Dining room, evolving
The dining room is evolving, and it always has been. Picture, if you will, the most classical formal dining room you can think of—for me, this calls to mind a sort of Regency-era atmosphere, involving dark polished wood, brocade-backed seats, crystal chandeliers, and posh British drama spoken in mild voices over a five-course meal. I’ll admit that I am thinking about Downton Abbey (an enduring favorite show), but the notion is still there. The idea of an old-style formal dining room conjures up certain aesthetic imagery that doesn’t necessarily apply to today’s dining rooms. And let’s be clear, there’s a lot of change that’s happened between then and now—a formal dining room of the 60’s might feature sleek mid-century modern furnishing, a Sputnik-style overhead light, cream fabrics and warm woods. In the past, the aesthetic of the dining space has flowed with the times. Now, we’re seeing a new change: a change in function.
Today’s dining rooms are something of a different beast. Typically, we take our meals in more variable, and often more casual, places. The kitchen island or counter has fast emerged as the new mealtime venue of choice—it’s also not uncommon to settle in for a meal in front of the TV with your latest favorite show on (we partake in that sort of dinnertime entertainment in our house plenty). When we turn back to our dining rooms now, they emerge as slightly different creatures, whose purpose broadens to suit our immediate functional needs. The dining table, with its vast open space, makes for a good spot to settle in for work-from-home duties, or putting together a puzzle. In our house, our dining table ends up more often than not becoming a craft station—you’ll probably find the middle stages of a sewing project laid out there, or trays of beads for bracelet-making. When we have special company, usually around holidays or other home-centric celebrations, we clear the space and use the table for, well, dining. But the rest of the year, we’re usually asking more of the dining room than has been asked of it before.
And increasingly, the dining “room” isn’t so much its own room as it is a conjoined area with the kitchen. The most common iteration of the dining space is one folded neatly into the open-concept kitchen, whose borders flow freely into the area of the dining table. This shift has made our homes more communal—we’re able to chat and coexist in the cooking space and the consuming space in one, spend time together while we prepare a shared meal in a way that closed-off, delineated spaces allow less. Our dining-kitchen area is open-concept, which I’ve really enjoyed. My daughter can work on her projects while I’m doing some baking in the kitchen, and we can listen to the same albums and make conversation.
So all these new fluctuations in function—what do they mean for the state of the dining room? Is the dining room’s sun beginning to set?
I certainly don’t think so. The way we live and move through spaces is an ever-changing thing—as our world changes, so do our routine practices, and in conjunction, so do our needs at home. Today’s homes are undoubtedly different from the homes of the past, and that’s okay! Adaptability is a good thing.
And at the end of the day, the dining space is still a space of real purpose and utility. You might not take every breakfast and dinner there, but having the capacity to sit more visiting friends and family for those special occasions is invaluable. The singularity of the dining room is expanding into a lovely multi-dimensionality. We view our dining spaces now as multi-function—they handle our special occasions, and our day-to-day operations, when we just need somewhere to sit and sort bills or play board games. The dining room is willing to change with us—what more could we ask?
A note on design: sometimes the sense of “formality” in the dining room can be foreboding. It can feel like you have fewer avenues in which to express your own style—you’re more constrained by a certain set of aesthetic guidelines around what “formal” really feels like. These blended spaces alleviate some of that feeling—they’re a little more relaxed to start with—but generally, you shouldn’t worry about the perceived rules of dining room styles. It’s your home, after all, and especially with the new flexibility of the modern-age dining room, the aesthetic options are as unlimited as they are in the rest of your home!
Are you ready to take your dining room to the next level? Drop me a line! Let’s talk—and let’s make your dining room really work for you.
Never fear—the dining room is here to stay. It’s just changing its coat.