The protruding wall around the fireplace needs to be wallpapered or painted with dense motifs or tiled with stone/brick textured tiles or ply. Re-doing your fireplace will drastically change the look of your living room. See photos below. Consider painting the frames of your doors and sliding doors in the living room and kitchen a dark brown to match the floating shelf over the fireplace. Do not decide what you want to do in poor lighting as you have provided in the photos. Wine is a good color to consider. Also think of darker colors like plum and have different shades on each wall (from the same color family). So maybe think of wine- plum- magenta or wine - oxblood-blood red, etc. whichever suits your taste.

Hi I notice your blind and lamp are Laura Ashley Pelham. Laura Ashley does a duck egg white, pale duck egg and duck egg paint colours. Maybe you could have the duck egg white as the predominant colour and use in both rooms but also use the pale duck egg or duck egg in the lounge, or add some wallpaper. Not sure grey walls would work with the kitchen units. Perhaps more of a taupe/warm grey would work in both spaces though.

Hi minnie101, Thanks so much for your detailed reply. Great to know what colour that grey is. It may be a little dark with our floor. We will definitely update the handles - I hate the current ones. We'll probably go with wood to keep within budget. Your non-tiles pic is lovely. We'll probably keep some tiles and try to keep the kitchen a little more modern than country kitchen, which might be a challenge with wood. The room faces south. I like your idea of dividing it with paint. We probably will go with white in the kitchen and then 1/2 slightly darker tones in the tv-couch area. The 'other' entrance into the dining area is narrowed by a non-structural wall, so we should remove this to open it properly or like you say, close it off. Maybe not close it off entirely as we'd lose a lot of light, but maybe put in a counter or breakfast bar if space allowed. I love your pendant light suggestions over the dining table. Details like this and a rug in the couch area will really help divide the room as at the moment it is one big cavernous space. I really can't decide yet what way the couches should face - into a tv in the corner, or out into the room like you suggest. We'll have to draw out some chalk outlines on the floor and see how much space there actually is. Colour-wise we like the idea of keeping walls and cabinets quite stark, the wood counter will add a bit of warmth, and then adding colour with couches, rugs and possibly dining chairs. I've attached a couple of pieces of furniture I like. Some may not work, but we'll figure it out.

I like the wood effect tile. If properly placed it might give the impression of an actual wood floor. Well apart from colour i guess one would have to conisder how easy they are to clean with stains and all. But more importantly how slippery they are when dry, when wet or when there is a little bit of oil on it.