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?

My gran had a semi-detached house probably built in the interwar period. The original layout had the stairs as you came in the front door with a door to the left leading to what my gran called the front room. This then lead to the back room.

My gran said the front room was for best and the back room was for everyday living, eating, and washing.
By the time my family moved there in the 70s an indoor toilet and separate bathroom had been added in a mini extension by the council. This was accessed to the left of the stairs area.
A small kitchen had been added onto the back of the back room, with the back room becoming the living room.

My gran’s neighbour had the wall between the two rooms knocked through making it a more informal multipurpose living area. My gran never bothered and just kept the formal front room, wasted space really.

Edit to add that we are a white British family, not that it has anything to do with it really. I think this was just a common set up before modern bathrooms and kitchens became incorporated in the working class homes.

If you’re interested in how traditional houses have developed read up on vernacular architecture. W b brunskill has written lots of books. It’s very interesting how housing stock reflects society of its time.

This is a very odd post! Why are you so interested op?

Because Eastenders is made-up shite.

This sounds similar to my grandparents' house, though theirs was a terrace in blocks of three, built 1930s. Stairs just as you describe and doors into the 'front room' which was the 'best room'. The room at the back was where they lived - they always referred to this room as 'the house' which is not a usage I have ever heard anywhere else. E.g. 'Where's the evening paper?' 'It's in the house'. The kitchen was absolutely tiny, a narrow room with oven, sink etc. going down one side and only width for one person to stand.

The upstairs was quite spacious with two good-sized double bedrooms, bathroom and a large single room (would fit 3/4 bed easily) - one room went over the 'ginnel' (passageway between two houses from front to back) so it was larger upstairs than down.

It was sold when they died at the turn of the century. I found it on Rightmove quite recently and the downstairs layout is unrecognisable, it's now all open-plan downstairs with French doors to the back garden which is decked now.

Are you researching for a sociology essay or something?

There are a lot of these houses round the place. They have a single frontage, but the door on the side so that there is a hall down the middle. Door at the front is more common though, which would need an extra wide plot if it had a hall down the middle so that layout isn't so common.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/153945917#/?channel=RES_BUY

I’d say it’s common in larger houses (say double fronted for example) to have more than one reception. One either side of the hallway as you enter, and the rooms behind would be a kitchen and a dining room, which these days may get knocked together so one big room across the back for kitchen/dining possibly with a casual seating area too.
I have a typical terrace with front room, back room which dud house the kitchen but becomes the middle room as everyone extended out the back. So for me the front room is the living room, double doors to the middle which is the kitchen, then no wall between that and the extension which is where the dining table is. On this street a few have not knocked through either between the front and ‘middle’ room, or middle room and back extension.
My front room is not big - if that was divided in two to separate the sexes then each room would be 9ft x 6ft! More likely the front room would be for one and the middle room would not be knocked through so could be the other. Issue is that middle room is also the passage to the kitchen (in the extension) and leaves no where to sit and eat. I guess it might work if the men did not go in to the kitchen often, though that is also the access to the garden!

Interesting question, my old cottage now has a separate lounge, dining room and kitchen. However someone in the past has changed and extended it as originally it had a kitchen and just one other room. It then had kitchen, dining, room, study and lounge. The lounge now incorporates what would have been the study. I think smaller rooms were easier to keep warm, but larger rooms grew in popularity.

It's an interesting question to be fair. Though the wording of the OP does make it sound as if white working class British people specially commissioned the houses we live in and they were built to our specific demands of small kitchen, tiny reception rooms and mandatory mingling of the sexes.

Eastenders and corrie are not representative of all housing in their respective areas.

It also sounds as if she’s taking housing as represented in two traditionally WC UK soap operas as somehow representative?

You make it sound like all houses are only laid out in two ways.

I've never noticed Asians having two living rooms. The social housing and ex council housing in my area wouldn't have enough space for two of anything. It's hard enough to get a flat with more than three bedrooms. As for private housing, well it comes in all shapes and sizes.

Except for the ginnel, that was the original layout of my ex-Council house from between the wars.

In the 80s (I think) the 2 reception rooms were knocked through into one. Since buying it I have restored the wall to make 2 reception rooms, but knocked through the backroom and kitchen to make a family room/ kitchen / diner!

The front room is now a home office to WFH