Kitchen-living room design: 100 photos of beautiful interiors

A kitchen combined with a living room is a fairly common interior solution these days. It reflects the desire for open spaces full of light and air, maximum comfort. The spacious room makes it possible to realize the wildest dreams, unusual ideas. And for studio apartments, a combined kitchen and living room is, sometimes, the only possible option.

Owners of small-sized housing are also willing to remove partition walls. Such a move allows you to increase the available area, make a more modern layout of the living room. What should be the design of a kitchen combined with a living room? Let’s figure it out.

Advantages and disadvantages of the kitchen-living room

The modern design, combining the kitchen and living room, looks harmonious, creates the feeling of a single, spacious complex, full of light and air.

What else attracts such a solution?

• With a special configuration of rooms – with inconvenient niches, bay windows, in the form of a polygon or with an arched wall, the combination of kitchen and living room allows you to use the entire living area with maximum efficiency.
• In small studio apartments, kitchens and living rooms provide a unique opportunity to create an interior to your liking, without looking back at the “charms” of a standard layout.

• The combined space unites family members, allows you to become closer, to know the interests and tastes of a loved one. In the kitchen-living room it is more fun to do everyday chores, cooking, cleaning.
• You can arrange parties, invite guests who will feel comfortable in such a living room.

• A single interior design of the kitchen-living room creates a holistic image of the living space.
• The absence of walls simplifies movement, and two or three windows (depending on the layout) give more light.

• If there are one or more small children in the family, parents do not need to fear for the child left in the hall – everything is perfectly visible in the kitchen-living room.
• In the living room combined with the kitchen, it is enough to install one TV, while separate rooms require the purchase of a second unit.
• It is possible to allocate a comfortable, cozy area for a dining table.
• And, of course, combining the kitchen with the living room helps to save more precious space, which is very important in small apartments.

However, the combination of the living room and kitchen has several “pitfalls” that you should be aware of when deciding on redevelopment:

• Redevelopment should take into account load-bearing walls.

• The absence of walls and doors has a negative effect: sounds and aromas during cooking float freely throughout the kitchen-living room. Therefore, you will have to install a powerful hood and look for low-noise household appliances.

• And one more everyday nuance: a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink or a sloppy countertop in the living room can completely spoil the impression of the most stylish and expensive interior. Therefore, cleanliness will have to be maintained constantly.

Zoning and layout of the kitchen-living room

Before starting work on the creation of a living room-kitchen, it is necessary to develop a detailed, carefully thought-out plan. To do this, you can use a computer program that allows you to visually view the final result from all sides.

What nuances should be taken into account:

• The kitchen is traditionally divided into three areas – a work area, a walk-through area and a small table. It can be replaced by a bar counter, which simultaneously plays the role of a table, a distribution window and a partition between the living-dining room and the kitchen itself.
• The living room is also divided into 2-3 sections, depending on the lifestyle, the number of family members and the need. There is necessarily a comfortable, cozy recreation area that can combine the functions of a bedroom.

In addition, in this part of the room, a dining group is usually equipped with a large table, chairs or armchairs for a large family or in case guests arrive. A separate area is allocated for sports simulators, a study room, a play or study area for a child.

To make the space look harmonious, it is not necessary to interrupt it with arched structures, differences in ceilings, floors, partitions. The ideal option for designating a kitchen area is a bar counter, an island or a peninsula. For the living room – a corner sofa or a set of elegant armchairs and a tea table. In the middle, a large dining table looks appropriate.

There is another interesting modern solution: if it is customary in the family to eat not in the kitchen, but separately, you can refuse a large table and 4-6 chairs. And use the vacant space properly in order to install additional household appliances or expand the recreation area in the living room.

Color palette and finishing materials

There are several secrets of such interior design:

• Choose a uniform style of wall and ceiling decoration, neutral, close to natural, color scheme. In a large space, it will be very difficult to harmoniously combine bright, eye-catching colors and different, sometimes opposite in their qualities, textures. There is a big risk that a chaotic dissonance will turn out instead of a single space.
• Good artificial lighting is very important. Each area in the kitchen and living room is equipped with its own set of lighting fixtures: a ceiling chandelier or lamp, lighting, wall sconces, table lamps and floor lamps.
• The use of floor coverings of various types – tiles and parquet boards, linoleum and carpet, to highlight areas in the kitchen and living room, is not always justified. The floor in the same style looks more advantageous, there are no sharp, ugly borders.

It is necessary to take care of a sufficient number of sockets that are mounted according to the scheme: the number of constantly used household appliances plus one more. The location of the switches should not violate the symmetry, so it is necessary to carefully consider the connection scheme of the lamps.

Features of furniture arrangement

When working out the plan of the kitchen-living room, it is necessary to immediately outline the layout of upholstered furniture, cabinets for the hall and kitchen set. How can this be done? Draw a plan of the living room and kitchen on paper, taking into account the door and window openings.

Cut out the overall pieces of furniture from a separate sheet at the appropriate scale, and creatively comprehend their location by moving around the “room”. The same can be done in the online planner.

Here are some tips from a professional designer:

• Immediately designate permanent routes of movement in the living room and kitchen, respectively, arrange free passages with a width of at least 60 cm. Furniture and decor items should not interfere with movement.
• In each functional area, determine the focus of the composition, the central object around which the rest of the furniture will be placed. It can be a TV, a dining table, a fireplace, a decorative wall with a beautiful picture, a photo gallery or a panel.

• It is worth thinking carefully about the placement of the TV. Ideally, the screen should be clearly visible from both the kitchen and the living room.
• Do not place the work area in the kitchen so that the hostess has to be with her back to the living room all the time during the cooking process. This prevents communication with other family members, guests, and causes psychological discomfort.

• If the living room has an elongated, narrow layout, you can visually bring it to a more harmonious square by installing a built-in wardrobe, a dressing room with a facade to match the wall decoration, or mirrored doors along the entire end wall. Also, you can decorate long walls in light, white tones, and short ones with panels under dark wood, brick or masonry.
• The furniture along the walls is a relic of the last century. Now the island layout is trending, when the living room and kitchen space is divided into sections according to the number of functional zones.

The interior design can be decorated in any style. The main thing is that the situation was to your liking, caused only positive, pleasant emotions.

Interior photos for inspiration