One large sitting room or two small?

[BeautifulandWilfulandDead]

We're renovating our new house and it's been the intention all along to knock through the two reception rooms (12x12 and 14x12) into one long sitting room, as this is what we had in our last house. At the 11th hour we're now wondering if we are making a mistake and would get along better with two smaller, separate room. We already have a dining kitchen and workspace, so don't need room for these. What would you do?

Personally I would rather have two separate rooms, but it depends entirely on your family and lifestyle. We have one long living room - plus a large dining kitchen & a separate dining room - I appreciate we are very fortunate but the "long" room is totally out of proportion and actually quite difficult to furnish and use (third world problem I know).

Two smaller. I have a great big long living room as someone else had this idea before I lived here and it's crap. Always cold, not cosy and a waste of space.

I like two but that was before everyone had their own phones so I liked to avoid other people's choice of tv. Now not such an issue.
But I had a lounge which remained tidy as only used for tv and a messier 'dining room'. It was nice to have one nice tiday room to go to in the evening.

If they were separate, how would you use them differently? One for kids? And will one of the rooms be very dark without the knock-through?

Definitely 2 rooms. One with a tv and one without as a relax/chill out/read a book room. That's what we have.

Go flexible and put large doors in that can be opened or closed depending on what you are doing.

We put the wall back. It was cosier, gave walls for furniture placement, kids room and adult room, great when they are older.

It was just too big before.

We have the two separate rooms, similar sizes. The large one is cosy but not cramped while the smaller one has become dh's wfh space. It was intended to be more of a craft room for us both but I just store my bits in there now and work in the kit hen diner. (it's a pain having to tidy up for dinner but it's a warmer room with much better light so I'm not completely salty about it)

Agree with @Aroundtheworldin80moves
Two separate rooms can be very useful and one long room is not a great 'dimension' for using - usually gets separated up into two distinctive halves anyway. But having the flexibility if you can seems the obvious answer.

We have a playroom and sitting room. If you have the room always go for 2 sittingrooms so people can escape each other's choice of TV. Your rooms are a reasonable size, no-one is going to think either is 'too small'.

Two smaller. If the lockdown has taught me anything it’s having walls between you and your family can be just what you all need sometimes!

I have two kids (16 and 9) and another space would be useful for when people wanted to watch different things/ play video games/ read a book. I did think about the double door option but I think the back room would be very difficult to furnish then as it would have only one free wall (another set of double doors leading to the conservatory on the opposite wall, and the third wall has the door to the hall). @UnlimitedChipsAndSalsa that is a good question, the back room may be quite dark as it would be in the middle between the conservatory and the front room, and only has one smallish window.

If you knock through will it be one proper room or will you end up with 2 fireplaces (or one which was in one of the rooms and will be in an odd place in a bigger room) and nibs where you take out the wall? If so, I'd stick to one room. We had that arrangement at an old house and could never really work out how to zone the rooms. Personally I'd go for one or the other but not put in glass doors as that feels odd (to me.....) if you're using the rooms differently at the same time and it can be hard to place furniture if you're trying to keep the door opening free.

We have a massive lounge that used to be 4 rooms before the sellers knocked it through. We love it. We have a dining area, lounge with tv area, reading area and toys area.

My DC are still young (7 and 9) but we enjoy being all together in the same room but with lots of space.

When they're older they can go to their rooms if they want to be separate.

We happily read in a different corner whilst they watch TV or play video games.

Also a great question @GU24Mum. No fireplace so far so we'll be adding that in the middle. The walls would be flat, but we'd have a beam in the ceiling that wasn't quite half way and it's going to create a tricky issue with coving as we have original 1920s coving in the front room which will either need to be ripped out (which feels very wrong) or matched in the back room (very expensive!)

Keep it as two rooms. Put a second sofa, desk area etc in th other room and the kids can have it. They can have friends round/do homework/watch different shows to you

We had a long sitting room and hated it. It just felt like half of the room was wasted, even though we tried to set it up as different ‘zones’.

How have you found yours though?

I think I would leave it. We have two sitting rooms and it’s really nice to have. One is currently covered in Lego so I’ve abandoned that one to the kids for a while.

One has a really enormous L shaped sofa that the whole family can lounge on to watch a film, the other is furnished a bit more formally.

I think with the age of your kids, having somewhere they can be and somewhere you can be is important. I like to escape the video games.

Two definitely, I don't like large living rooms, a living room should be cosy. Ours is 6.5mx4m ish I think it's just on the cusp of being bigger than I'd like. We have another room (about 4x3M) which we use as a snug, I love that room, it's the most used room in the house by the kids.

These long thin rooms put me off buying the house, having had one before which I found impossible to use as half was always a walkway. I’d much prefer two smaller rooms, in fact, as a buyer I would pay more for it.

This is massively helpful, thank you. We loved our big living room before, but it was a really well proportioned room, and I don't think this one will work as well (longer and narrower). Also, we are now mid renovation and the budget is getting a bit stretched - hence just considering if we can do without the knock through!

Definitely two rooms - my DH and I can hardly even choose a tv programme to watch together so add your 16 and 9 year old into the mix and surely you will all want to be doing different things? Personally I couldn't imagine even sitting in the same room if someone else wanted to play video games ... I love peace and quiet but maybe that's just me . My DS is at Uni now but even when he's home we tend to do different things in different rooms - apart from the occasional board game.

I'd have 2 rooms. One more informal / family/ kids and one more of an adult space.
We are in the process of doing this and the adult room won't have any visible screen!! Utter bliss.

@cakefanatic I love the idea of a tv room with a massive l-shaped sofa!