1. Allows for More Privacy – One of the reasons wall play such a huge role at work and at home is that it can have a huge impact on productivity. Before the pandemic, open plan workplaces were all the rage for many decades. And then a slow but steady backlash developed against this concept – which had been around since the 1950s – when more and more research discovered that open plan offices did not necessarily lead to productivity gains and actually ended up being distracting to building teams or focusing on work. When the pandemic occurred, families discovered pretty much the same thing: it was a lot easier to work if one had a private space all to oneself rather than having everyone gather on the dinner table working together much like in an open plan office. There was just too much idle chatter, noise, and potential distractions that it can be difficult to get work done. Just like offices sought to have more individual privacy using movable barriers (i.e., dividers like the one pictured below), so did people who were forced to work – or attend school – from home. In fact, walls became more desirable at some point during the pandemic as parents realized that with walls, you could have 3 separate spaces to work from: (1) the kitchen, (2) the dining room or (3) the living room. With open plan designs all 3 spaces became joined together and privacy was hard to achieve when you could see and hear everyone doing their own thing.
2. Helps Maintain Neatness & Order – Some architectural purists hate walls and design homes that are open plan. Visually it can be very dramatic. There’s nothing like seeing windows with views stretching as far as the eye can see as soon as you enter someone’s home that’s on a hill or on the top floor of a building. While the views may be inspiring, the cost to you in terms of storage can be pretty steep. Walls exist not only to divide spaces into separate ‘zones’ where people can do different things (i.e., eat, sleep, work, watch TV, etc). Walls also exist so we can install shelves, cabinets and/or closets on them. When I bought my house, one of the first things the seller and his realtor encouraged me to do was to make the ground floor ‘open plan’ by knocking down the wall separating the kitchen and living room. That would have allowed me to have a proper dining area (right now, it’s squished into one corner of the kitchen). It was a good idea on paper. Except that also meant sacrificing the loads of upper and lower cabinet storage that were custom built and already mounted to one side of the wall facing the kitchen. And the end result wasn’t going to be a beautiful view of nature. In fact, my wife and I would be staring at the duplex across the back alley behind our property, which was not really the kind of view we wanted to look at (or even show off). That’s why we opted to keep our wall and the all important storage cabinets that came along with them as these were more important than having an open plan just to look at a nice view.
3. Regulates and/or Controls Cooking Smells – After downsizing from a much larger house to a condo half the size, one of my clients install a wall in her open plan condo to block off the cooking smells that she knew were going to emanate from the kitchen. When she and her husband and two kids all still lived together, she actually lived in a home with two separate kitchens: one that was for show and only used for microwaving food, and another one where the real cooking took place. The second one was where all the smells got isolated from the rest of the house. If you like to cook at home and use strong-smelling spices, or if you like to deep fry, you may want to carefully think about whether it’s a good idea to knock down that wall and make things open plan. A lot of houses built in Vancouver in the 1970s, for example have a very efficient rectangular layout. Knocking down the wall separating the kitchen and dining area would make for a very spacious and attractive open plan layout with the living room out front, dining room in the middle and kitchen at the rear of end of the main floor. Light would stream from both ends of that open plan and the side of the main floor, or from three different directions. However, cooking smells will permeate the entire house (unless you use a powerful exhaust fan). And if you like soft curtains, fabric sofas (and accent chairs), and have throw cushions, remember that these items will retain those smells especially if they’re made from cotton material. You’re better off having using roller shades and having leather furniture if you like to cook spicy food or do deep frying if you have an open plan space as these don’t retain smells as easily. Or you can make do without the open plan and keep your walls to help regulate those cooking smells.
4. Soundproofing – One important function that walls perform is to muffle sound. When you work in an open plan office you hear everything. You hear people talking on the phone. You hear the receptionist taking calls. You hear the courier delivering something to a co-worker. You hear your colleagues’ personal and work conversations. In fact, you get tired of hearing all this noise that you put headphones to drown it all out. Or maybe you ask for a work space that’s not an open table where you can see or hear everyone. It’s the same at home when people are working remotely, or just all together from a day of work or school. When you’re in living room, your thoughts may be interrupted by someone watching TV – or family members talking about their day – right next to you. What should you do? Go to someplace where you can work in silence, like the dining area, kitchen a den/library, or even your own bedroom. This can be challenging in smaller apartments with little or even no walls. Room partitions and room dividers saw a huge spike in sales during the middle of the pandemic, as family members were all forced to work from home together and hear each other’s conversations and idle chatter. People couldn’t cope with not being able to concentrate and bought these folding screens to block out some of the noise and the visual distraction of seeing other people. I personally can’t work with the TV on. I can have music in the background but not the TV. So having someone watch it in a separate room where I can’t hear it is really helpful for my concentration. Open plans are great for visual impact but not so great for being able to work in peace.
5. Entertainment center – One of the most common problems that open plan spaces have is that it can be challenging to have a proper entertainment area, as it forces you to make some tough decisions. When you buy (or rent) a space, you may not always have 4 walls to work with. With most open plans, the 4th wall is non-existent. In a lot of cases, 1 or even 2 walls may have windows, leaving you only 1 free or open wall. And if that 1 last wall already has a fireplace, then where do you place your media cabinet? Do you tear out the fireplace so you can put your TV on that wall (as many people do)? Or do you just put the TV above the fireplace (which is okay but not ideal as it’s a little too high). Ideally, TVs should be hung at eye level or about 4 to 5 feet off the ground to the top edge so as not to cause any neck strain. When you have more walls in your house, you can have more features like a fireplace, a TV wall, or even a work area. Take away your walls and you’re left with just windows. If you can’t put a TV in the living room, you may have to forgo having a fireplace. In smaller apartments, it’s generally recommended to put the TV (or entertainment centre) in the living room rather than in one’s bedroom as electronic devices emit a bluish glow that make it harder to fall asleep. Keep this in mind next time you decide to tear down your wall or hang your electronics.
