How would you reconfigure this kitchen, breakfast room and dining space?

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This is the floorplan for our kitchen and nearby rooms. The kitchen is ok, but doesn't have enough storage and we've had to put the fridge around the corner on the breakfast room. The breakfast room has large floor to ceiling east facing windows so can be sunny in the mornings, but the corner furthest from the window always feels very dark. The dining room is north facing but as it has large floor to ceiling windows too, it tends to be quite bright all day. The utility room is ok but a bit small, though I don't really see how we could enlargen it.

The main priority would be to have a larger open plan/social kitchen/dining space but I'm struggling to visualise the layout of it. I'm sure we would be able to open up the breakfast room and kitchen, but with the way the kitchen and utility doors are placed I'm not sure where stuff would actually go. What would you do - perhaps put an island in? There may also be the option of opening up the kitchen to the dining room, although then I don't know what we would do with the breakfast room.

It might be helpful to share the whole floorplan. Id probably be looking to place the utility room elsewhere and open up the kitchen and the breakfast room into one space, plus add access to the outside, seeing the whole floor plan would give an idea of the flow of the house.

I would turn kitchen, utility and breakfast room into one large open social space, perhaps pinching some of the dining room and turn the dining room into the utility. It all looks a bit awkward around inner hallway and not sure what you have outside.

Here is the full downstairs

where are the drains for the existing kitchen sink and utility?
Those are limiting factors on repositioning if you subscribe to the basic principle of kitchen design & function: the triangle between hob, sink and fridge.

Kitchen layout design: The kitchen triangle | Magnet Kitchens

Do you live in the sort of area where people expect (need) separate dining room?

Can you move the WC to under the stairs? Do you use the garage as a garage - i.e. could you use some of that as a utility room?

Im guessing the picture will take a while to upload, but what about study at the front, and a dining kitchen all the way through the right.
New door to rest of house from entrance, and close up the door from the vack of the livingroom.

Needs a bit of thought as to how to access the study - from kitchen, or new hall

This is tricky as your current layout “ticks boxes” for utility, downstairs loo, breakfast room etc but the spaces all seem to be disjointed.

Might be expensive but I’d look at re-jigging the walls to get more useable space. Steal party of the hall and swap the utility room for a “utility cupboard” to tuck the washing machine (marked yellow). Then open up the dining into the kitchen to get one large space with two decent zones… not sure how to layout the kitchen tho… any good?

What do you need? Do you need a dining room, do you need a study? Does the garden wrap around the house? Do you need a utility just for washer drier or do you need a space for storage, a boot room, a drying room and space to do the ironing? How would you like to live in the house?
Do you want/need the whole of the double garage? Do you live the size of the lounge?
Where would you and your family spend most of your time?

Assuming the double doors lead into the garden, I would absolutely be swapping round the rooms like this and I’d turn the French doors into large bifold doors into the outside space. I’d make the kitchen dining area into a large open plan beauty for entertaining. If I didn’t need the study I’d use the space for what I did need, in my case a little playroom/snug.

If I had the budget and the space to accommodate I’d add a utility off the garage and kitchen too.

a friend of mine did similar with switching round the house entirely, big project and took about 12 months but totally worth it for their house.

edit: obviously these are big changes with big budgets and also a massive knock on to family life, it’s just how I’d do things with this house if I could and the plans allowed for it. Otherwise if I couldn’t swap the lounge round, I’d look at opening up the existing rooms in some way so it’s less modular.

Ooh thats lovely!

Really like this layout!

Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and swap rooms around to make the best use of the space. We've done this twice and it's made so much sense that the aggro and expense have been worth tolerating.

This is what I’d suggest too. The utility room can just be part of the kitchen, no need to box it off imo.

I’d try opening up the kitchen into the breakfast room, that’s probably the easiest way to get a bigger space. You could add an island there and bring the fridge back into the main kitchen area where it belongs 😁 The darker corner of the breakfast room could be great for tall cabinets or extra storage and keep the brighter window side for a table (or the island where you usually hang out).
I’d maybe only open it partially toward the dining room so it still feels a bit cozy and not too spread out. It's hard to picture that way, maybe you can try bulding layouts in Interiorbox 3d or other interior design programs, it makes it much easier to see what works and how it would look like.

I'd love this but it won't work with the fireplace in the living room being in the way. It would also probably be too expensive I'm guessing.

Opening the kitchen to breakfast and/or dining room may well work though. Just needs thought around the utility room and arrangement of the kitchen though.

We probably need two or three separate living spaces downstairs (eg living room, kitchen-diner and snug/piano room) plus a utility room which is ideally big enough for a clothes airer. We don't really need a study downstairs as we have enough upstairs rooms for that. The double garage we would like to keep.