Kitchen-living room design: we design it ourselves

A person feels more comfortable in spacious rooms, which most of our apartments, and many private homes, do not sin. Rooms can still be more or less decent-sized, but kitchens are often frankly small. Especially in the famous “Khrushchevka”. Here comes the idea of redevelopment. The most popular option is to combine the kitchen and living room or dining room. Due to the fact that the wall goes away there are additional meters, and a properly decorated interior of the kitchen combined with the living room can enhance the feeling. About how you can formalize the combined premises and will talk about it.

Combining the kitchen and living room: pros and cons

The idea itself came from the countries of Europe and America. In these cultures, the kitchen and living room together is the norm. But the way of life there is very different from ours: few people cook complex dishes at home. Mostly, if anything, they make sandwiches, can warm up semi-finished products. That’s the end of cooking. With us, the cooking process takes not half an hour or even an hour. All this is accompanied by strong and persistent aromas. If the kitchen is combined with the living room, there will not be even such a leaky barrier as a door. With the spread of odors can partially cope with a powerful hood and a competently built ventilation system. But far from 100%. With this will have to fight (strengthening the hood and properly organizing air exchange) or put up with it.

Another point is cleaning. In a kitchen open to all eyes, you will have to constantly maintain perfect order. No unwashed plates or products on the table you will not leave, since everything is in plain sight. One more thing. If before you had to clean only in a small kitchen, then in the kitchen-living room area, and therefore the time for cleaning is much larger.

That’s all about the disadvantages. Now about the pluses. In a spacious room, the feeling is completely different, not that in a small kitchen-box. Here and work more pleasantly, and rest. Combining leads to the fact that it takes less effort and time to set the table or remove it: less movement from room to room. What is also important that in a large room can be realized much more original ideas for design: the interior of the kitchen combined with the living room is definitely much more interesting than two separate rooms. There is an opportunity to play with the levels of ceiling and floor, with color and light, combine materials and combine styles. All this is also important and often outweighs the negative aspects. But before making a final decision, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the legal requirements.

Legal considerations

If you have a gas stove in your kitchen in an apartment building, it is forbidden by law to combine the two rooms: you can’t demolish the walls. There is one possibility: make the doorway wider. In this case, the kitchen and living room will be adjacent. You can make the doorway in the form of an arch or make it square – it depends on the interior. In this case, doors are mandatory in the aperture. They can be sliding or folding, but they must be.

If there is electrical equipment, unification is possible, but the wall can be demolished only if it is not load-bearing. Supporting walls cannot be dismantled: the whole building may collapse. But even here there is a way out: instead of walls to put columns equal to the load-bearing capacity of the former wall. For this purpose, it is necessary to order a remodeling project in a specialized organization.

Only beforehand, make sure that such remodeling can be accepted in the administration and you will be issued a permit for such work. It is necessary to obtain it in any case. To do this, you will have to write an application and attach the redevelopment project.

After receiving permission in hand, you can proceed to demolish the partition.

Options for zoning

Although we sought to unite the living room and kitchen, in the design they tend to separate. After all, one zone is working, the second is intended for a pleasant pastime and rest. Naturally, the styles should be different, as well as the furniture used. This division is also called zoning: we divide the room into zones.

Ceiling and floor to divide the kitchen and living room

The most common technique – different levels of floor and ceiling. When combining the two rooms, they can be obtained naturally – they were just different from the beginning. Leveling them is not necessary, but can be played with different texture finishing materials.

Even a small difference of a few centimeters is enough to visually separate the rooms. And if you add a different texture and / or color, the effect becomes more noticeable. From a practical point of view, it is more convenient when the place where food is prepared is slightly lower. This way, the debris that is bound to appear is less likely to be dispersed. It is a pity that this can not always be realized.

Read more about ceiling design here.

Partitions

A more obvious way to separate one part of the kitchen-studio from the other is to make a partition. It’s an oddity, first we remove the wall, now we recreate it. Yes, but in a different version – lighter and airy, which only marks the boundary without compressing the space.

The most tangible of partitions is glass. Closed can be only part of the passage, and may be the whole. In this case, most often use sliding systems. Such a glass wall visually leaves the living room-kitchen as a single room, but prevents the spread of odors and almost completely dampens sounds (in a closed position, of course).

Another way is to divide the kitchen and living room area with the help of a plasterboard or wooden (furniture) partition. Naturally, the partitions are not whole, but only “partial”. In some interiors, the kitchen is separated from the living room only by a hint of a wall, in others it is located in the middle of the zone, leaving two passages on the right and left. Hall combined with the kitchen with an archway or just a beautifully designed opening, often looks much more attractive than a simple separation by means of light. Looking at the photo, you will understand what we are talking about.

The next way – the organization of a bar counter or counter. They slightly differ in design, but not in the way of device. Sometimes even at the stage of repair from the former wall leave a “stump” about a meter high, which is then remade into an appropriate divider. Sometimes such a rack is put on purpose, often made of kitchen cabinets. On the side of the kitchen are cabinets, and on the side of the living room or dining room – a bar counter. Practical. Especially for small-sized kitchen-studios.

There are many options for zoning the kitchen and living room. In the photos you have seen only a small part of the ways of design. Taking one of them as a basis, adding something of your own, you will get your own, original and unique design project of your combined kitchen-living room-dining room. After all, this is how the resulting room is often used.

How to separate the kitchen from the living room partition, we think, it is clear, but that’s not all. The layout of the living room-kitchen provides also the choice of lighting. This is no less important than everything we talked about before.

There are several options for renovating 9 meter kitchens here.

Lighting in the living room-kitchen

Since the rooms with different purposes are combined, they also require different lighting. In the kitchen, work surfaces need to be clearly visible and the light needs to be sharper. In the living-dining room, the ambience should be softer. Ideally, multi-stage systems are used, then the light is bright or dimmed as desired. Based on these requirements and develop a lighting scheme for the combined rooms.

In the kitchen, the problem of illumination of work surfaces can be partially solved by installing on the lower end of the hanging cabinets lamps or LED strip. They and illumination will give and raise the cabinets visually.

If the kitchen area has an “island” or a freestanding counter bar counter, you will have to make lights and above them. These can be ceiling options or descending from the ceiling on long cords. In some versions of the design of the kitchen combined with the living room can be put classic chandeliers.

Interior of the kitchen combined with the living room of a small size

About small rooms have to talk separately. In small areas, most of the ideas can not be realized: functionality in such rooms in the first place. Nevertheless, even on 15 squares you can make a very good interior, what to say about 20 square meters and more ….

Some of the ideas you have already seen on the photo in previous chapters: it is a counter, which is also a dining table and zoning detail, or the same counter, but which on one side – kitchen cabinets.

The main idea is to make the interior of the kitchen combined with the living room in light colors, with a few bright accents. Light shades give volume, expanding the boundaries. Another familiar technique is the use of mirrors.

Several ideas for a small kitchen can be found in this article.

The next point is the installation of furniture at full height: a large amount of it simply will not fit, and you need to fit everything. Therefore, cabinets and other storage systems do under the ceiling. In addition to functionality, they will also merge with the wall, raising the ceiling.

You can read about the design of the kitchen interior here. The subtleties of choosing a kitchen set are described here.