Few project decisions spark as much debate among clients as this one: open or closed kitchen? Over the last twenty years, the kitchen integrated into the living room went from a design-magazine rarity to the default choice in almost any remodel. But "default" doesn't mean "right for everyone." The real question isn't what's trending — it's how you cook, who visits you, and how much mess you're willing to show every single day.
What an open kitchen gains and loses
Opening the kitchen to the living or dining room has clear advantages: more light, a greater sense of spaciousness, and a different social experience, where whoever's cooking isn't cut off from the rest of the house. In compact apartments — increasingly the norm rather than the exception in Lima — removing a wall can be the difference between a space that feels small and one that feels complete.
The cost of that openness is real too. Cooking smells and steam circulate freely through the whole house, blender and extractor-fan noise creeps into the living-room conversation, and above all: everything in the kitchen stays in plain sight all the time. An open kitchen demands a constant level of tidiness that a closed kitchen simply doesn't ask for. If your household cooks hard and often — sofritos, fried food, aromatic home cooking — that's a factor worth taking seriously before you knock down the wall.
What a closed kitchen offers that often gets underrated
The closed kitchen has a bad reputation as "outdated," but it's still the most logical option for certain lifestyles. It contains smells and noise, lets you leave dirty dishes or a half-used cutting board without it being visible from the dining room, and gives you more wall surface for storage — something that completely changes the functionality of a small kitchen.
In the Peruvian context, there's also a factor generic articles on the topic tend to skip: many homes still have domestic help who work mainly in the kitchen, and a closed kitchen gives that person their own working space, without being exposed to the rest of the house while cooking or washing up. It's a practical consideration, not just an aesthetic one, and it's worth discussing openly with the client at the start of the project.
There's no "correct" kitchen. There's one that responds to how you live, and another that only responds to how it looks in a photograph.
The in-between solutions that resolve the false dilemma
Between fully open and fully closed there's a wide range of solutions that often turn out to be the smartest answer. Islands or bars that separate without fully closing off, creating visual continuity while still marking a functional boundary. Sliding doors or glass panels that let you open the kitchen up when guests are over and close it while cooking something with a strong smell. Semi-open kitchens with an interior window toward the dining room, letting light and eye contact through without exposing all the activity.
These in-between solutions usually take a bit more planning — especially around ventilation and extractor placement — but end up giving the best of both worlds to families that don't fully fit either extreme.
How to decide for your own project
Before deciding, it helps to honestly answer a few simple questions: do you cook daily or occasionally? Do you host often and like the kitchen to be part of that social experience, or would you rather it stay out of view? How much real time do you actually spend keeping a house visually tidy? And in projects with domestic staff, does that space also need to function as an independent workspace?
There's no universal answer, which is why I'm wary of any article that tells you "this is what's used now" without first asking how you live. The kitchen is one of the most-used rooms in a house; its design deserves to respond to the real routine of the people who live there, not to the trend of the moment.
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