An open kitchen is increasingly popular in Hong Kong: take down the wall between the kitchen and the living and dining area, and cooking, eating and living flow into one bright, connected space. It brings in light, makes a flat feel larger, and keeps whoever is cooking part of the room rather than shut away. But an open kitchen in Hong Kong comes with real considerations: oil smoke, noise, and most importantly the gas and fire-safety rules. This guide explains what an open kitchen gives you and what to think through, with a real island open kitchen from one of our projects as the example.
ARTWILL Residential Interior Design
Thinking of opening up the kitchen? Start with the whole layout.
We design around how you cook and live, and check fire safety and building rules before anything is built.
See the serviceThe short answers first
- Is an open kitchen a good idea? It brings in daylight, makes the flat feel larger and keeps the cook part of the room; the costs are oil smoke and noise. A fully open plan suits households that cook mostly Western or light dishes; if you cook on high heat often, a semi-open layout usually works better.
- Enclosed kitchen (梗廚) or open plan? Start with the flat's approved plans: the walls around the kitchen may be structural, and the walls and door may be required to be fire resisting. Where the plans show them as fire resisting, in general they should not be removed; where they are neither structural nor fire resisting, they may be removed, provided the kitchen keeps its location and size.
- Can you cook with a gas flame (明火) in an open kitchen? No rule bans it outright, but two things must hold: the open kitchen itself has to comply with the approved plans and fire-safety requirements, and the hob has to be installed by a registered gas contractor, with enough ventilation and air supply. Switching to induction does not make removing a fire-resisting kitchen wall or door acceptable.
- How do you deal with oil smoke? A powerful extractor hood, a short duct route with few bends, and a glass sliding partition you can close while cooking are the three measures that work best.
- What is a semi-open kitchen? A glass sliding partition between the kitchen and the living and dining area, open day to day and closed to contain smoke while you cook. If the approved plans show a fire-resisting kitchen door, it cannot be swapped for an ordinary glass sliding door.
What an open kitchen is, and why it suits Hong Kong flats
An open kitchen removes the partition between the kitchen and the living and dining area, so the cooking zone and the living zone become one connected space.
Most Hong Kong flats are tight, and a kitchen wall chops the space up and blocks light. Open it up and daylight reaches deep into the home, the flat reads far larger, and the cook is no longer boxed into a small galley but can talk to the family while cooking. For a small flat, that sense of openness is often worth more than one more wall.
Open kitchen pros and cons at a glance
Before deciding, weigh three things. The gains: better daylight, a larger sense of space, and the cook no longer shut away from the family. The costs: oil smoke travels, the extractor and fridge are no longer muffled by a wall, and whether you can keep a gas hob depends on the flat's approved plans rather than on preference.
Who it suits: small flats, households that cook mostly Western or light dishes, and families who like to gather in the kitchen. Who it suits less: anyone who cooks on high heat often, or a household with an older relative who is bothered by oil smoke. If you sit in between, a semi-open layout with a glass sliding partition is usually the most balanced answer: open for everyday flow, closed while you cook.
The trade-off: openness versus oil smoke and noise
The real cost of an open kitchen is oil smoke and noise. Without the wall, the smoke from Chinese high-heat cooking drifts into the living room, and there is nothing to muffle the extractor or the fridge.
So a fully open kitchen does not suit every household. If you cook on high heat often, we suggest a semi-open layout: a glass sliding partition that stays open for everyday flow and closes to contain smoke while you cook, giving you both. A powerful extractor hood and a well-planned ventilation route are what make or break an open kitchen.
Enclosed kitchen or open plan: the approved plans decide first
An enclosed kitchen (梗廚), with walls and a door that close it off completely, has long been the standard in Hong Kong flats. Whether you can open one up is not first a question of taste but of the flat's approved plans: the walls around the kitchen may be structural, and the walls and door may be required to be fire resisting. Both show on the plans; neither can be judged by tapping the wall on site.
If a kitchen wall is load-bearing (主力牆), the work needs an authorised person, a registered structural engineer, and approved plans and consent from the Buildings Department before it starts, as our guide to removing walls in a Hong Kong flat explains. For non-structural walls, the Buildings Department's guidance is that, in general, kitchen walls and a door shown as fire resisting on the approved plans should not be removed; if they are not shown as fire resisting, they may be removed, provided the kitchen's location and size do not change. Moving or enlarging the kitchen calls for a building professional's advice first, and any change that affects fire-resisting construction or the means of escape also goes through an authorised person and the Buildings Department.
