When Winnetka homeowner Jim Bychowski and his wife, Barbara, decided to redesign their kitchen and family rooms without walls a few years ago, not everyone in the family was open to the new free-flowing look at first.
“My [teen] daughters called [the railing separating the rooms] ‘Jurassic Park,’ because they thought it looked like the big railing that keeps the tyrannosaurus Rex in its place,” says Jim Bychowski with a laugh.
For the railing, Bychowski used 5/8-inch steel rods and cherry wood scraps left over from the kitchen cabinets. “It’s a nice combination of wood and metal–it breaks up the room a little bit but not too much.”
To open up their home’s 1960s-era kitchen and enlarge the existing family room, the Bychowskis also dropped the family room about 3 feet below the original first floor and added a clerestory (a high wall of windows) in the middle of the ceiling. “The family room is a big square room, so it gives the space a lot more dimension,” Bychowski says.
As open floor plans continue to eclipse traditional dining and family room layouts, homeowners are finding a wealth of creative ways to divide up these expansive spaces. From decorative railings to two-sided fireplaces to varying ceiling and floor heights, visual dividers give rooms a more intimate feel without the boxy look of traditional walls, architects say.
“It’s a way to have a more open plan without a room feeling cavernous,” Evanston architect Chris Turley says.
On the flip side, homeowners also can make small spaces look more expansive by dividing living areas with elements other than walls, says Sarah Susanka, an architect and author of “The Not So Big House” book series by The Taunton Press.
“The value of opening up a view [by taking out a wall] is so you can see much further through the house, which gives you the experience of more space,” Susanka says. “But we still need some differentiation of one place from another to give the awareness that this is one space and that’s another one.”
Among the most popular room divider choices are half walls, railings, built-in bookcases and fireplaces.
“Bookcases and fireplaces have degrees of openness and closed-ness,” Susanka says. “A bookshelf, for example, can let you see through if it’s open on both sides. It could also be shelves for a collection of ceramics, pieces of art, little sculptures. And fireplaces, especially the see-through kind, give you that sense of a very solid object, but we know that there’s space beyond. You can also have a fireplace more like a freestanding element, with space on either side.”
It pays to keep an open mind about materials too. Half walls and railings can be fashioned from drywall, brick, metal, wood or any number of creative combinations. Or, let light flow freely through translucent walls made of glass block or frosted glass–an especially effective way to add more light to the top floor of a house where dormers aren’t an option, says Oak Park architect Arlene Warda.
And letting in more light doesn’t have to come at the expense of privacy, Warda adds. Lombard homeowners Jeff and Patricia Simmons, for example, replaced a wall between their kitchen and living room with four sliding Shoji screens to create a dining area that can be closed off from the kitchen.
“We needed something that would afford us some privacy between the two rooms if we needed it. Sometimes you just don’t want all your guests in the kitchen,” says Patricia Simmons. “The Shoji screens slide on a track, so we can have one to four of them open. There’s a lot of flexibility. “
Columns often are viewed as barriers rather than dividers, says Susanka, but she supports them. “Many people have an instant aversion to a column–they feel it would be an obstruction,” Susanka says. “But it allows you to perceive a boundary without it becoming a solid obstruction, and it can lend a lot of character to spaces. And when you take out a wall, you very often do need columns [for support].”
Ceilings of different heights also serve as effective visual breaks within a space, says Turley, but raising and lowering floor heights isn’t as effective. “[Different] floor heights are tough, for both structural and accessibility reasons,” he says.
A more practical option for floors is using different materials from one area to the next, such as slate or tile in a kitchen and wood or carpeting in an adjacent family room.
Whatever type of room divider you choose, hiring an experienced architect or designer is recommended because it’s easy to get carried away. “Any of these things [room dividers] can look great or awful,” says Susanka. “You need somebody who’s really used to doing this kind of thing.”
Winnetka homeowner Jim Bychowski, in fact, says he initially was skeptical about the flat roof and clerestory his architect envisioned for the family room but ended up loving the finished version. He and his wife both come from large families, and the new room arrangement is perfect for the frequent entertaining they do.
“Now that the kids are moving out, we thought maybe we should go get a condo, but we realized we like our house a lot,” he says.
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High-style, low-cost room dividers
Want the no-wall look without a major redesign? Try these low-hassle, high-style room dividers.
Movable screens. Although few homeowners want their open-plan lofts or living rooms diminished by walls, there are times when a bit more privacy is needed.
– One answer is the standard-issue Japanese folding screen, which is easily moved according to your needs, lightweight and relatively inexpensive, starting below $100 for three-panel screens.
– For a sleek, modern look, Designers Eye (www.desginerseye.com/wall.htm) offers flexible walls–50-inch-long felted wool screens that attach to each other magnetically.
– Panel-track fabric shades. These shades hang from a ceiling-mounted track.
– Kirsch’s PanelTracs (www.kirsch.com) come in a variety of sleek fabrics and easily attach, so it’s possible to change fabric panels with seasons or trends.
– See-through shelving or bookcases. Modular, see-through shelving can be a practical way to divide a space–you can stash your books and vases on these shelves and still get a view into the adjoining room.
– The Metropolis Book Divider at www.usonahome.com offers a modern, substantial-looking floor-to-ceiling room divider in a variety of wood finishes.
– West Elm’s geometric storage units put a visual twist on traditional horizontal shelving and come in tall (71.75 inches) and short versions (32 inches). Find them at westelm.com.
–Elizabeth Brewster
