Are you a lounge lover?

Do you need a living room? It’s a question you may not have considered before embarking on the hunt for rented accommodation in London. But with space at a premium in most London houses, living space is often one of the first things to go. How important is it? It depends largely on your lifestyle. Myrooms.co.uk knows for some people it is a priority – hence why it appears on the property’s listing highlights.

Whether you’d prefer accommodation with a living room comes down to how much interaction you’d like with the people you share the space with. If you are new to London or looking to make friends, having a space where you can gather with your housemates makes for a more sociable lifestyle. Having the ability to sit down on the sofa and have a chat on evenings and weekends can broaden your social circle and help build a new ‘family’ of friends. Plus, if guests come around, you won’t have to congregate in the kitchen and run the risk of annoying your hungry housemates; or have the awkward job of hosting visitors in your bedroom!

Of course, many tenants are happy just engaging their housemates with a polite nod in the hallway or having a quick chat while they make a coffee in the kitchen. In which case, you could happily forego the living space.

It’s worth noting as well that the more living space you share, the more potential there is for tension over personal levels of tidiness. Nobody can see their housemates’ junk behind closed bedroom doors. If it gets spread across a communal living room it’s a lot more obvious – and annoying. Not to mention the potential for clashes if you have a communal television. If your taste in TV programmes varies wildly, you may need to rotate command of the remote control!

Flats with living rooms are, however, in the minority: only 11% of the properties listed on Myrooms.co.uk at the time of writing have a living room available for tenants. If you want your accommodation to offer more opportunities for ‘living’, you’d best be quick.