Open or closed kitchen?

One of the great dilemmas when carrying out a comprehensive renovation of a medium-high range home is the type of kitchen we will choose. Open kitchen or closed kitchen? This choice depends a lot on the person who uses it, who lives in that home, fashions…

For a few years now, the concept of “open space” has gained ground in single-family homes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

We want to help you discover the perfect type of kitchen for your home and give you the necessary tips to make this choice the right one. Why should I choose an open kitchen? Is a closed kitchen better?

What is an open kitchen?

The open kitchen is characterised by sharing space with other rooms in the home such as the living room or dining room. It is an excellent space for those who like to cook in company.

As much as spaces are visually united, it is important to add an element that makes them differentiate. A clear example would be an island or a bar, useful for other activities.

Advantages of the open kitchen

• Feeling of spaciousness: this feeling is achieved because we omit partitions, walls, elements that visually clash and divide spaces.
• Luminosity: By eliminating these walls we get much more light to enter. This is distributed throughout the rooms.
• Moments are shared: This type of kitchen allows many more moments to be shared, because sharing spaces improves social relationships. Cooking becomes much more participatory, favoring family life.
• Ventilation: When you have a small kitchen without a window, the best thing to do is to open it to another room. With this we get it to be ventilated and odors are eliminated.
• Modernity: As we have said before, the concept of “open space” is in fashion. A clear example of this concept are homes that integrate a living room, kitchen and bedroom.
• Ease of serving the table: thanks to this fusion of spaces, whenever possible with the dining room, there is a much more comfortable ease of movement to serve and prepare the table.
• You gain space: If you have a small kitchen, changing a partition/wall for an island will save countertop space. And comfort of movement.
• Aesthetics: aesthetically open kitchens win, they are more attractive by nature, they create special corners, different areas of the houses are integrated making it more aesthetic.

Disadvantages of an open kitchen

• Odors: We all know that when cooking, the smells of food are permeated throughout the space. By turning the kitchen into an open space, we make it distributed throughout the house. This has an easy solution, a good extractor hood and a proper window. In addition, having professional support from an architecture studio will allow you to know how the air circulates in your home and take it into account to define the orientation of the kitchen, windows, etc.
• Noises: this is a problem because all the noises when cooking, cleaning, putting the dishwasher on, the noise of the extractor hood, reach the space we are sharing.
• Disorder: As it is a connected space, you cannot close the door and that’s it. Everything is in sight, so you have to have everything as tidy as possible. Here it is key to understand all the storage solutions that exist. You would be surprised to know all the options there are if you talk to a specialist in renovations and/or interior design.
• Privacy: you can’t be alone in the room and cook quietly because the space is shared.

What is a closed kitchen?

Kitchens that use elements such as doors, walls, partitions to separate rooms and rooms. This is the conventional option for people who don’t want to share spaces.

Advantages of a closed kitchen

• They prevent odors from spreading throughout the house, if the kitchen is an independent room, the living room or dining room will not smell of food while we rest, watch TV or are simply in that room.
• They isolate noise, from appliances, noise while cooking or from the extractor hood.
• More privacy, you don’t need to share the space with people who are in other rooms, being able to enjoy some privacy and tranquility if you like to cook to relax.
• Decorative independence, having separate rooms allows you to decorate each one in the way you want and with different styles.

Disadvantages of a closed kitchen

• They make table service difficult: because you have to be moving food from the kitchen to the dining room or vice versa.
• They detract from the feeling of spaciousness: by having scary walls, the rooms seem smaller, losing that spaciousness that the open kitchen gains.
• Darkness: If the space you have has no windows, it makes it look much smaller in addition to being dark. Partitions make the space seem much smaller, and if we add a small window it is even worse.
• Social isolation: means that when you have guests, the cook cannot enjoy time with them, they must be in another room cooking

Some aspects that are not always taken into account

There are a number of aspects that we must take into account in both.

In the open kitchen , appliances should be quieter, you should have an extractor hood that absorbs those smells and fumes from the kitchen well.

In the closed kitchen You can solve the problems in a simple way. Open a serving hatch to the dining room, install a sliding door, separate the rooms with a glass wall, and there is no need to hide the appliances.

Other options:

Not everything is black or white, there are many more possibilities of kitchens that you can choose from. One of them is the semi-open or semi-closed kitchen.

The semi-open kitchen It is a new concept, it is a kitchen that is located inside the living room. This is achieved by opening the walls that separate these two rooms in half. You have a lot of different options to do it.

Opening up those walls allows you, for example, to build a bar, which allows you to make guests chat with you while you cook and offer them an appetizer. This is a way to keep the people close to you and enjoy even being in different rooms. That is, to make a half-height wall, leaving the upper area free and the lower one used as a support or bench.

This division can also be made through an island, furniture, screen, or even a window as a plate passer.

The style of this type of kitchen is industrial and elegant, and the good thing about this type of kitchen is that they try to minimize the disadvantages of both spaces and maintain the advantages. Another type of division is a glass that makes it clear that they are two different rooms but they are unified.

No matter what your home is like, the important thing is that you look for solutions that you feel identified with and with which you find functionality. You should consider the pros and cons of each option and decide according to your needs. Not everything is the style you want, the most important thing is that it fits well, any renovation can achieve even the smallest detail that you want to transform in your kitchen.

If you want to see more examples of kitchens, go to our projects section and see the ones you like the most.