to the dining room ceiling. Open floor plans also benefit from a cohesive color scheme. Here, all-white walls extend though the home's entrance and beyond, making pops of accented colors more dramatic and interesting.

An open concept living room, dining room, and kitchen blurs the lines between each area. For more definition, incorporate a focal point in each adjacent space. These standout elements capture the eye while improving how the space works. This open-concept design showcases four striking features, one in each space. A mirrored bar area, a paneled television wall, light-inviting breakfast room windows, and a steely range hood set against a marble backsplash make one area as visually appealing as the next.

When painting and decorating great rooms, it's sometimes hard to know when to start and stop applying color. The simplest solution? Paint all adjoining walls and architectural details the same color so as not to disrupt the visual flow. Then further the link between the kitchen, eating, and sitting areas with similarly hued accents. In this great room, shades of white and brass accents help connect the spaces with color.

When planning cooking, eating, and relaxation areas, consider what you want to see from each spot. Place your sink or cooktop in an island so as you work, you can enjoy a hearth's flickering flames, watch your kids as they play, talk with guests, and take in views framed by doors or large windows in adjacent areas. Some of the greatest benefits of an open plan kitchen is how easily it flows into other areas of the home, doubling the size of your entertaining space.

Hang eye-catching light fixtures to distinguish different areas in an open floor plan. For continuity's sake, choose similarly styled fixtures that mirror a material, color, or finish used elsewhere in the great room. Underscore the separation of spaces by choosing various lights sporting distinct silhouettes. For example, drum shades provide even ambient lighting that works well over dining room tables, while a small open floor plan kitchen could benefit from direct lighting over work spaces like the island.

Apply open floor plan furniture layout ideas to separate a single room into multiple uses. Here, a clever ceiling treatment and horizontal white painted boards on the walls immediately identify this as one space. Thoughtful furniture arrangements double its purpose to include seating for TV-watching anchored by an area rug and a more intimate grouping meant for conversation. Splashy aqua hues, which appear on banding on slipcovered chairs, floral-patterned pillows, and solid-hued club chairs, supply a vibrant link between spaces.

Take advantage of your home's features to connect spaces within an open floor plan. Here, built-in bookcases extend into a sitting area to handily unite work and relaxation zones, while supplying display shelves and closed-door storage for the family room. Shifting shades of tan on the kitchen and family room walls subtly delineate the two different areas. To reproduce this look, choose two shades of the same color from a paint-chip strip; the farther apart the shades, the greater the contrast.

Manage wide-open spaces by dividing the area into two defined zones. Arrange cozy conversation groupings, each defined with its own area rug, and spotlight each group with an impressive ceiling-mounted fixture. In this large lounge area, a pair of statuesque lamps set atop a console subtly divides two sitting areas without blocking sightlines or conversation. A pair of lightweight stools can easily be moved between the two areas as needed for quick rearranging before parties and gatherings.