Homeowners across the UK are starting to shun more regular house layouts in favour of open-plan styles, creating “social areas” and getting rid of dining rooms, living rooms and kitchens, recent research has discovered.

The study by Lloyds TSB found that over one-fifth of homeowners (21 per cent) are being relatively destructive in their home over the last ten years, and many are even undergoing fast house sales either privately or with companies like Tom Craven Property in order to speed up a move to this type of home.

In the questionnaire involving no fewer than 2,000 people, it was also claimed that one quarter of homes in the modern world have one room reserved for utilities alone – far and away from just one in ten homes that had the same in the previous generation.

Commenting on this socio-cultural effect on construction, Simon Hamilton, the international director at the British Institute of Interior Design, said: “With our increasingly hectic lifestyles convenience and sociability have become key, which is why kitchen-diners and games rooms have grown in popularity. In the next ten years, the majority of houses will be designed in this style.”