Open Floor Plans And The Sound They Carry

The open plan solved a real problem of dark, closed-off kitchens. It also removed the walls that were doing acoustic work nobody had itemized.

Walls were separating sound, not just rooms

An interior wall blocks a meaningful amount of sound, which is why a closed kitchen and a living room could run different activities simultaneously.

Removing it merges the two spaces acoustically as completely as it merges them visually, so every sound made anywhere is present everywhere.

The design was evaluated on sight lines and light, both of which are easy to imagine from a drawing, while sound is not.

Hard surfaces make the space louder

Open plans tend to come with hard flooring, quartz or stone counters, large windows and minimal upholstery, all of which reflect sound rather than absorb it.

Reflected sound persists longer, and the accumulated reflections raise the background level and make speech harder to separate from everything else.

This is why conversation in these rooms often runs slightly louder than it needs to, with each speaker responding to a level they helped create.

The kitchen is a loud machine room

Dishwashers, range hoods, blenders, faucets and the noise of cooking itself were previously contained behind a wall for a reason.

In an open plan those sounds arrive in the room where people are talking or watching something, at whatever volume the appliance produces.

The clean-up period after dinner is the clearest case, since it reliably collides with the part of the evening the room is otherwise used for.

Concurrent activity is what suffers

Open plans are excellent when everyone is doing the same thing, which is what they are photographed doing: a party, a meal, a room full of conversation.

They are poor when two people want different things at the same time, because there is no second place to be that is not also this place.

Households that added remote work discovered this quickly, since a video call requires acoustic separation that an open plan structurally cannot provide.

Soft material is the available correction

Rugs, curtains, upholstered furniture and anything textile absorb reflections and lower the persistence of sound in the room.

Large soft surfaces do far more than small ones, so a substantial rug and full-length curtains change a room more than a collection of cushions will.

Partial separation also helps, and a bookcase used as a divider or a half wall recovers some of what was removed without rebuilding the original room.