Just about every home — no matter how modest or palatial — used to stick to the status quo when it came to the floor plan: Food was cooked in the kitchen, consumed in the dining room and everyone adjourned to the living room to gather around the fire.These days, that setup is as antiquated as your grandmother's lonely, closed-off kitchen. New homes are built with the food-prep, dining, relaxing and entertaining areas folded into one voluminous "great room." In older homes, walls are coming down to make way for more modern, open-plan living. In city centers, former factories and other buildings are being transformed into lofts to house droves of urban professionals, empty nesters and other converts to the charms of wide-open living.
"People are looking for more open floor plans to accommodate more casual lifestyles," says San Francisco interior designer Steven Miller (www.StevenMillerDesignStudio.com). But creating a cohesive, beautiful and functional open space can be tricky. "The challenge is to pull a large space together visually and to make it feel comfortable and intimate while maintaining the openness," Miller says. Read on to discover simple strategies for making your loft feel livable and your great room look gorgeous.
