Why Your Dining Room Is Essential to Your Home
If you’ve recently bought a home or even perused the internet and looked at home listings, you’ll notice that dining rooms have the world divided. Some people love formal dining rooms, and that love is obvious when they sell their homes. Others couldn’t stand their formal dining room and didn’t think anyone else would want one, so they converted the space into something else, like an office. While you should always have the right to decide what happens in your house, your dining room is essential to your home. Keep reading to learn why and how to design the perfect one.
A Specific Functional Space
As open floor plans grow in popularity, we’re losing the specific functions of individual rooms. While many people think it’s nice to be able to arrange and decorate an open floor plan however they want, this freedom is also overwhelming. You’re not sure what to put where and can end up spending a long time trying to create the perfect arrangement.
Specific functional spaces, like formal dining rooms, take all that extra work away. You can walk in and know that you’re in a dining room and how it should function. It’s also an easy space to measure, so you can effortlessly pick out the right tables and chairs. You might use it every day with your family, or you might leave it untouched until special occasions. Regardless of how often you use it, you can stay confident in the knowledge that you have a functional dining space.
A Space for Good Habits
Many of us feel like we’re always on the go. We’re rushing to work or school or other activities, rushing home, and moving on to the next thing on the to-do list. Sitting down to eat dinner means inhaling food off the plate, or you may not even sit down at all. Sometimes you can’t help having a busy schedule, but sometimes you can. Just like your home has a space carved out for eating, you should make space in your schedule for good, healthy eating habits.
Having that formal eating space can help you form those healthy eating habits. Formal dining rooms don’t have TVs or other distractions, which means when you sit down to eat, you can focus on your food. This allows you to pay better attention to your body’s hunger queues and can help little ones develop good table manners. Dining rooms are essential to your home and health.
A Hosting Area
Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, there are people outside of your household that you love and enjoy spending time with. You can go out to spend time together, but sometimes it’s nice to stay in the comforts of someone’s home. A formal dining room gives you the perfect hosting area when your home is up in the hosting rotation.
Most formal dining rooms can seat at least six people, which means you don’t have to worry about anyone squishing in. The table and chairs provide the right setting for a delicious meal, but it provides other opportunities as well, such as hosting a game night or making for a great gathering spot.
No one will feel left out either, which can accidentally happen in a living room where seating options can group people together. Even if you don’t host a lot, a formal dining room makes a great gathering spot, so you should invest in nice furniture that will keep the space comfortable whenever you use it.
A Bonding Area
Just because formal dining rooms have the word ‘formal’ in them doesn’t mean you can use them only for special occasions. While dining rooms are a great hosting area, as we described above, they’re also a good spot for gathering with your family. With few distractions other than food, you and your household can sit down and talk about your day with ease. Whether you have roommates that you want to keep up with instead of scattering around the house or you’re a more traditional nuclear family, dining rooms offer a quiet place to bond with each other.
If you’re worried that your dining room is too stuffy and formal to create a bonding area, change it. As we said above, the formal word doesn’t require formality. Pick the furniture you’re comfortable with, include various lighting options, and decorate the room in a way that brings comfort to the people using it the most. If you want it to look more formal when you host or have company over, consider using fancier place settings for the table and cushion covers for the chairs.
Designing Your Dining Room
Now that you know why your dining room is essential for your home, you need to start designing it. If you’ve never designed a dining room before and only had eat-in kitchens, this process can sound nerve-racking, but it’s not. Designing the right dining room comes down to the accommodations of the space and how you plan to use it.
Accommodations
When you look at your formal dining room and consider how you can best design it, you need to think about what it can accommodate. How big is the room? How big and what shape is the doorway? What shape is the room? What are the light sources? Is there any natural light? Are there any home features you need to be careful of, like a radiator?
Answering these questions will help you decide what table size and shape you need, how many chairs you need, whether you should add or replace light sources, and how you should arrange the furniture. Also, write measurements down so that you don’t have to second guess size and space while shopping for your dining tables and chairs on credit.
Usage
After you consider the bones of the room and how the furniture will fit, you have to decide how you want to use it. If this will be a formal dining room used only for hosting and special occasions, you may want to invest in more high-quality furniture, like leather seats.
However, if you and your household plan to use this space to eat every day, you may want to focus your shopping on durable furniture options like wood. You’ll also need to focus on durability and design if you want the space to be versatile for hosting, family, and other functions, such as a spot for kids to do homework or a grandparent to craft.
What will look best and allow the room to function for you? Answering this question will help you choose the right furniture and not get distracted by options that won’t help you.
Dining rooms provide a specific space that gives your home clear boundaries, helps you form healthy eating habits, and functions as a great hosting and bonding spot. If you’re on the fence about keeping a formal dining room in your new home, invest in some good furniture and do your best to enjoy the space. You can always convert it later if you discover that it isn’t as useful as you thought it would be.
