Buying Guide

Judging the layout of an open-plan apartment before you buy

Open plan removes walls and adds routes, which is a trade rather than an improvement. Five checks tell you which side of it a specific apartment falls on.

Count the doors before anything else

Open plan is usually sold on the absence of internal walls, and what actually determines whether it works is the number of doors opening into the space and where they lead.

Each door swing removes a stretch of wall and adds a circulation route. A large open room with four doors has fewer viable layouts than a smaller one with two, and no furniture arrangement corrects it.

Every door is drawn on a floor plan with its arc. Reading those before the viewing turns a general look around into four specific questions.

Map the routes, then check nothing sits on them

Walk from the front door to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to any balcony. Those are the two journeys made most, and a seating or dining zone sitting on either is interrupted every time someone crosses it.

Allow roughly 80 cm for a route past furniture, a metre behind dining chairs and 40 cm between a sofa and a low table. The routes should run between the zones rather than through them.

This is the check that separates an open-plan room that feels generous from one that feels like a corridor with furniture around the edges.

Sit where the seating will go and look at the kitchen

In an open-plan apartment the kitchen is permanently visible, and what you see from the seating position is what you will see every evening.

A worktop at counter height is visible from a sofa; the same worktop behind a raised bar edge is not. A sink facing the room is visible; a sink on a return is not. These are layout facts rather than styling ones and in an existing kitchen they are largely fixed.

Check the extraction while you are there. Turn it on and ask whether it vents outside or recirculates through a filter, because a recirculating unit in an open-plan room is materially less effective and heavy cooking will be noticeable in the living half. Altering the route touches the building's common systems in a copropriété and requires consent.

Check whether the room can be lit in two halves

This is where most open-plan apartments fail and it is the cheapest thing to correct.

One bright ceiling fitting serving both halves produces a kitchen-lit living room. In a country where the sun sets before half past four in late December and a large share of winter days are overcast, that is the condition for five months of the year.

Count the ceiling points and the position of every socket in each half, and note which sockets are switched. Separate switching is the whole mechanism: task light on the worktop, three layers in the living half, and the central fitting used only during the day. Unfurnished Luxembourg lettings frequently come with bare fixtures or none, and anything wired requires consent.

Listen, because one room is one acoustic space

Kitchens are necessarily hard: tiles, glass, stone, metal. Combined with an open living area that produces a room where every sound carries, which affects conversation, television and anyone taking a call.

Stand in the middle with the window closed and stay silent for thirty seconds. That measures what the building transmits through its structure, which in the converted townhouses of Limpertsberg, Belair and the Gare district is far more consequential than the street and cannot be changed by an owner, since the floors between lots are common parts.

What can be changed sits in the soft half: a rug with underlay, curtains hung outside the reveal, felt pads on every leg and one soft surface on a wall.

Storage, which open plan makes visible rather than smaller

Where the kitchen is permanently in view, what is on the worktop is part of the living room. That raises the storage requirement rather than lowering it.

Count the drawers rather than the doors, since drawers hold considerably more usable volume. Check whether there is landing space for dirty plates that is not the surface still in use. Measure the longest uninterrupted wall in the living half, since that is where closed storage has to go. And measure the cave, taken rather than described, with the base of the walls checked for salt bloom.

The resale question

Open plan suits some household types and not others, which narrows the pool slightly in both directions. What genuinely affects value is whether the layout works: a room that furnishes easily shows better and suits more households, and buyer pool determines how quickly a property sells rather than what it is worth on paper.

Note also that removing a wall after purchase is rarely a free option. In a copropriété anything touching a load-bearing element is a common part, and work of that kind requires the general assembly's authorisation, with assemblies meeting once a year.

Three questions we are asked

Is open plan better for a family? Better for supervision, worse for concentration and noise. The mitigation is orientation and separate lighting rather than a different layout.

Can I close a kitchen off later? Sometimes, and it touches the structure and the extraction, both of which are usually common parts. Ask before assuming.

What is the most predictive single check? The number of doors and their swings, followed by whether the two halves can be lit and switched separately.

What to record for each open-plan apartment

Seven fields, filled the same evening, because after four viewings the open room you remember as generous will be the one with the best kitchen.

Number of doors and their swings. The two circulation routes and whether any zone sits on one. The sightline from the seating position to the kitchen. Ceiling points and socket positions in each half, and which sockets are switched. Clear worktop length and whether there is landing space for plates. Whether the extraction vents outside or recirculates. And thirty seconds of silence with the window closed.

An apartment failing the first and fourth will resist every arrangement, whatever its floor area.

Three questions we are asked

Does open plan add value? It suits some household types and not others, so it narrows the pool slightly both ways. What adds value is a layout that furnishes easily, since that shows better and suits more buyers.

Can I add a wall later? Sometimes, and it touches the structure and frequently the extraction, both common parts requiring the general assembly's authorisation. Assume not until told otherwise.