My Disdain for Open-Concept Living

By Joe Boos, Certified Master Inspector® and NC Licensed Home Inspector

Is open-concept living actually better, or has it just been marketed that way?

Sometimes it works. Often, it doesn’t. In many homes, open-concept living layouts introduce problems with noise, privacy, clutter, and function that aren’t obvious in listing photos. After years of walking through real houses, not renderings or staged showpieces, I’ve come to see open-concept not as a universal upgrade, but as a default choice that’s rarely questioned.

That’s where my skepticism comes from.

People praise open-concept living for light, flow, and flexibility. Those benefits are real. But they come with tradeoffs that the people who actually live there quietly absorb. And more often than not, the design choice itself feels less intentional and more like the path of least resistance.

The Death of Functional Identity

When the kitchen, living room, and dining room combine into one uninterrupted space, you don’t end up with three rooms. You end up with one oversized zone trying to perform three very different roles.

Cooking.
Relaxing.
Eating.
Entertaining.
Working.
Existing.

Each function competes with the others. Furniture placement becomes a negotiation. Lighting has to compromise. Storage never quite lands where it should.

I jokingly refer to them as the “klining” room, but the critique is serious. The space loses its identity. Rooms used to tell you what they were for. Now, open-concept asks the occupants to figure it out on the fly… every single day.

Acoustics Were an Afterthought

Open-concept homes are loud. Not in an obvious way, but in a slow, cumulative way.

The blender runs.
The TV is on.
Someone’s on a call.
Someone else is cooking.

Without walls, sound has nowhere to go but everywhere. Hard surfaces, high ceilings, and wide spans only make it worse. You don’t notice it during a walkthrough. However, you notice it when you live there and realize there’s no quiet place left in the house.

Here’s the thing: walls don’t just divide space. They absorb sound. When designers remove them, they usually don’t redesign acoustics to compensate.

Cooking Smells Don’t Respect “Flow”

In an open-concept layout, the kitchen doesn’t stay in the kitchen.

Whatever you cook becomes part of the entire house. Ventilation helps, but it rarely solves the issue completely. Strong smells linger. Light smells travel. Yesterday’s dinner greets you the next morning.

Boundaries matter. Walls offer one of the simplest and most effective boundaries we have, and removing them has consequences that get downplayed because they aren’t glamorous.

Visual Clutter Becomes Permanent

In a traditional layout, a messy kitchen is just a messy kitchen.

In an open-concept home, it’s the backdrop to everything.

Every dish in the sink.
All appliances on the counter.
Each unfinished task.

There’s no visual separation, no place to rest your eyes. The space demands constant tidiness to feel calm, which works great in photos and far less well in real life. Most households don’t live like a magazine spread… no matter how good their intentions are.

Privacy Was the First Casualty

Walls provide more than structure. They create separation, both physical and psychological.

Open-concept layouts remove the ability to:

• Close a door
• Retreat without leaving the space entirely
• Be present without being involved

This becomes more obvious as homes take on more roles. Work-from-home didn’t pair well with open-concept living. Neither does a household where people operate on different schedules or energy levels.

Sometimes people don’t want to be together. They want to be nearby but separate. Unfortunately, open-concept doesn’t allow for that gracefully.

Furniture Placement Is Always a Compromise

People often describe open spaces as “flexible,” but in practice they’re awkward.

Couches float.
Rugs define imaginary rooms.
Traffic paths cut straight through seating areas.

Instead of designing around comfort, you design around circulation. The room tells you where furniture can’t go more than where it should. Walls give furniture something to work with. Without them, everything feels temporary… even when it isn’t.

It’s Great for Photos. Less Great for Living.

Open-concept homes photograph beautifully.

Wide angles.
Clean sightlines.
Natural light everywhere.

They sell an idea, and that idea performs exceptionally well online. But houses aren’t static images. People live in them. Use them. Test them.

What looks expansive in a listing can feel exposed once the novelty wears off. The difference between a good photograph and a good home becomes clear after the first few months.

Lazy Design and the Loss of a Home’s Soul

This is the part people don’t like hearing.

In many cases, open-concept design feels lazy. Not always, but often.

Instead of thoughtfully arranging rooms, transitions, and proportions, designers remove walls and declare the problem solved. The result is a space that technically checks boxes but lacks character, intention, and hierarchy.

Homes used to have rhythm. Movement. Moments of compression and release. Spaces felt distinct yet connected. When everything opens up indiscriminately, that rhythm disappears.

It’s lazy design that detracts from the soul of a home.

My Honest Take

Open-concept living isn’t inherently wrong. It’s just wildly overused.

It works for some households.
It frustrates others.
And people frequently adopt it without asking the most important question:

How do you actually live in your house?

Walls aren’t the enemy. Thoughtless design is.

And sometimes the most meaningful improvement you can make isn’t tearing walls down… it’s understanding why they were there in the first place.

Common Questions About Open-Concept Homes

What is meant by open-concept?

Open-concept typically refers to a floor plan where the kitchen, living room, and dining room share a single open space with few or no interior walls. The idea emphasizes sightlines, light, and shared space rather than separation by function.

Why is open-concept so popular?

Open-concept layouts photograph well, feel larger during walkthroughs, and align with modern real estate marketing. Psychologically speaking, it gives off the illusion of grandeur… “you’re not cool unless your home is open-concept.”  People often choose them by default rather than as a response to how they actually live in their homes.

What is the difference between open-concept and closed-concept?

An open-concept plan prioritizes visual and physical openness, while a closed-concept plan uses walls and doors to separate rooms by function. Closed layouts give you more control over noise, privacy, and visual clutter, while open layouts emphasize connection and flow.

About the Author
Joe Boos is a Certified Master Inspector®, Licensed Home Inspector, and owner of Realm Inspections. He has spent decades working in and around residential construction and evaluates homes for a living. This perspective comes from inspecting real homes as they’re actually lived in, not from idealized plans or marketing renderings.