How useful/essential is a utility room?

[Iggity]

I live in a 1930s mid-terraced house in London. We are planning to extend the back of the house to increase the size of the very small kitchen. We are also adding a downstairs cloakroom. We have been back and forth over the need for a utility room. Currently, we only have a washing machine and laundry is dried outside when weather better and in winter, on clothes horses/driers/radiators. This isn't ideal and we are planning to get a tumble dryer following the kitchen extension.

If we added a utility room, it wouldn't have any windows so no natural light/air circulating etc. When we discussed this with the architect, he didn't think a house our size needed a utility room. The house has 3 bedrooms (will have 4 as we are converting loft at same time). There are 2 adults and a child in the house.

We are doing to have quite a sizeable kitchen after the extension and the plan is to have integrated appliances but would value people's thoughts on how useful it would be. We don't have animals and storage in the house is limited. We don't have a chest freezer and not sure if we need one. We will probably just buy a bigger fridge/freezer for the kitchen.

The builder had suggested a combined utility/cloakroom but we weren't very keen on the idea. I had visions of sitting on the loo watching the washing machine!

Our first utility (or loo-tility!) was in our last but two house, which was quite a grand 3500 sq ft Victorian family home and the space had most likely originally been a servant's area. Despite the size of the house, we could only fit two appliances, a loo and basin in the room as there was also a huge floor-standing boiler.

The next house we bought didn't have a utility room, but did have plumbing for a washing machine in a walk-in cupboard off the kitchen, which was better than nothing. As we decided pretty soon to sell up we didn't explore our initial plans to reconfigure the space, but had we stayed we would have converted the existing kitchen into a utility/laundry room and sited the kitchen in one of the reception rooms.....of which there were more than enough!

At our last house we built an extension that encorporated a kitchen and loo-tility, but soon realised we should have made the latter larger when our architect discussed the plans with us. There was space for a(nother) floor-standing boiker, a washing machine and large free-standing butler sink unit as well as a loo......there was just enough room to hang a clothes airer on wet days, but as this was also our main access from garden to kitchen with two wet/muddy dogs (we had a stream and 1/3 acre garden), space became a bit tight on wet days.....

The house we just bought has no utility room, but we decided during the buying process that the current kitchen - which is reasonably well-appointed with granite work surfaces and an Aga, but is also fairly small compared to our last kitchen - would make a great utility and pace for the dogs to sleep at night. We intend to keep the dishwasher, washing machine (plus a tumble dryer) in there and turn the second of three reception rooms into our new kitchen. The new utility will have ample space for ironing, should I ever get the unlikely urge to do any - and in the lobby there is an original 'broom' cupboard for hoovers etc, next to the downstairs loo.

I'd definitely find space to add one if at all possibles!

Wow thanks for all your replies. Going to read then and show to DH.