‘Without a living room, your world becomes quite small,” says Georgie, a 27-year-old climbing and outdoor instructor. When she moved into a house-share with four strangers in 2023, she wasn’t worried about the lack of a living room. “I kind of thought it would be fine – I didn’t have that many options, and the house was by far the cheapest.”
The property she rented was in Leeds, and what had once been a lounge had gradually been turned into an inaccessible storage space. To make things worse, the kitchen was tiny: “By the time you put a table against the wall, you couldn’t sit or stand without getting in the way of the sink or the oven.”
As a result, Georgie and her housemates tended to cook separately, taking meals back to their respective bedrooms to eat – but the lack of a living room left her feeling isolated. “You miss shared experiences,” she says. “It was hard to invite people over because not everyone wants to sit in a bedroom – there wasn’t space for a proper chair – and your bedroom becomes less relaxing, and more stressful.” She would go to friends’ houses for dinner, but they rarely came to hers. “I felt really bad because they were always hosting me and I couldn’t return the favour. Eating, sleeping, socialising and working in a bedroom can lead you to feel trapped.” She lived there until buying her own place – with a living room – in February this year. “I love it,” she says, “and I’m way happier.”
Living rooms have long been commonplace within western homes and something many of us take for granted, but according to recent research from SpareRoom, a growing number of rentals advertised on the house-sharing website come without living room access. Between January and June this year, 29.8% of rooms listed in the UK were in properties without a living room, rising to 41.2% in London. Almost half (49%) of all renters surveyed reported that the living room in their home is now being used as a bedroom.
The term “living room”, as opposed to “drawing room” or “parlour”, is widely credited to Edward Bok, the former editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, who popularised the term around the late 19th to early 20th century. Social formalities had begun to relax, and communal spaces were starting to be used more casually, having also become more attainable among the middle classes. Bok believed it “foolish” to have an expensively furnished room that was used only on special occasions, and hoped that renaming it would encourage daily use.
Arguably, he succeeded: these days, the living room is often a place to slump on the sofa, eat a TV dinner and scroll on your phone to your heart’s content. But could we do without it? Or does shared space still hold value within the home?
Opinions are divided. According to SpareRoom’s research, 44% believe not having a living room may have affected their mental health. Even so, as the cost of living crisis continues, more than a third (36%) of those living in a shared property said they would willingly forgo a living room in return for cheaper rent.
For Louis Platman, the curator and research manager at the Museum of the Home in London, getting rid of the living room is a recipe for disaster. “Just from personal experience, going into friends’ flatshares where there isn’t any living room, it’s really hard to build that sense of community and friendship without a place to gather,” he says. “As fewer and fewer people are owning their own homes, and most people can’t afford to rent a whole house, landlords will seek to convert whatever space is available into a bedroom for another £1,000 a month in rent. It’s going to become increasingly difficult [to save the living room] without a wider recognition, or potentially a legal recognition, of the right to a shared leisure space, and its importance to our wellbeing, as well as our sense of home.”
But this is not the first time that the end of the living room has been mooted. “For centuries, the communal area in the home would have been around the fire – even in one-room houses,” says Platman. But when central heating and electric heating became more commonplace in the 1930s and 1940s, this began to change. “Bedrooms could become ‘living rooms’, and more time was spent in these rooms now that they could be heated easily for the first time. There was a lot of commentary announcing ‘the death of the family’ as there was no longer any necessity to gather in one place; people like George Orwell were deploring the demise of the hearth as the family hub.”
The concept of shared leisure space was restored with the invention of the television: initially, most homes would only have been able to afford one TV set, so everyone would gather around it. But the way in which we watch TV has also changed hugely, especially in recent years: in 2024, it was reported that less than half of 16- to 24-year-olds are now watching traditional TV (live and catchup programming on a television set at home) each week, compared with 76% just five years before. Only the over-75s slightly increased their traditional TV viewing compared with the previous year, and then only by 1%. When viewers do tune in, streaming via separate screens has become the norm – eliminating the need for a communal space once again.
