Britain’s obsession with open-plan interior design appears to be waning, according to new research.
Instead of knocking down walls to create a single, large living space – a major trend over the past two decades – in 2023 it seems families would prefer to create more separate rooms.
More than half of the UK property owners surveyed by Spaceslide said that they would sooner create additional rooms for kids’ toys, home-working, games consoles and students’ homework than knock down partitions in favour of wide-open interiors.
The company’s findings were supported by a 36 per cent increase in sales of room dividers during the past year.
Jon Gough, of Spaceslide, commented: “We set about researching what was driving this trend and whether there was a backlash to open-plan living – which we believe there is.”
He suggested that the reversal was being driven by new technology and changes to family life.
“Compared to ten years ago, there is increased home-working, more teenagers having bigger and better entertainment systems comprising large screens, games consoles and computers,” he explained.
Gough added that these worked better if they were “set up separate to the TV-viewing family area … [lending] themselves to private rooms rather than open-plan living.”
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