Whether you live in an apartment or a modern new-build, a lot of homes nowadays have jumped on the open plan living space bandwagon. Having your living room and dining room within the same four walls has been something we’ve seen on the rise in the past few years as people want to make their lives as streamlined and as easy as possible.

But this isn’t the only open-plan type of space we’ve seen. Us Wido-ers know how to make the most of the space that we have, and it seems we’re not the only ones. We have seen homes embracing the kitchen-diner life so that you can serve up right there in the room where the food is cooked. It’s also been evident that people are starting to create a shared dining room and office space, making the very most out of what they have and combining two distinct rooms in one to be able to enjoy having both.
However, sometimes creating these separate rooms within the same space can be a task. Do you want them to have the same design aspect or do you want them to feel like separate spaces? We’ve got our home designer heads on to share with you how you can make the most out of an open-plan space.

Change The Flooring

Having two spaces in one is always going to be a design dilemma that you have to work on, and that includes the flooring that you choose. By differentiating the floor in each of your spaces, it can really help to define the two rooms as separate. If you have a dining and living space that you want to create the illusion of separate spaces, you could utilise carpet in the living side of the room and lay down some wooden flooring for the dining area, making it look as if they are intended to be two different spaces.

Walls

As well as the flooring, consider changing up the walls too. This will completely depend on the layout of your open-plan space, but it can help to create a different feeling for each of the room’s intentions. If you have a plain wall on the side of your living area, you could add a feature wallpapered wall for the side of your dining room. The walls can make such a difference to any room, so even adding a subtle wallpaper can help to make that differentiation clearer.

Divide the Room

Quite literally! There are plenty of different options for installing something that can divide the room. Whether it’s a half wall room divider or a shelving system, they can help you distinguish a line between the two given spaces. The traditional way to do this would be to purchase a folding divider that you can move around to suit you. Meaning that you don’t necessarily have to have the room divided all of the time. But you could also have a shelving system or sideboard that can help you permanently block off the area and create a partition between the rooms.

Utilise your Sofa

Your sofa can also come in super handy when splitting a space, especially if it’s a corner sofa. Corner sofas have a fantastic way of not only being the most comfortable types of sofa you can buy (yes, we’d argue that!) but because they can close off a room as well as open it up. If positioned in a way that it isn’t against the back of a wall, the corner sofa can itself be the divide that you need for your open-plan rooms. If you want to create an even bigger divide, add a unit or shelf onto the end of your sofa for a divide that extends even further.

There are some simple solutions for switching up your home interior to create two rooms out of one. Will you go down the home decor side of things, or embrace some furniture changes? Or maybe even both! What we do know is that an open-plan space doesn’t necessarily mean that it all has to look the same.

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