“That’s been happening since the 80s, when second TV sets became pretty cheap and you’d get people watching in their bedrooms, or even having a small set in the bathroom,” says Platman. “It’s becoming more atomised – and now, with entertainment on demand, we’re losing both the time and the place that was connecting people in this way.”
Not everyone sees this as a loss. When Imogen, who is 34 and works in the culture sector, first moved to London in 2011, she lived with two housemates in a two-bed flat. “With the landlord’s permission, we turned the sitting room into a third bedroom and split the rent three ways,” she says. “We were all forging careers in the arts while working hospitality and front-of-house jobs … It was the money-saving mechanism we all needed to build [our] careers.”
Without a lounge, their small kitchen became a social hub. “We cooked, ate, socialised, gamed, entertained and crafted together, and forged relationships we wouldn’t have if we were spread across multiple rooms. It was the least comfortable and most social five years of my life.” While Imogen does now own a house with a sitting room, she says she finds herself saving it for “best” and sitting in the kitchen instead, “because that’s where life really happens”.
Repurposing living spaces is not always as straightforward as it initially seems. When 25-year-old Salli, from Essex, first moved into a shared student house in her fourth year of university, it appeared that they would have a good amount of space, even without a designated living room. “The house was a typical student house: once built for a family, then transformed to fit the maximum amount of bedrooms in order to maximise rent,” she says. “Although we were six [occupants] and six bedrooms, practically there were eight or nine there most days with everyone’s partners.” Still, they had a bathroom, as well as two shower rooms, a kitchen, and a conservatory that could fit two sofas and an armchair – it seemed like plenty of space for socialising.
“However, as nights got colder and spiders found their way in, we soon realised why an indoor living room is nice to have,” says Salli. “We would sometimes bring a TV down to the conservatory and play games there, but lighting, temperature and plug sockets were an issue. Sometimes we would hang out in the stairwell and upstairs landing, or in one of the bigger bedrooms, but eventually the owner of the room would naturally want to use it. It would have been nice to sometimes drink beer or celebrate birthdays indoors, and not where you could see your own breath.”
Most architects and interior designers I speak to are hesitant to recommend ditching the living room – although admittedly, most of their clients tend not to be short on space. “Having lived without a lounge, I think it’s a pretty horrible idea to be honest,” says Peter Markos, the architect/director at Markos Design Workshop. He was renting in London in 2020 when the landlord suggested changing the living room into another bedroom so they could pay less rent. “Once the living room was converted, there were six of us living there: the only place to talk is the kitchen, the only place to eat is the kitchen, so everyone’s on top of each other. It’s really not the nicest experience. There’s nowhere to just watch TV or read a book.”
In the end, not having a sitting room was a decisive factor in Markos moving back to Birmingham, where his budget allowed for more space. “The quality of life was so much better,” he says. “I could see that, in terms of my own mental health and personal satisfaction, if I stuck around in London, the best I could afford was a house with a kitchen that does everything. I always tell clients to make the most of the space available. Clever, smart interventions – how you use storage, how you use the space – can make the world of difference. But there is a tipping point with that, where you get to the other extreme and say, ‘Oh well, we’re not going to have a lounge.’”
Regan Billingsley, the principal at Regan Billingsley Interiors and founder of lifestyle brand RB Curated, is open to the idea of rooms evolving, based on how they are used. “It really depends on how you live,” she says. “Every home should reflect the rhythm of the people in it. A living room today should flex with your life: a space for connection, relaxation and creativity.”
For those without the option of a traditional lounge, however, she stresses there are solutions. “From a design perspective, open-plan kitchens, dining areas and even wide hallways can be layered with texture, lighting and furniture placement to create natural gathering points,” Billingsley says. “A built-in banquette can double as a lounge area; a large dining table can transition from workspace to dinner party setting.”
But like many of those who have experienced homes without a lounge, Platman remains unconvinced. “I think having a living room is essential to a healthy home life, whether that’s a traditional family set-up, or flatsharing, or an intergenerational home, which is becoming increasingly common now.” It’s crucial, he says, to have a room that belongs to everyone; a space that can foster conversation and “just lets people relax”.
