Modern bungalow layouts.

Spreadsheetman

I agree with the OP, the all-in-one kitchen/dining/living room is awful.

There are some very fancy & expensive new-build bungalows not far from me where they have done that. It looks like you could just about have put a partition wall in to separate the living area, but they included some large bi-fold doors in the way that would make that expensive and tricky to do.

Slinky

A bungalow we missed out on looked to me to have the perfect layout. The front door was in the middle of the long side of the building. There was an entrance hall with another hallway off to the right with all the bedrooms and bathrooms on that side. On the left hand side was the kitchen, lounge and conservatory, so you didn't have visitors wandering past peering in open bedroom doors. Unfortunately the floorplan seems to have been removed from RM otherwise I'd post it up.

Scotbot

Agree with the OP that kitchen/diner/living room is common and the space is small.No it is not what people want but it allows developers to advertise a bungalow as 3 beds when in reality it is 2 beds, living room and kitchen/diner

tooldle

Slinky said:

A bungalow we missed out on looked to me to have the perfect layout. The front door was in the middle of the long side of the building. There was an entrance hall with another hallway off to the right with all the bedrooms and bathrooms on that side. On the left hand side was the kitchen, lounge and conservatory, so you didn't have visitors wandering past peering in open bedroom doors. Unfortunately the floorplan seems to have been removed from RM otherwise I'd post it up.

Mine is like this, turn left for lounge, kitchen and now removed conservatory and turn right for bedrooms and bathroom. 

matthew91822

I'm currently only viewing bungalows and have seen lots of different layouts. I can be a fan off kitchen/diner/living but only if it's big enough, some are so small you can only fit in a 2 seater sofa. 

I definitely prefer a rear-facing or better a dual-aspect living room, I've always wanted to have patio doors that look out to the garden, rather than the front of the house, and as someone else has said you want access to the garden without going through a bedroom!

See below this very cheeky layout where they're pretending its a 3 bed.

Soot2006

matthew91822 said:

I'm currently only viewing bungalows and have seen lots of different layouts. I can be a fan off kitchen/diner/living but only if it's big enough, some are so small you can only fit in a 2 seater sofa. 

I definitely prefer a rear-facing or better a dual-aspect living room, I've always wanted to have patio doors that look out to the garden, rather than the front of the house, and as someone else has said you want access to the garden without going through a bedroom!

See below this very cheeky layout where they're pretending its a 3 bed.

Bedroom 3 is a very nice living room -- it is indeed odd how these are all labelled as bedroom but I guess it makes the property come on more sale site searches?

We got our semi-det bungalow (which does have an ugly dormer plonked on top) relatively cheap because it was advertised as  "two bedroom" because the dormer doesn't have building regulation sign-off. It's been up since 1980; it'll be as fine as any other built at the same time.  Counting the upstairs, it's 170 sq.m, 2 bedrooms upstairs + a little bathroom; 2 big bedrooms downstairs + living room/den, dining room, kitchen, and a lean-to cheapie conservatory.  If we are still here when we can't manage the stairs, we could either get a stair lift, or the downstairs will be plenty big enough to live in.

[Deleted User]

Soot2006 said:

matthew91822 said:

I'm currently only viewing bungalows and have seen lots of different layouts. I can be a fan off kitchen/diner/living but only if it's big enough, some are so small you can only fit in a 2 seater sofa. 

I definitely prefer a rear-facing or better a dual-aspect living room, I've always wanted to have patio doors that look out to the garden, rather than the front of the house, and as someone else has said you want access to the garden without going through a bedroom!

See below this very cheeky layout where they're pretending its a 3 bed.

Bedroom 3 is a very nice living room -- it is indeed odd how these are all labelled as bedroom but I guess it makes the property come on more sale site searches?

We got our semi-det bungalow (which does have an ugly dormer plonked on top) relatively cheap because it was advertised as  "two bedroom" because the dormer doesn't have building regulation sign-off. It's been up since 1980; it'll be as fine as any other built at the same time.  Counting the upstairs, it's 170 sq.m, 2 bedrooms upstairs + a little bathroom; 2 big bedrooms downstairs + living room/den, dining room, kitchen, and a lean-to cheapie conservatory.  If we are still here when we can't manage the stairs, we could either get a stair lift, or the downstairs will be plenty big enough to live in.

If you see this kind of dishonest rubbish on Rightmove, you can hide the house from your search results and then it will ask you why you did that. One of the options is "inaccurate description" or something like that.

TBagpuss

I don't think it is just bungalows - a lot of houses and flats are built this way too, with open plan living / kitchen areas. 
I think some people do like it, and I think also it's becuase otherwise, in many cases, the rooms would be very small.

My house was altered by the previous owners to knck the living and dining rooms into one - I would have preferred separate rooms but it wasn't a deal breaker (the kitchen is separate with a door that can be clsoed, so I don't get smells or sounds I don't want. If I ever have the money I would ideally like to put back the dividing wall, with double doors to allow me to be cosy in smaller rooms most of the time and open them up when I have guests, but it's not my biggest priority.

It's not new - my parents had a extension and renovations done to our then home back in the mid 80s and the architect was very keen for them to make it all open plan. They declined. (My mum did point out to him that in a family with 4 children, 3 of whom played diffrent musical instruments, and who were of different ages and interests, having plenty of spaces where it was possible to close the door on whatever noisy thing you were doing was a big advantage! )

Mgman1965

This for sale near me.

My almost perfect layout, wish I could afford it, £375,000.

Greymug

matthew91822 said:

I'm currently only viewing bungalows and have seen lots of different layouts. I can be a fan off kitchen/diner/living but only if it's big enough, some are so small you can only fit in a 2 seater sofa. 

I definitely prefer a rear-facing or better a dual-aspect living room, I've always wanted to have patio doors that look out to the garden, rather than the front of the house, and as someone else has said you want access to the garden without going through a bedroom!

See below this very cheeky layout where they're pretending its a 3 bed.

I see really 2 options here:

Option A gives you a decent 2 bedroom bungalow
- Bedroom 3 becomes a living room.
- You tear down that monstrosity called conservatory because all conservatories are pure garbage.

Option B gives you a nice 1 bedroom bungalow
- You tear down the conservatory because all conservatories are pure garbage.
- Kitchen becomes the bathroom (who are this savages that deem acceptable to have a bathroom with no windows?)
- Bedroom 2 gains space from moving the bathroom and becomes a nicely sized living room
- Bedroom 3 and dining room become a nice and open kitchen/dining area

Again, lots of work for not a big return. At the end of the day you always end up with a small bungalow.