Flexible Living: Six Ways to Divide Rooms

There are ways to divide a room that doesn’t involve an entire wall installation. In fact, there are a ton of potential solutions. In this guide, we’ll explore six ways to divide rooms and what each option might offer you. Let’s dive in!

1. Kitchen Island

You may want to section off two or more areas in your kitchen based on functionality. And a well-placed kitchen island can be the ideal way to pull this off.

Dividing a kitchen may involve creating one of the following zonal setups:

• Cooking area and dining area
• Cooking/dining area and socialising/living space
• Cooking area, dining area, and kids’ play zone

An island can offer your kitchen a central focal point while helping to differentiate two or more zones, although it would work best for separating two zones. Depending on your kitchen setup, you may want to have the kitchen island fitted next to a wall and just behind a living space (e.g., dining table or sofa).

2. Room Divider Doors

One of the clearer approaches to dividing a room is the instalment of room divider doors. There is a plethora of internal doors on the market to choose from that could pull off the job.

Popular types of room divider doors include:

• Conventional door
• Bi-fold door
• Sliding door
• Pocket sliding door
• Tubular track sliding door
• Bespoke slimline sliding door

Room divider doors can also vary greatly depending on the material used. Ultimately, room divider doors are a more clearcut way of separating a space to truly create two distinct rooms. Naturally, the cost to hang a door can vary significantly too, although the average cost is around £200 to £250 for a conventional door with the price rising to several hundred more or even several thousand pounds for the more sophisticated options. While more expensive, it’s the most effective way of dividing a room.

3. Rugs

One effortless way of dividing a room is to include rugs in one space and not the other. It seems absurd how simple this approach is but in the right space, it can do the job just fine.

For example, in a large living space, you may want to place a sizeable rug beneath a table and chairs as a dining area. This will help clearly contrast this zone from the rest of the room. Along with being straightforward, adding a rug (or a few rugs) is a very affordable way of dividing a room in two.

4. Distinct Paint Colours

Another approach you may want to consider is the use of distinct wall and floor colours to separate a space in two. For a very clear line to distinguish both sides of the room, you could have the floor and walls a certain colour up to a certain point before the room/walls become another colour or even other colours.

Obviously, this might not always work as too obvious a distinction can look awkward. Therefore, you may want to keep the same flooring but opt for two wall colours. Alternatively, you may want to paint a specific section of one half of the room a unique colour so that it stands out and emphasises it being a separate space.

5. Bookshelf or Cabinet

Another way of partitioning a space is with a well-placed cabinet or bookshelf. Using a bookshelf/cabinet can be a great way to separate two areas of a room while being a sophisticated and seamless dividing line.

Also, if you were to separate a room by distinct wall colours, you could use a bookshelf or cabinet to hide the line where the wall colour changes to therefore make it more seamless. It’s worth noting that this won’t always work and will depend on how the cabinet or bookshelf looks juxtaposed against the wall and the space in general.

6. Standalone Room Divider

Rather than go with a permanent divider in the form of room divider doors, you may instead prefer to opt for a standalone room divider.

This temporary (although it can be kept in position continually, of course) and movable solution is a more affordable way of creating a clear division between two spaces of your room than room divider doors.

Types of standalone room dividers you’ll want to consider to partition your room includes:

• Folding screen room dividers
• Folding wall dividers
• Decorative screens

A similar option worth mentioning (although not standalone in most cases) is a curtain pole. Installing curtains can be another way of clearly dividing a space without splashing out on permanent room divider doors.

I hope that the six ways to divide rooms mentioned above are of some help. If you have other ways of dividing a room I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

*This is a collaborative post