which way to lay floors?

[BarkingUpTheWrongRoseBush]

Got a very long quite thin kitchen/sitting extension. The dining room and hallway are original 1900s parquet like in the picture. The dining room has doors opening into the extension.

We are thinking of click lock flooring. Probably not parquet but wood effect planks in the new thin extension.

Which way should we place them. Lenghtways seems normal but will it make it look ever longer and thinner. Should we do long parquet instead? Horizontal?

pictures - similar to what we've got in house already and will keep.

Second picture what we are thinking of.

Could you ask a professional floor fitter for advice?

I think the general rule is to lay flooring in the direction that light comes into the room, if that makes sense.

I reckon part of the "traditional" way of laying floorboards has as much to do with practicality as aesthetics. The joists run across the room in the narrowest direction, i.e. across the width from side to side in a typical terraced house, and the floorboards have to be at right angles to this, so from front to back.