Open floor plans are a big trend in interior design at the moment. They give you a larger space to work with and give you more opportunity for creative design. The only problem is, people often don’t know what to do with that space and they end up following the same design rules that they would with any other room. If you do it that way, you’ll end up wasting a lot of that space and not realising the full potential of your great open plan space. If you’re redecorating your open plan floor space, here are some good tips to help you get the most out of it.
Divide The Space
This seems a bit counterproductive because you don’t want to lose the spacious feeling in the room, but if you divide it properly, you won’t. It’s a good idea to divide the room up a little so you can get multiple uses out of it, rather than just having one large room. You can get some nice quality wooden plantation shutters online which are perfect for this. Get a few and put them around the room. Section off a corner and put a nice comfy chair in there and you’ve got a little nook to relax in. You can also use them to create shaded areas if the room gets a lot of sun. By dividing the room up with smaller partitions, you maintain the open feel but you get more distinct areas.
Symmetry
One of the biggest dangers when decorating an open plan space is that it will get too messy. People often think that they need to fill that space so they’ll pack it with a load of different bits of furniture that make the place look cluttered. It’s true that you need to make the room look a bit fuller but the way that you arrange furniture is more important than how much you put in there. Symmetrical arrangements of sofas create a nice seating area. Putting a table in the centre with chairs either side will create a dining area in the middle and break the room up without cluttering it up too much. By using symmetrical arrangements like this, you bring a bit more order to the room and avoid it looking messy.
Make Use Of Rugs
When it comes to dividing up the room, you don’t always need to physically separate areas, you just need to use something that identifies each different area. Rugs are a great way to do this, especially with conversation areas. If you’ve got your dining table in the centre of the room, put a nice rug and a coffee table somewhere else. Just by having another texture on the floor, you create the illusion that it’s a separate room and divide those two areas without having to put walls in.
Even though you’ve got one large space, you need to think of it in terms of separate areas and decorate each one in a unique way, while still maintaining a common theme.
