Open vs separate kitchen: layout trade-offs

A kitchen is the only room in an apartment that has both furniture (the cabinets) and serious infrastructure (water, gas or electric, ventilation, drainage). That makes it the most expensive room per m² to build — and the room where moving the wall changes the build cost most. The open-vs-separate kitchen choice is therefore not just a stylistic question; it is also a question of how much m² and how much budget the kitchen claims.

What 'open' actually means

An open kitchen is a kitchen without enclosing walls on the side facing the living room. The cooking and eating zone are visually one room. There may still be a counter, a half-height wall, or an island that suggests separation, but you can see from the sofa to the stove without a door in the way. A separate kitchen has at least one full-height wall and a doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment.

Open kitchens are sometimes called 'open-plan kitchen', 'kitchen-living combined', or 'great room' (when the dining area is also part of the same envelope). The terminology varies; the spatial reality is what matters.

The 3 m² that open kitchen recovers

In a small apartment, the wall between a separate kitchen and the rest of the apartment costs roughly 3 m² of usable floor. That includes the wall thickness itself (~0.1–0.15 m × 3–4 m of wall length), the door swing (~0.8 × 0.9 m of clear floor on the swing side), and the corner-of-room space that becomes awkward to use because of the door. In a 40 m² 1BR, those 3 m² are 7.5% of the apartment. In a 90 m² 3BR, they're 3.3%. The smaller the apartment, the more an open kitchen helps.

The recovered area shows up in the living room (which can be larger), the dining zone (which can become more generous), or the kitchen counter run (which can be longer, fitting a real range plus a dishwasher plus a freezer rather than choosing two of three).

The acoustic and olfactory cost

What open kitchens trade for that area is acoustic isolation and odour control. A closed kitchen with a door attenuates cooking noise (running water, dishwasher, range hood, sizzling pan) by 20–25 dB. With an open kitchen, those sounds reach the living room directly. If you have a TV in the living room and a dishwasher running, you'll hear the dishwasher.

Odours travel similarly. A high-quality range hood (300+ CFM, vented to outside) helps significantly, but cooking smells still reach the living and bedroom areas in an open layout — fine for most cuisines, harder for dishes that sear at high heat or use strong spices.

When open wins by apartment size

Studio (20–50 m²): open is essentially the only choice. A separate kitchen in a studio is a galley along one wall with no enclosure — there is no room to enclose. Above 40 m², a galley with a half-height counter starts to suggest separation but is still 'open' in spec.

1BR (35–70 m²): open is the default. At 35–45 m², open recovers 3 m² that meaningfully improves the rest of the apartment. At 50+, separate becomes plausible if you cook intensively or want acoustic isolation; below 50, open is almost always right.

2BR/1BA (50–100 m²): mixed. At 50–70 m², open dominates. At 80+, separate kitchen becomes viable because the apartment has acoustic-isolation needs (more occupants, more overlapping use of public space). Acoustic isolation matters more in 2BR than in 1BR.

2BR/2BA (60–100 m²): the second bath creates a plumbing wall that often sits next to the kitchen. Open kitchen visually masks this service spine — that's why open kitchens flip from rare to default at around 75 m² in 2BR/2BA plans.

3BR and 4BR: separate kitchen at lower areas, open kitchen with island at higher areas (100+ m² for 3BR/2BA, 130+ m² for 4BR/2BA). The island doubles as a casual dining surface and takes load off the main dining area.

What an island actually adds

A kitchen island is a freestanding counter, typically 1.0–1.2 m wide and 1.8–3.0 m long, in the middle of the kitchen envelope. It needs at least 1.0 m of clear circulation around all four sides, so an island claims 8–12 m² of total kitchen-zone area. It is therefore a feature of larger plans only — sensible at 100+ m² total apartment area, awkward below that.

The generators on this site do not draw islands explicitly (the kitchen is rendered as a single rectangle), but if the kitchen is large enough to fit one in real construction, you can imagine it. Kitchens above ~10 m² in the generated plans are island-territory; below that they are typically galley or L-shaped layouts.