How common is this for houses in the layout?

[Morgweather26]

In a lot of working-class white British houses, it’s common for there to be one large living room that perhaps leads on to a dining room. Sometimes the dining room is a separate room so there are two reception rooms downstairs.

In Asian/Muslim British households I’ve found it’s more common for there two always be two reception rooms in the house but those two tend to be made from dividing up the larger one that would exist in a white British household. This is usually due to the fact that in Muslim culture men and women are separated at social gatherings like family events so if guests are over then the men congregate in one room and the women in the other or the children in one room and the adults in the other.

I’m just curious but how common is it for houses in the UK to essentially have two large reception rooms downstairs rather than the divided one that I mentioned. Maybe a formal guest room and living room.

Also, is there a difference in terms of house layout when the two reception rooms are located to the left and to the right of the entrance rather than it being the case that there is the entrance and then a wall to the left/right and then the reception room is on the other side with any additional reception room found on the same side of the corridor behind the first one. The latter concept is usually found in smaller houses.

Some houses may even have a separate dining room as a third reception room.

How common is this design?

Some context as to why you need the answer to this question might be helpful OP.

Houses vary a lot in style. The classic terrace / semi with two/three rooms downstairs is incredibly common - and they are also often incredibly old, so have been adapted by the owners over the years and so can be slightly different (open plan, separate rooms, double doors, whatever).

Double-fronted houses ie rooms on both sides of the front door are probably less common due to space limitations in urban areas…

I’m not sure I understand your second question — I mean, of course there’s a ‘difference’ in layout if there are reception rooms either side of the hall rather than one behind the other, but what is it you’re asking?

Oh, hang on, are you looking for a house with reception rooms either side of an entrance hall, and are asking to see if this is realistic?

I would say pretty uncommon to have 2 living rooms and a dinning room as we just don't have the floorspace for that. If you wanted a house like that near me, you would be looking at paying at least 850k.

It's even less likely on new builds as it's all open plan so that they can pretend that there is enough space for a dining room and a living room when there isn't if there were walls in place separating them.

The combined living room & dining room is common in small terraced houses that would once have had a tiny "front room" (living room/parlour) and dining room, and a galley kitchen. People usually choose either to open them up as a combined living/dining room; or sometimes to keep the living room separate and open up the dining room to create a kitchen diner. It often depends on whether they can extend at the back. People want at least one large space to relax and entertain.

In larger houses, it's common to have separate living and dining rooms because they're big enough without knocking them together. Sometimes there is a third reception room, giving a formal living room, dining room and an informal room - snug/den/tv room/study or whatever (sometimes presented by estate agents as an additional 'bedroom').

I haven't noticed a divide in this based on culture/heritage/religion. I think it comes down purely to size and configuration of the house, extension potential and personal preference.

Victorian houses often have two reception rooms, sometimes built that way (with a small kitchen) sometimes the second reception room is the ex-kitchen (with a new kitchen added as an extension).

Our 1970s house has two reception rooms, a separate dining room and big kitchen (the whole depth of the house), but the dining room and kitchen were added in the early 2000's

I mean, it depends what budget you're talking. You'll find different housing stock in different parts of a town and you might find it helpful to target the more affluent areas.

It sounds to me like you're after a double fronted house. Hall in the middle, reception rooms either side at the front which might be living or dining rooms but are pretty flexible.

I have not heard of your characterisation of having a downstairs guest room. I would say if there are 3 reception rooms it's more likely that there would be a living room, a dining room and a second living room /playroom /snug. But much more commonly these days, at least one of those will be joined with the kitchen as it's all about big eat in or eat in/live in kitchens these days. Increasingly people use kitchens as an entertaining space.

So how common is the Coronation Street-style house that the Platt family have where literally they have one tiny reception room which leads on into a kitchen and small dining area but the stairs are not separated in their own place the stairs are only accessible by the living room?

that isn’t a terraced house; it’s a semi-detached house yet it’s so small and designed like that for some reason.

As PPs have said, we have this layout because we live in a small country where most people live in cities. The houses were built this way to get as many houses and people into as minimum a footprint as possible and to maximise the light and warmth. So narrow at the front and long at the back with side returns. We live in old houses because we've never had wars or earthquakes that would require us to build a lot of new ones unlike say Dresden or Seoul.

It has nothing to do with religion or culture. In fact, I would suggest that it's the space and environment that shapes our culture rather than the other way round. We have very small houses so we built a lot of pubs for example (public houses) so that we could socialise there. We don't socialise as much at home as other cultures (our houses are small) so we don't need big parlours for men and women.

In the houses I lived in as a child, there were always 2 ‘reception’ rooms, a sitting room and a dining room. Kitchens in those houses would have been too small for a table.

A DD’s 1920s house originally had 2 fairly small reception rooms, knocked into one by the previous owner, who’d also fitted a downstairs loo into the space.

