Open plan living space is fine for lots of people, but if it’s not properly zoned – it can just turn out squalid.

Big gloomy kitchen units looming down on you, with no separation between the kitchen and the sitting area you feel like you’ll get frying oil spattering on your upholstery.

Even just visually, when there’s a big sprawl of kitchen units, they dominate an open plan space.

It’s not giving ‘hosting a dinner party’, it’s giving ‘depressing bedsit’.

What you need instead are proper zones. Here they’ve got the kitchen at one end, they’ve used an island to create a threshold, zoning off the kitchen units and protecting the seating area at the other end.

In an open plan space a kitchen island can be a great way to create this separation. You can still talk over it, but you don’t feel like you’re sitting among the pots and pans.

In a smaller space, a kitchen peninsular works well too.

And rather than too many units everywhere you can also use furniture for storage, that doesn’t look kitcheny, and can happily go in the rest of the space.