And walls. "Open concept" might look great in photos and provide good "wow" factor, and it's definitely cheaper to build, but it's also a great way to make a lot of square footage feel small when you live in it. Contrast smaller, older houses with lots of smaller rooms, which can often feel as big as much larger, newer houses.
Unfortunately, at least in our market, there's not much built in the last 20 years where the builders favored actual rooms instead of just one giant open public space. If you're lucky the basement's finished so maybe you get two of those.
What would you use all of the extra rooms for? One room for each person to sleep, a laundry room, a couple bathrooms, and a great room with living, dining, and kitchen is all you ever really need right?
Having different rooms really helps keep the kids’ shit from permeating everywhere. We’ve got a big living room mostly open to the kitchen and dining room and I’m very lukewarm on it. I’d love to be able to serve guests without everyone being able to see the kitchen mess, or being able to watch TV without seeing the kids’ toys and kitchen mess and dining table mess. (We have maids come twice a week and it’s still impossible to get that under control.)
A lot of the open concept houses around here use enough space for four rooms for one big one. Usually kitchen + dining area + a single living room easily large enough to be two. If you're lucky you have one other room in the public area, designated by design as a dining room (distinct from the merely-yards-away dining area!), and if you're super lucky it's at least got three walls rather than just being designated by flooring and maybe like one pillar.
More rooms is nice if you don't like being on top of every single other person in the house all the time, without having to go to your bedroom (aren't we supposed to only go there for sleep, for sleep-hygiene reasons?) to escape. In recent houses this means using ~3x the space you actually need to accomplish that, mostly by adding a room or two in a finished basement, because the main public area's gigantic, yes, but also entirely open.
It's also very nice to be able to contain messes. So nice. One large shared living space plus kids means no part of your house ever doesn't look like shit without heroic efforts or paid help.
The same logic applies to a living room that doesn't need to be as big as a football stadium: sofa,TV, a few chairs,table and sobe cabinets..what else is there?
