Architecture Coach: A Different Kind of Dining Room

By Barbara Ballinger

Despite rumors of its demise, the dining room is not disappearing, but going through a transformation as homes get smaller and more energy-efficient and low-maintenance.

Often thought of as a place mostly for enjoying holiday dinners and birthday celebrations, the dining room is morphing into a friendlier, more intimate space as home owners try to maximize existing square footage rather than add on.

One popular trend today is to take down a wall between the dining room and kitchen to fashion one big, casual cooking and eating space, which can also be used for watching a movie or using a computer, says interior designer Janell Rasper of Callen Construction Inc. in Muskego, Wis.

Those who build from scratch today often go for a simpler approach: In addition to fewer bedrooms and smaller garages, people frequently opt for more casual living and eating spaces, an open great room with a corner for dining, or a smaller dining room, according to the most recent New Homes Started survey from the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, D.C. “Home owners worried about costs are interested in making trade-offs today,” says Stephen Melman, NAHB’s director of Economic Services, Economics and Housing Policy.

Tom Hackett of Orren Pickell Designers & Builders in Lake Bluff, Ill., says his firm regularly scales back on the size of most dining rooms and lowers once-high ceilings for warmth and intimacy. More dining rooms also have become multipurpose with bookshelves, a bar, or paneling that opens to a desk for an at-home office. And some of these rooms are placed at the center of the house so they lie within the main traffic flow to attract attention and use, Hackett says.

You can help your buyers and sellers analyze a dining room’s importance by discussing the following possibilities, based on how they live. The ultimate goal: to feed the eyes and make the space functional.

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Reprinted from REALTOR® Magazine Online November 2010 with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.