By the middle of the nineteenth century, the furnishing of a parlour in a middle-class household would typically have included a fitted carpet and rugs, easy chairs and sofas with sprung upholstery and deep buttoning, tables draped with large cloths and a variety of furniture for activities like card games, sewing, music and reading. It was no longer usual for the parlour to be used for dining; in most houses there was now a separate dining room and this allowed the parlour, or drawing room as it was sometimes called amongst the wealthy middle classes, to become a space for comfort and relaxation. New houses tended to have a through-room connected by large folding doors which allowed the space to be used as one or sub-divided.