Open Floor Plans in a NYC Apartment: Pros, Cons and What the Building Allows

An open floor plan takes down the walls between the kitchen, the dining room and the living room and makes one large room of three small ones. In a New York City apartment it can be the best change you make or one you regret, and the answer turns on three things: how you live, what is inside the wall, and what your building and the city will let you remove.

The case for opening up

• More daylight. Light from the living room windows reaches a kitchen that had none, and you switch on fewer lamps during the day.
• Company while you cook. Nobody is left alone in the living room while the host works behind a wall, and nobody shouts through one.
• Sight lines. You can watch a toddler or a pet from the stove, and keep an eye on the soup from the table.
• Freedom to arrange. With the walls gone there is more room to work with, and one design carries through the whole space.
• A bigger feel. The floor area is the same, but a small apartment reads as larger when the eye runs from end to end.

The case for keeping a wall

• Noise. Without walls, the television, the dishwasher, the dog and a crying child share one room with whoever is trying to cook or work.
• Cooking smells and grease travel to the sofa. A range hood matters far more in an open kitchen than in a closed one.
• Less privacy. Everything and everyone is on view from the front door.
• Less wall. Every wall you remove is a wall that held cabinets, shelves, art or a radiator.
• Mess on show. A sink full of dishes makes the whole apartment look untidy, and pets have a clear run at the food.

What is inside the wall

Before the pros and cons matter, the wall has to be one that can go. Some walls carry the floor above. Others hide the building’s pipes: the water, waste and gas lines that serve the apartments over and under yours. The New York City Bar Association’s model alteration agreement for co-ops bars an owner from interfering with the building’s gas, electric, heating or plumbing systems and requires that water, steam and gas valves stay accessible after the work. A wall with a riser in it usually stays, or stays in part.

What the city requires

The Department of Buildings names moving a load-bearing wall as work that needs a permit application filed by a professional engineer or registered architect. For walls that carry nothing, the city’s rule on work exempt from permits is narrow: in a residential building, removing part of a non-load-bearing, non-fire-rated partition is exempt only up to the lesser of half of that wall’s surface or 45 square feet, and not at all in certain special zoning districts (1 RCNY 101-14). Taking out a whole wall between a kitchen and a living room goes beyond that, so plan on drawings and a filing.

The kitchen’s size matters too. State law treats a cooking space of 80 square feet or more as a kitchen and a smaller one as a kitchenette, with different rules for windows and ventilation, so the architect checks what the opened room becomes on paper.

What the building requires

In a co-op or condo the board’s consent comes first. Expect to submit plans, which the building’s own architect or engineer reviews at your expense, and to carry the insurance and deposits the alteration agreement asks for. Our pages on co-op renovation and apartment renovation in NYC explain how that process runs.

Halfway options

If the wall cannot go, or you are not sure you want it gone, there is ground between open and closed:

• A wide opening or a counter-height pass-through that keeps the wall’s ends and whatever runs inside them.
• A peninsula in place of the wall, which keeps cabinets and a visual edge to the kitchen.
• Glass or pocket doors that open the kitchen for a party and close it for frying.
• A partial wall that screens the sink from the front door.

An open kitchen is on display, so its cabinets and finishes carry more weight; see kitchen renovation in NYC. For other ways to gain room without losing a wall, read our tips on making the most of a small NYC apartment.

Questions people ask