Loft Design: Open Floor Plan
One of our favorite types of design projects here at Kimball Starr Interior Design is lofts. It’s exciting to have so much open area to work with: high ceilings, often lots of natural light, and few walls or physical restrictions. However, sometimes you need boundaries to help define an open floor plan, to give it purpose and make it more cozy and livable. Over the next series of blog posts about loft design, we’ll show examples of how to get maximum design impact and best use of your open plan loft based on a recently designed San Francisco loft interior by Kimball Starr.
When you have high-ceiling lofts with lots of open floor space to work with, one problem can be how to design the interior appropriately so they feel intimate. Custom rugs, draperies, and decorative accents are essential design elements that soften the acoustics and personalize the loft to feel more like your home.
In this beautiful award winning San Francisco loft interior, multiple techniques have been used simultaneously to both accentuate the room height for visual drama, and to lower the ceiling height to create intimate entertaining areas.
Authentic Moroccan brass teardrop pendants fill the high space above the custom-designed curved fireplace and dramatic 18 foot high golden draperies emphasize the room height and capture sunlight with a backlit glow. Hanging hand-pierced brass pendants down to the top of the fireplace lowers the visual focus and adds a stunning design element.
To create a more intimate space in the living area, white glass pendants hang down to visually lower the ceiling directly over the seating area and the living room rug has been custom-cut at an angle to echo the lines of the sofa creating room for the adjacent pivoting bookcase on floor casters. By customizing the shape and size of the rug, we’ve defined the living area zone and created an inviting and intimate space.
When entering the loft, you stand underneath the upstairs loft overlook where this lower ceiling compresses the space and identifies the entry and kitchen as separate zones, showing how varying ceiling heights in the open floor plan can create different spaces. After walking past the lower ceiling, the compressed space explodes into soaring ceilings, underscored by the dramatic height of the draperies.
In this incredible space, it’s important to create a feeling of intimacy for relaxing and entertaining, which is accomplished by the comfortable contemporary sofa sectional offering multiple seats for reading and entertaining next to a roaring fire.
An intimate mid-century dining area and separate lounge area are created by grouping furniture under the lower ceiling. The entire space where the lounge chairs are located, converts into a guest bedroom which we’ll show you in the last of this 3-part series of Loft Design. It’s easy to see how you would live in these spaces – they feel cozy and intimate.
Filling spaces often isn’t a problem for modern homeowners- it’s more about making lofts feel comfortable and cozy while still preserving their dramatic openness. The best loft design is a balancing act, and we’re loft design experts at Kimball Starr Interior Design! In the next installment in this 3-part series on loft design, we’ll talk about clever ideas for loft storage. Please check back next Wednesday to learn about storage solutions for this loft or yours.
Kimball Starr Interior Design is a San Francisco award winning loft design firm that provides contemporary interior design for residential and commercial interiors.