Victorian terrace floor plan ideas

The humble Victorian house is something that millions of us call home. The rugged build quality and architectural features mean they’re as enduring today as they were when originally built. In their traditional form, they’re not always ideal for family life. Fortunately, the houses lend themselves to changes, ranging from knocking through a wall or two to complete renovations.

It can be hard to picture what can be done, so in this article, we’re focusing on floor plan ideas to give you an idea of layouts. Our Victorian terrace layout ideas article has images for inspiration.

Original floorplan

Below is a floor plan for a standard Victorian terrace house or semi-detached. For this floor plan, we’ve assumed that the bathroom has already been moved upstairs to where the rear bedroom would have been, and we’ve assumed that the box room at the front has been knocked through to create a larger master bedroom. Our examples are then variations of these plans.

Please note that the plans are not drawn to scale or code, so are designed as a guide to the kind of layout you could achieve. Any structural changes will need to comply with building regulations and permitted development rights and may require planning permission. There will be some limitations based on where you live, too, such as in a conservation area. It’s worth checking with your local planning authority before making any changes, and getting an architect to design any changes, accounting for any additional support that may be required. You’ll need a professional builder to perform the work. Keeping an eye on Rightmove to see what other people have done to similar houses is also a good idea.

In addition, there are minor variations between Victorian houses, so the layouts may not exactly match your home. For example, some Victorian homes have a bay window in the front bedroom as well as in the living room; others have no bay window at all. We’ve put one bay window into the lounge, in our exmaples. Regarding layout, bay windows (or the lack of) don’t make any difference to what you can and can’t do.

Likewise, we haven’t included chimney breasts, as many homes have had some or all of these removed. Again, these features don’t affect the layout options, just the space in a room. If you want to make more space, you can remove a chimney breast.

Upstairs, some homes have a rear extension that goes to the back of the kitchen, but many have a half-length extension, as pictured. Some houses only have a single-story extension at the rear but are in the minority.

With those assumptions out of the way, the traditional layout of a Victorian home is as below, with a lounge at the front, a slightly smaller dining room behind this, and then a long kitchen behind. Upstairs, above the kitchen, is a bathroom, followed by two bedrooms that sit above the lounge and dining room below; the front room doesn’t have to have a door to the front, so it is the full width of the house.

Downstairs ideas

With a corridor running through the house, the traditional downstairs of a Victorian home can feel compartmentalised, and there are no big individual rooms for entertaining. For some people, separate rooms can be nice, but there are options to use the space differently.

Through lounge

The through lounge is a common change to a Victorian home, knocking together the living room and dining room to create a larger room, while maintaining the external walls into the corridors.

The space can be opened up, or doors can be added so that it can be closed up to create two rooms when required. One of the original doors to the corridor can also be removed to gain wall space (or just blocked with a sofa or bookcase).

This type of layout creates one bigger room, but as the dining section is narrower than the front one, the space isn’t uniform in width. With the corridor in place, a through lounge can feel like a long, thin room that still feels like two separate areas. You also lose a wall in both rooms that you could otherwise put furniture against.

Part open plan

As the dining room is narrower than the living room, taking out the wall that divides this from the stairs and hallway can be a good idea. This opens up the room and can help with light through the house. It’s also easier to fit in furniture, such as a dining table.

The downside is that this open space allows noise to travel upstairs, and you lose the privacy of having an enclosed room.

Fully open plan

Taking out all of the walls in the main part of the house can open up the entire downstairs. You may need some supporting columns, but you’ll still get a wider room to use however you want, leaving the kitchen separate.

The downsides are that noise travels upstairs, as there are no walls and doors to enclose it; the exposed staircase can cause issues, such as if you want a loft conversion and need an escape route; and you don’t have an enclosed room that you can put a sofa bed in. For the latter, a curtain or sliding divider could be used to add some privacy back in.

With this design, the front door opens up onto the living space, which isn’t ideal. Some people leave part (or all) of the living room’s side wall in place; you could add a porch to the front of the house.

Side return extension

If you have more money to play with, a side return extension makes the kitchen the full width of the house. This can mean that the dining room becomes a bit darker, as it loses the window to the outside, but liberal use of glass on the side return can help negate that problem. Depending on the size of your house and how far you can extend into the garden, you can put in  small courtyard outside of the old dining room, allowing fresh air and light in.

Below is a typical layout with a side-return extension, including a doorway to the dining room from the kitchen, although you don’t need this. You can mix and match the other ideas for the ground floor with this idea to get the layout you want, and you don’t have to keep this as the kitchen. Swapping the layout of your home, so the kitchen and dining area are at the front and the new big room at the rear is the living room, can also work.

And, more than just giving more room, the side return extension also opens up the option for other ideas.