Why would a kitchen need to be fire resisting at all? Under the Buildings Department's current Code of Practice for Fire Safety in Buildings, in a flat with a single exit door, a kitchen next to that door should be separated from the rest of the flat by fire-resisting walls and a fire-rated door, so that a kitchen fire cannot cut off the only way out. Buildings of different ages were approved under different codes, so what a neighbour's flat has tells you little; your own approved plans are the answer. And an exemption under the Buildings Ordinance is not the same as consent under your deed of mutual covenant, so the management office is a separate step.
Only once the plans allow it does lifestyle come in. If you cook on high heat often, or someone at home is bothered by oil smoke, an enclosed or semi-open kitchen will be more comfortable; if you cook mostly Western or light dishes and value daylight and cooking together, an open kitchen gives the most back.
Gas or induction: the Hong Kong fire-safety question
This is the point many people miss: whether an open kitchen can keep town gas is not a matter of preference, but of the flat's approved plans, its fire-safety provisions and its ventilation.
Whether a flat keeps a gas hob depends on its approved building plans and fire-safety provisions, not simply on having a wall. Where the approved plans show the kitchen walls and door as fire resisting, they should in general stay, and switching to an induction (IH) hob does not change that; a flat sold as an approved open kitchen, with an openable window, ventilation and the developer's fire-safety package, can keep town gas in an open layout. That affects how you cook and your appliance budget, so before committing to an open kitchen, always confirm with your building management, the authorised person and your design team whether your specific flat is actually allowed gas. We check this for you at the measuring stage.
Can you cook with gas in an open kitchen? The rules and the practice
The short version: no Hong Kong rule bans gas cooking in an open kitchen outright. The open kitchen provisions in the Buildings Department's Code of Practice for Fire Safety in Buildings make no distinction between gas and electric hobs, and the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations contain no open-kitchen rule. Instead they set the same conditions for every gas appliance: a sufficient permanent supply of air for proper combustion, adequate ventilation of the room, and safe removal of the products of combustion.
Two questions decide it. First, is the open kitchen itself compliant? Where the code would otherwise require a fire-resisting kitchen enclosure, an open kitchen needs a package of fire-safety provisions: a smoke detector with a sounder base inside the flat, smoke detectors in the common area outside it, sprinkler heads covering the open kitchen area, and a full-height fire-resisting wall beside the flat's exit door. These must not be removed or obstructed, the management's registered fire service installation contractor checks them every year, and the code asks for these conditions to be written into the fire safety management plan and, where applicable, the deed of mutual covenant. When the flat is refitted, false ceilings and cabinetry have to work around the sprinkler heads and detectors.
Second, if the flat began with an enclosed kitchen, switching to induction does not make removing a fire-resisting wall or door acceptable: in general, the fire separation shown on the plans stays, whatever the fuel. On the gas side, the hob must be an approved model bearing the GU mark, and installing, moving or replacing it is work for a registered gas installer employed by a registered gas contractor. Nor may other works in the flat affect an existing gas fitting's ventilation in a way that makes it dangerous to use.
In practice, Towngas's own guidance is that a hob, gas or not, belongs in a room with an openable window and ventilation, so a windowless open kitchen is usually the hardest place to keep a flame. At the measuring stage we check the approved plans, the deed of mutual covenant and the existing gas supply point, and leave the gas work to a registered gas contractor, so the choice of hob is settled before the design rather than discovered after completion. If you are planning residential interior design, this belongs at the very start.
The island as a natural boundary
Open does not mean boundaryless. An island is often the best soft divider there is.
One side of the island handles cooking and the sink, the other becomes a breakfast bar, separating the kitchen from the living and dining area without blocking light or sightlines. Below it sits a lot of storage, and the worktop serves for prep, homework and entertaining. If the flat has room for one, an island is just about the most worthwhile thing you can invest in for an open kitchen.
Storage: because it is on show, it has to be complete
An open kitchen is almost always in view, so its storage has to be more generous and more hidden than a conventional kitchen.
We run tall cabinets to the ceiling and integrate the appliances, building the oven, fridge and microwave into the joinery so the worktop stays clear. Pull-out baskets and fitted interiors keep clutter behind doors. Whether an open kitchen looks good often comes down less to how the worktop is styled and more to how completely everything can be tidied away.
A real example: the island open kitchen at Tin Hau Temple Road
One of our Tin Hau Temple Road projects is a textbook open layout. A large island faces the dining and living area, cooking, eating and living run in one line, and daylight from the big windows reaches right into the kitchen.
One side of the island is the cooking and stone worktop, the other seats people at the bar; tall cabinets run to the ceiling and tuck the appliances and clutter away, so even though the whole kitchen is on show, it still reads tidy. That is what a well-done open kitchen looks like: open and bright, but able to be put in order.
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