ᐅ Lighting for a Long, Narrow Combined Living and Dining Area in a Mid-Terrace House

I understand your wish to move the kitchen slightly forward. However, if the drawn furniture is accurate, you would then have the dining table almost right next to the sofa. We had a similar layout in one of our previous semi-detached houses, and I have to say that this was one of the most annoying things for me. A clearer separation between the dining and living areas feels more spacious to me than if it “looks like” the dining takes place in the living room. But that is just my personal experience.

Bertram100 schrieb:

I don’t have any significant features in the center section.

However, this is where the central dining table is located, which requires good lighting.

JuliaAlex schrieb:

Do you happen to know if a wall outlet is needed there, or just a power socket?

No, unfortunately, I don’t know.

JuliaAlex schrieb:

I didn’t quite understand that 😳 Do you mean setting the table back a bit so it doesn’t extend into the living area?

What I meant is: based on the kitchen island, keep a distance to the dining table, then adjust the same distance at the lower right.

However, I want to take that back: Your kitchen island is currently too shallow. You will get more grease splashes behind it than you want. A kitchen island should be at least 90 cm (35 inches) deep.
The others are right about visually separating the dining area from the chill zone.
You’ve drawn in a 2.40 m (8 feet) dining table? Do you already have that? I would push it back, maybe even rotate it, and place it against the wall. For the dining table, consider a dimmable pendant light.
I think the exact wall outlets can only be decided once the kitchen layout is finalized. If it really is a kitchen island, what kind of extractor hood will you have? Downdraft or an overhead hood with lighting? That makes a difference.
The kitchen needs task lighting… or does your kitchen not have any? Then you could do without a central ceiling light.
The front hallway needs lighting. My middle left point of the six-point layout would be good for a spot light to illuminate the closet. Do you like spotlights? LED?
I would skip the upper left point of the six-point layout; it’s only there visually if you use those focused spotlights. But since the dining table already covers that area, it’s unnecessary, especially as the basement stairs get their own light.
If I plan a practical kitchen as a U-shape (not a G-shape), I’d follow this layout and the corresponding outlet placement (excluding wall outlets, which I will leave out for now). I must say I am quite flexible with moving light fixtures, as I often rearrange furniture. So I like to get creative and sometimes hang the pendant light about a meter (3 feet) away from the ceiling outlet. For me, a table lamp on the kitchen countertop also looks nice and serves as decoration rather than being a failure in lighting design 😉

JuliaAlex schrieb:

We would definitely be interested in your kitchen layout!! That’s our next project... We’re still going back and forth with the planning. We want to intentionally extend the countertop a bit beyond this "kitchen niche" so the kitchen doesn’t feel so cramped in the corner. Also, we deliberately moved the dining table a little closer to the living area so the space looks more open from the table and you don’t feel like you’re sitting in a hallway—though that does mean the walking paths are quite long.... So, we’re really looking forward to practical tips and concrete experiences; so far, everything is just theoretical for us.

I’ll post it here sometime—maybe you could start your own thread about it. I would never make the kitchen that large—the open-plan space is just too small for that; it wouldn’t fit! The 3 or 4 m2 (32 or 43 sq ft) where you have “cooking” marked—what exactly do you want to do there? That seems like wasted space!

I’d place the wall light centered right above the table at about 150 cm (5 feet) height. I’d mainly place mirrors in the hallway—two mirrors with a rail for jackets in between. Given the tight space: shallow shoe cabinets and pegboards wherever there are no mirrors, where you can hang boxes, bags, or backpacks. It’s very flexible and uses the space efficiently.

The first picture shows our original plan—we moved the island up by 10 cm (4 inches) and attached it to the tall cabinet front with a shallow base cabinet (35 cm (14 inches) deep).

Keep in mind that our width is only 238 cm (94 inches), and the wall extension on the right side is 293 cm (115 inches) deep measured from the window. So, with the island, we extended about 15 cm (6 inches) beyond that line.

The second photo is from a neighboring house; the tiled area is, if I recall correctly, 265 cm (104 inches) wide and 293 cm (115 inches) deep. These are all rough construction measurements.

If you increase the depth by 150 cm (59 inches), you only gain two cabinets along one wall—that’s hardly worth the wasted 4 or 5 square meters (our entire kitchen is less than 7 square meters (75 square feet)!). We solved this by placing a large Pax closet right in the basement hallway, where we store less frequently used kitchen items. This way, our current kitchen setup works perfectly for us.

Bertram100 schrieb:

I don’t have any significant rooms in the central section. I placed the kitchen and kitchen sofa in the garden area with large windows, and the “living room” is at the front. The window there is big enough to avoid sitting in the dark. In the middle section, I have a storage room and an office. My house has the same dimensions as the original poster’s. I don’t understand how someone could find such a house dark.

I think the idea of positioning the kitchen and dining area towards the garden and the living room near the entrance is great!

Scout schrieb:

The first picture was our initial plan – we moved the island up by 10cm (4 inches) and attached it to the tall cabinet wall with a shallow base cabinet (=35cm (14 inches) deep).

Keep in mind that our kitchen is only 238cm (94 inches) wide, and the wall extension on the right measures 293cm (115 inches) deep from the window, so the island extends about 15cm (6 inches) beyond that line.

The second photo is from a neighbor’s house; the tiled area is, if I remember correctly, 265cm (104 inches) wide and 293cm (115 inches) deep. These are all rough construction measurements.

If you increase the depth by 150cm (59 inches), you only gain two cabinets on one wall – which isn’t much considering the wasted 4 or 5 square meters (our entire kitchen is less than 7m² (75 ft²)!). We decided to keep a large PAX closet right at the basement entrance where we store kitchen items we rarely use. That way, the kitchen as it is now works perfectly for us.

Wow, the paneling on your neighbors’ tall cabinets looks great 😀 😀 We personally don’t much like the side view from the dining area of those quite bulky 60cm (24 inches) deep tall cabinets for the oven and fridge, but with the paneling and the “floating effect,” they look completely different! It’s probably from an expensive kitchen studio, right? Unfortunately, our budget is limited to 15,000–20,000 euros including appliances.

I also like your island solution. Do you have enough space to walk past the island to get to the dining area? I’m always worried it might be too tight and you have to constantly go all around it.

Everything in the kitchen that isn’t essential and is only used very rarely will also end up in our basement.

Isn’t it dark in your dining area without much natural light, or do you always need the ceiling light on? I wouldn’t want to have to turn on the light all the time during the day.

My kitchen layout sketch was just a rough initial draft, and right now I’m leaning towards a two-line kitchen with a breakfast bar at the front (which isn’t that far from your design). But I think I’ll start a separate thread for that.