Light now reaches deeper into the house, catching the edge of the new opening between floors and sliding across the darker joinery below. The renovation turns a sixties split-level house into a home that reads differently from room to room: more open, more legible, and more connected to the outside. What once felt compact has been pulled apart in a controlled way, so that the spatial sequence is now part of the interior experience.

Open rooms arranged around a new void

The most striking move is the double-height void. It cuts through the centre of the plan and links the ground floor with the level above, letting sightlines pass through the house instead of stopping at a wall. That gesture gives the house renovation with open layout its clarity. You see the change immediately in the way the spaces stack, with the upper floor hovering over a lighter, more open living zone below.

The relocated kitchen on the ground floor helps that structure work in daily use. It sits where circulation and gathering overlap, instead of being tucked away. Around it, the plan can open toward the living areas and toward the glazing at the garden side. The result is not an empty plan, but a sequence of rooms that remain visually linked, even when they serve different functions.

Kitchen and living space brought into one field

In the kitchen, dark cabinetry frames the working area and sets off the pale stone-look surface behind it. The long run of worktop is interrupted by a sink and open shelf detail, while horizontal blinds soften the daylight at the window. These elements keep the room grounded and direct. The kitchen on the ground floor now reads as part of the main living route rather than a separate service space, which is exactly what the split-level house renovation needed.

That same sense of continuity appears in the dining and sitting areas. A large table sits close to the glass, with the terrace visible just beyond. In another view, a yellow sofa faces a low built-in unit, its clean lines cutting across the room at bench height. The layout leaves enough breathing room around the furniture, but the joinery still gives the space a clear edge.

Walls that hold storage, heat and structure

Built-in storage is used as an architectural device rather than an afterthought. A custom storage wall runs along one side of the living space, gathering cabinets, niches and display openings into a single surface. In the images, these recessed details break up the larger wall plane and give the room places to pause. The effect is quiet but practical: objects disappear, while the geometry of the wall stays visible.

The modern fireplace wall works in a similar way. It anchors the seating area with a black flue, a glazed firebox and a low surround that reads almost like furniture. Nearby, the finish shifts to stone-like textures and smoother painted surfaces, so the hearth becomes a focal point without overpowering the room. The project uses this kind of restraint throughout, letting built elements shape the interior instead of decorating it.

Material contrasts kept deliberately sharp

Black, white, wood and stone are set against one another with little fuss. The round timber coffee table, the dark kitchen fronts and the pale wall finishes each hold their own surface quality. In one room, a worktable sits beneath pendant lights that add a fine vertical line; in another, the large window opening picks up the grain of the flooring and the matte finish of the seating. These contrasts make the open-plan interior readable at a glance.

There is also a stronger graphic edge in the smaller details. A geometric mirror, patterned tilework and the black curve of the fireplace flue introduce sharper lines into the softer volumes of the furniture. Even the bathroom follows that approach, with a glass shower screen, a dark vanity and marble-look wall cladding that gives the room a more mineral surface. Nothing here is overworked; the finishes are chosen to make the structure of the space visible.

Views that move between inside and outside

The indoor-outdoor connection is one of the renovation’s clearest outcomes. Full-height glazing opens the living and dining areas toward the terrace and garden, and the eye keeps travelling past the furniture to the exterior paving. Seen from inside, the outside no longer sits at the edge of the house. It becomes part of the same visual field, especially where the table and chairs are placed directly in front of the glazing.

That relationship is reinforced by the altered outer shell, which extends the building outward and gives the façade more depth. From the interior, this change is felt as a more layered edge: window frames, wall thickness and shadows now all contribute to the room. The renovation with open layout uses that thickness well, turning what could have been a simple opening into a more nuanced threshold between the house and its surroundings.

A sixties house recast for daily life

The original structure is still present in the sloping split-level arrangement and the recognisable stacked volume. What changes is how those parts are used. By shifting the kitchen to the ground floor, opening a double-height void and extending the shell outward, the house gains a different internal logic. The character of the existing structure remains visible, but it now supports a more open and connected way of living.

That is what makes this house renovation with open layout compelling: the intervention is architectural, but the result is felt through everyday movements, from the kitchen to the table, from the seating area to the terrace, from the lower floor up through the opening above. The project shows how a split-level house renovation can work with its inherited structure rather than against it, using a few clear moves to reshape how space is read and used.