Side return with utility room/office or snug

With the side return making the kitchen bigger and opening up space to hold a dining room, the old dining room becomes a spare room. Rather than converting into a through lounge, you could put up a partition wall inside this and turn it into a utility room on one side and an office/snug on the other, connected by bi-folding or pocket doors.

With this layout, you can use the utility room for coats and boots, freeing up space in the narrow corridor.

Side return with open plan layout and toilet

Once the side return is in place, there’s scope to remodel the front of the house, too. With this example, there’s a large open-plan entertaining space at the front, but part of the old dining room has been retained to add a toilet, giving more space than if placed under the stairs. This also gives scope for a utility room accessed from the kitchen.

Similar downsides to the standard open-plan layout include noise travelling upstairs, a lack of privacy, and the front door opening onto the lounge. Again, there are options, such as leaving part of the living room’s original wall to section it off or using curtains or sliding partitions.

Upstairs

Upstairs, most of us want as many usable bedrooms as possible, with a decent-sized bathroom. That does limit the number of changes that you can make, but there are options. For most of these designs, we’ve assumed a half-length extension on the first floor, but have included one design with a full-length extension that fully goes over the kitchen below.

Separate the toilet from the bathroom

Putting the toilet in its room by partitioning it off from the bathroom can be useful, particularly if you don’t have a downstairs toilet. This way, someone can be in the bathroom having a shower while someone else uses the toilet. The separate toilet can also house the boiler in a cupboard at the back, freeing up space downstairs.

The downside of this design is that there might not be space in the bathroom for a toilet, which some people don’t like.

Bathroom next to a full-length double-storey extension

If you have a house where the upstairs extends fully over the kitchen, you’ve got a bit more scope, as you can fit in a smaller bathroom and a small bedroom at the rear. It’s a good use of space if you’ve got this option, and you end up with three bedrooms.

You’ll have to check about putting in a window in the bathroom as it could overlook a neighbour’s property and, therefore, not be allowed. And, this kind of layout can mean that the bathroom is very compact, depending on the size of the rear extension.

Take space from the front bedrooms for a bathroom

If you’ve got quite large front and second bedrooms, you might be able to take a bit of space from both to squeeze in a bathroom, leaving the rear extension for a full-size bedroom. This design only works in larger homes, and the downside is that you end up with a bathroom that won’t have a window. It also impacts two bedrooms. If you can, a loft conversion probably makes more sense.

A small ensuite at the front of the house

You might be able to use the space at the front of the house where the box room used to be for a bathroom. This can be an ensuite for the master bedroom, as pictured, but you could potentially have it accessible for everyone in the house.

The downside of this design is that the bathroom is very small, so you might need a secondary bathroom downstairs (the layout option with the toilet and side return extension could work, making the toilet into a shower room). You also lose a lot of room in the front bedroom. Finally, drainage tends to be at the rear of the house, making it hard to install a bathroom at the front of the house. If this kind of layout is possible, you may require a macerator toilet.

Loft conversion

If you’ve got enough head height in your loft, a loft conversion makes a lot of sense, as you can grab unused space. For some houses that don’t have enough headroom, it’s possible to have ceilings lowered below to make them taller, but the conversion process is impossible for some houses.

For most Victorian terraced houses, you can usually have an L-shaped conversion within permitted development limits, where you extend out the back over the bathroom and kitchen. This usually isn’t possible on a Victorian semi-detached house, as these typically require a hip-to-gable conversion, which uses up the available limit for roof expansion.

A standard loft conversion

A standard loft conversion will let you add a master bedroom and en-suite to the front of the house, while those with an L-shaped conversion, can add another bedroom to the rear. It’s a useful change to a house, genuinely adding more space.

Most people can fit the bathroom at the front of the house under the sloped roof, but if needed, it can be put in the dormer at the rear of the house.

Two bedrooms and a bathroom, plus a master suite downstairs

Going up into the loft means areas of reduced head height, but a way around this is to take the first floor, and join the master and second bedrooms. Turning the second bedroom into a walk-through wardrobe and dressing room, with a bathroom at the back, you get the main master bedroom with its full head height. Upstairs, you can have two bedrooms and a bathroom.

The disadvantage is that the front bedroom in the loft has reduced head height, and the master suite is passed by people heading upstairs, so it’s not the quietest place in the house.

A loft conversion with a walk-through wardrobe and en-suite

Most L-shaped conversions end up with the rear add-on (over the existing kitchen) at a lower height than the front. If you can get everything at the same level, or with just one or two steps down, you can create a loft conversion that contains the master bedroom at the front, with the rear extension used for a walk-through wardrobe and bathroom, or just a bathroom.

The main advantage of this layout is that everything is on one floor, and the master suite is at the top of the house, where it’s quieter and more secluded.