Open plan

Open plan is the generic term used in architectural and interior design for any floor plan which makes use of large, open spaces and minimizes the use of small, enclosed rooms such as private offices. The term can also refer to landscaping of housing estates, business parks, etc., in which there are no defined property boundaries, such as hedges, fences or walls. In residential design, open plan or open concept (the term used mainly in Canada) describes the elimination of barriers such as walls and doors that traditionally separated distinct functional areas, such as kitchen, living room, and dining room.

In the 1880s, small public rooms of the home with specific functions began to be replaced by larger rooms that would fulfill multiple uses, with the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms still being enclosed private spaces. Larger rooms were made possible by advances in centralized heating that allowed larger spaces to be kept at comfortable temperatures.

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the early advocates for open plan design in houses, expanding on the ideas of Charles and Henry Greene and shingle style architecture. Wright's designs were based on a centralized kitchen which opened to other public spaces of the home where the housewife would be "more hostess 'officio', operating in gracious relation to her home, instead of being a kitchen mechanic behind closed doors."

A home with this type of layout has one or more large, open rooms that function as multiple rooms within a single living space. The most common is a "great room" that combines the kitchen, dining room, and living room in one shared space. These floor plans usually work well in homes with a smaller area, while larger homes have more leeway to work with when integrating great rooms into a floor plan.

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