How to create stylish, seamless open-plan living

To help your open living spaces look and feel fantastic, it’s important to think carefully about how you’ll furnish them. The placement and combination of furniture can either enhance or close off a space. And while interior decorating magazines and websites often make it look simple, it’s easy to get wrong – without really knowing why.

To help you create beautiful, relaxing open-plan spaces you’ll love, we spoke with Rosie from LaBelle Maison Interiors who offers some helpful tips.

Create continuity

The key to creating seamless open-plan spaces is to ensure your eye can move around the area without any interruption to the space itself. If you have a look that isn’t cohesive – by using too many colours for example – it can quickly start to look very busy and broken up. Once that happens, you lose the ability to maintain that gorgeous, open-plan.

You can create flow in an open-plan space by linking variations of a similar colour within furnishings, window treatments, and other objects you wish to have in the room.

When painting walls, use a light and neutral colour that creates a flow. Then, use variations to highlight feature architraves, ceilings, and doors – but keep them in a similar colour palette.

Lighten up

Light walls will give the benefit of additional natural light, which then creates an illusion of more space. When you’re planning a new home build, consider using high ceilings which also enhance the sense of spaciousness.

Mood lighting and lamps can also help enhance and demarcate open spaces. A tip for those planning a new build – once you’ve decided on placement for your lamps, consider having power points on the floor rather than the wall.

It can be tempting to push your furniture out to the walls to allow more space in the centre. Instead, arrange your furniture away from the walls and leave open space around the perimeter to create a natural feeling of space and lightness.

One of the lovely ways to use furniture is to have it back-to-back. For example, you can place a console table behind a sofa that is sitting centrally in a room, and then layer the table with some of your favourite objects of desire.

ADD DEFINITION WITH RUGS

One of the other lovely things in an open-plan setting is to use rugs. You can use these to help define areas, and of course they add texture and colour.

GET REFLECTIVE

Another lovely item to include in your open-plan space is a mirror or two. These offer a lovely reflective value and can help to illuminate a room and create a beautiful ambience.