Quite common - I lived in Moss Side - so not that far from where the Platts would live relatively - where the houses are narrow terraces and have this layout (they also open straight onto the street). Houses built for poor people are not expansive - they are very basic. If you live in a country where space and land value is not an issue (many of the Muslim countries you refer to for example) then it will be different.

That was built in the 90s and was considered very forward thinking to have one big family space!

thinking about the older side of the street for coronation street, the old terraces have a front room, then a dining/living room with a small kitchen off the dining room, so 2 reception rooms plus a small kitchen. This shows the very traditional working class and middle class approach of keeping the front room “for best”, if you couldn’t afford servants, you kept one room nice and didn’t let your dcs use it, so if you had a guest (like the vicar) they would be taken into the front room that the family would otherwise only use at Christmas/easter/if somebody died. (This is how my grandparents lived, both sets were horrified my parents let me and my brother sit on the sofa in the front room).

If you were richer than the very poor people who would have traditionally lived in those small Corrie houses, you’d have a hall way to the kitchen so you could keep two reception rooms nice away from the kitchen.

Honestly, having nowhere else to eat but your kitchen was considered lower class until about the late 80s. Even then it was sniffed at to not have a separate room from your kitchen.

More common in the 80s/90s was to take down the wall between the sitting room and dining room, from about 20 years ago it changed to taking down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room but keeping a separate living room. Just having one room downstairs still isn’t all that popular. Most people want a hall way.

I find this conversation very interesting by the way. In the 80s, when we were proudly looking forward to a future of convenience, microwaved food, TV dinners and going out every other night to the new burger chains and Terence Conran restaurants, we built houses with tiny kitchens.

It depends on the overall footprint of the house. My DF's Victorian villa had 2 reception rooms and a dining room (which was previously a huge kitchen). He knocked through the larder and coal store to make a kitchen. My favourite house was 1920s and originally would have had just 2 rooms downstairs.

Housing is expensive in the UK so you could get what you want at a cost

So how come the house is in EastEnders are typically better and bigger? Is that the true in London in general?

One long room was the standard where my Gran lived - council house in Liverpool.

So how come the house is in EastEnders are typically better and bigger? Is that the true in London in general?

Eastenders is generally considered a lot less realistic than Corrie - it wouldn't fly that many of the characters would live in a Victorian semi in London garden square given their jobs and backgrounds.

Even a small house in London is very expensive compared to the rest of the UK, so people who are able to buy one will maximise the space by extensions, where possible, clever configuration, loft and basement conversions. They often look a lot bigger than they actually are in terms of square footage.

Where houses are cheaper people are more likely to be able to move to a bigger house if they want more space, so you get fewer cleverly configured small houses because it's cheaper to move than extend or alter.

That’s typical of the very old property in that area, but it’s completely unrealistic to think people with those jobs would live in those houses. They are about £2m houses being lived in by people who work in working class jobs. It was semi realistic in the 80s when some of the older people living there could have feasibility moved in in the immediate post war era and several of the properties on the square were split into flats. It’s not been reflective of real life for a long time!

My experience is a 3 bed house has a larger living/dining room, which may or may not be subdivided into 2 rooms, often with an archway in between

4 bedroom houses (where all the rooms are on the first floor, not in the attic) will have 2 completely separate rooms. One of my houses did have them either side of the hallway.

Yes @AmethystAnnotation and to add to that, terraces in London were generally built for clerks and civil servants (Metroland Edwardian terraces in zone 3 for example). Terraces in Manchester were built for mill and canal workers. Two completely different social classes.

Also the bigger city terraces were built for multi-generational living - my mum grew up in a four storey Victorian in Manchester but the entire extended family lived there - her mum, dad, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. About 12 of them in a 5 bedroom house. They weren't nuclear ('our little family') family houses.

Albert Square in Eastenders is modelled on a Square in Hackney East London where I used to live. It's almost an exact copy. The interiors of the houses are very realistic for that part of London. I agree that people on lower wages wouldn't be able to afford them now though.

I don't mean the interiors, I mean the people living in them. Was it realistic even in the 80s that Pauline (laundrette worker) and Arthur (road sweeper) would have a large Victorian semi on a garden square?

It’s not common !
But I was brought up in a home where there were 2 living rooms casual one and a more posh one lol separated by a big hallway and dining room kitchen
This house was set up on a hill with 3 large bay windows and the house itself was a really unusual shape like ! Very grand !
Houses like this are usually super old and not so common in newer built homes I don’t think ! We are white British family ! We hardly used posh sitting room I did but to get a bit of peace !

Only larger houses will have this but it’s becoming more common to have open plan so less reception rooms.

I do have white/british friends that have a child reception room and an adult one which is essentially the same. I’d say only 4 bed/extended homes have this. I have the dining room converted to a second living room and the conservatory is a dining room. I don’t think it’s normal to do that in my teeny tiny house.