Is it weird to go through living room to the kitchen...

[intelligentPutty]

Please help settle a 'discussion'!
. We are planning to extend at the back. We thought to add an extra bedroom downstairs but the only way we can see to do so is to block the hall access to the kitchen. It means you'd get to the back of the house via the living room. Or via the back door. I think thatd be fine. Hubby disagrees. Please let me know your thoughts or any other ideas. Pic on the left is now and pic ok the right is my current idea.

That's what we have to do in our house. Kitchen is through the living room. There is no hall. I've never even questioned it until now.

Looks fine to me.
PILs have that sort of thing in a Victorian terrace. Front door leads to stairs and a door to living room. Kitchen at back of living room, with big doors.

Thats how it is in our house. Have to go through living room to get to the kitchen, or can enter through the back door direct to kitchen. Thought that was pretty standard tbh.

Would prefer it like this than have a big hallway that takes up lots of space and is essentially useless...

No it’s fine. I lived in a house where you went through the lounge/diner, which had been knocked through, into the kitchen. There was a porch and no hall.

How it is in our house. It is fine.

It’s commonly done but personally I hate it and would avoid it if I could.

It limits furniture placement as you have to leave a pathway through and you wouldn’t want to walk eg between the sofa and the tv if someone is watching. Also means the lounge is no longer a quiet place to escape for peace.

In your layout I think I would chop off the rear section of the lounge and make that the utility. Then make the bedroom long and thin with a hallway next to it. Move back door to kitchen.

Alternatively chop off back end of lounge and make into bedroom. Have long thin utility next to bathroom.

It’s all personal choice though.., these ideas have compromises it’s just a question of whether you prefer those compromises to having a walkthrough lounge.

it's fine.
I would prefer the kitchen at the front though, but realise that that's not possible with some footprints.

My house is basically long and narrow (Victorian terrace) so the living room, dining room and kitchen are all lined up. There's only two ways to go from my front door - into the living room on your right (leading into dining room and kitchen) or up the stairs to bedrooms. It's no problem here.

Its a compromise but as they go seems quite a small one to me. We have to go through our kitchen to get to our living room though which is a much bigger compromise!

Looks fine to me. If the utility is planned to be a separate room already could you just put the toilet and sink in there to keep the corridor?

No don't do it! We just had an extension and designed it so we didn't have to go through the living room.
We had that before the extension and it was awful.

If people come in they have to go through the living room.

Living room was effectively a corridor. Always messy.
We couldn't have a nice floor because it was effectively a corridor.
It wasn't relaxing - see comments above.

I just wouldn't recommend it at all.

I’ve never lived in a house where you don’t have to go through the living room to access the kitchen and I only realised that just now so it obviously hasn’t been a problem.

@VinylDetective

I’ve never lived in a house where you don’t have to go through the living room to access the kitchen and I only realised that just now so it obviously hasn’t been a problem.

You’re not the only one. Every terrace where I live has the same setup. Come to think about it, every 60s 3 bed semi I know does too so it can’t be that awful

Is there a WC in the middle of the floor plan? Could a kitchen door not go there?

I wouldn't call it weird, it's fairly common but it's far better not to have the lounge as a corridor imo.

When we were looking at houses we specifically looked for a separate lounge so that we could use it as a guest bedroom if we had visitors (family live overseas)

I think its a really big compromise. I wouldn't like it - as above, the living room would just be a corridor. I'd make the bathroom smaller, then have utility and toilet, and then a doorway into the kitchen and the bedroom / study on the left.

While in an ideal world you'd access a kitchen from a hallway, masses of people have their kitchen off of a lounge - it's not unusual at all. There a far weirder layout issues people have - my pet peeve is directly accessing a bathroom/loo from any room other than a bedroom or hallway (who wants to be in a communal space trying not to listen to someone going to the loo? )

I'm not keen on having to walk through other rooms to get to other rooms. I wouldn't look at a house which was arranged like that. We have to walk through our dining room to get to our kitchen in our Edwardian semi, I really dislike it, and would always aim for having rooms off a hallway if possible.

I'm not sure of dimensions, but perhaps look into splitting the lounge in 2, the putting the bedroom in the front half, then having a large kitchen diner in the back half and into the extension which includes utility. On the other side where the bedroom and bathroom are, you could put a second lounge there, and still be able to walk from the front of the house through a hallway to the kitchen.

Perfectly normal! Our last Victorian terrace had a layout with the living room onto the kitchen, most do. Just as open plan kitchen/dining/living room is normal these days so it’s defo a non-issue.

That's what my parents house is like. I lived there for 28 years so anything other than this sort of layout seems weird to me. Having to walk out of the kitchen, along a hall and then into a dining room with plates of hot food would really annoy me like it did when I moved into my own flat

My current house and the house we’re buying has the only access to the kitchen through the living room (apart from the back door). It’s normal for me and never been a problem.

I think every house I've ever lived in you would go through the living room to the kitchen.

That’s how my house is laid out. Hallway with stairs, and door through living room into kitchen. Kitchen runs across the back of the house.

We actively avoided houses when looking that had this set up.

Had it once in a rented property and as others have said it's basically a corridor. It also means you can't put furniture in some ways.

I hate it, our house has a relatively large lounge but can only fit one sofa as a third of the floor space is the corridor to the kitchen. We are also limited as to how the rest of the furniture can be positioned.

We are in the process of moving and a non negotiable for us is a lounge that is a separate room, not a route to another room.

Finding it hard as so many houses have the downstairs knocked through.