What is a second reception room for?

[LollieB]

We are property hunting at the moment and everyone seems to be telling us that it is essential to have a second reception room. I'm not sure if it is just me who is missing the point, but what are these second reception rooms used for? Every time I visit people who have them, they seem to be kept as a room for 'best' and therefore just wasted space. Wouldn't they be better used as something else more useful or knocked through to make a bigger room?

For doing different things at the same time. One person can watch TV while ironing in the living room, so another can go into the other room to read a book, or if Child 1 is doing their bassoon practice in their bedroom, Child 2 might get more peace and quiet to do their homework in the dining room. Or you're half way through a giant jigsaw puzzle and don't want to have to disturb it. It's essential for me to have space to each do different things, but it doesn't have to be by way of two living rooms.

A dining kitchen would be my house nightmare, I can't stand cooking smells, puts me off eating.

I would love a second public room, it would be a dining/family room

I would love a second public room, it would be a dining/family room

If I had another reception room, I'd live in it prob and Lee my lounge lovely and tidy for when people come round!
I'd just like another wee small space to go to in my tiny house. It gets so claustrophobic sometimes. If you when children or grown up children it's lovely to hair have another room to sit in!

It's full of yarn and fabric here

I live in Australia, where two receptions are common, one of which will be called the family room

My front room has the dining table comfy seating, a log burner, lots of bookshelves and a TV, and is where most of the time is spent, especially in winter. In summer, as it faces full west, it is hard work on the hottest days as it doesn't have air con.

The back room faces full east so is cool in the summer and has air con, so it gets more use then. Also comfy seating. books and TV.

It's nice to escape to another room

Ours is a bit of a "jack of all trades, master of none". Mainly playroom and music practice. I think there's a risk they can be a bit of a nothing room - that's kind of what Family Room implies to me anyway!

Maybe some of the vendors have styled them as second living rooms to give them an "identity" as the home programmes recommend. I imagined ours would develop into a second sofa/tv room as the kids get bigger, but now I'm not so sure.

My mum always says the secret to a long marriage is 2 living rooms

My dad has 'his' room with a disgustinly large tv and surround sound system. Mainly watches wicked tuna / deep wreck mysteries and terrible action films. My mum has 'her' room which is very tastefully decorated, and she can watch corrie and holby city to her hearts content.

The key is having the rooms close enough so that my dad can hear her when she shouts her g&t has run low

TealGiraffe sounds like the perfect setup

teal sounds like my parents house too (right down to my mum's choice of TV programmes).

We have a big kitchen / diner / lounge where we (as a family of 5) tend to spend most of our time. The lounge (2nd reception) at the front of the house is kind of more of a sitting room - one of the children might do in there to watch TV quietly, they all might go and watch a movie in there especially if we have friends round who all congregate in the big room at the back of the house.

When children are in bed, its been known for H to watch football in one room and me to watch something else in the other. H often works at night too, so he'll go in one room (usually the back room) and I'll sit in the front lounge.

We converted a double garage to provide space for us rather than the cars.

We already have a dining room and there was no wall separating the garages from each other so one end has a massive desk with computers for homework/Minecraft, the other end has a sofa bed and we have a 4m run of storage.

This storage houses Xbox/Wii the 32" tv for the xbox/Wii, all toys/boardgames, shoes, coats, bags. So I can shut the cupboard doors and it is all hidden away.

When the children were younger it meant they could leave out train track/Hexbug track and we could just close the door on it all and still have a lounge without an obstacle course from the door to the sofa.

Works really well for us and means that when the children have friends over we aren't all in the lounge.

When we bought our house (Victorian terrace) the 2 receptions were knocked through, with sliding glass doors between. We chose to have the wall between rebuilt so that there was one room separate from everywhere else downstairs (we don't have a through hall, access to the kitchen is through the rear room)

Our kids were only 4 & 1 when we did that & 30 years later we've always been glad to have 2 spaces!

(Front room has tv & comfy chairs. Back room has bookcases, dining table & piano & was always the main play room when kids were small - has French windows which are effectively the back door as we had that bricked up & knocked through to the kitchen at the same time as rebuilding middle wall)

Playroom when kids are little. When they're bigger it's good to have another room where they can take their friends and talk inane rubbish with 'like' every 3 words, or watch stuff that gets on your nerves.

I've got;
Living room - sofas, coffee table, couple of cupboards & TV.
Dining room - dining table & chairs, sideboard (rarely used!).
Kitchen / breakfast room - breakfast bit is a conservatory open to the kitchen and has a table & chairs (it's our main eating area most of the time).
Playroom - next to the lounge and joined to it by double doors which don't make it into one space but do make the two rooms very open to each other (both rooms have doors from the hall), at the moment it had a TV with the Wii, PC in a cupboard with printer etc plus 2 office-y chairs for the DC's, big storage unit with lots of toys that are no longer played with (dc's are 13 and 10), a massive plastic box full of lego and a chest full of nerf guns! Kind of feel we need to rethink how we use it now, but have no idea as to what!

When the kids were smaller the playroom was great, because it was open to the lounge they would play in there rather than bringing stuff through as it felt like they were still in the room with us, but then we could just shut the doors on it in the evening!

I use one as a family/play room and the other as a tidy room. It might be a bit lazy but it's nice to be able to chill in a tidy room when the kids have gone to bed with out having to clear all the toys up.

Library!
(With x-box for Minecraft and two desks for study, and sofa for reading lovely books)

We use ours as a study - it was originally the dining room of the house but there is now a kitchen diner been built on. Conservatory as a playroom. For us using the second reception as a dining room would be a waste as we have always eaten in the kitchen and are happy to do so. study works better.

I think having seen a variety of house layouts visiting friends, the big kitchen/diner + sitting room works better than two receptions + separate kitchen. But that is personal taste to some extent. If you have kids somewhere to designate either as a playroom or toy storage is invaluable.

teenagers

For posh.

DH and I have a setup very similar to Teals mum and dad