Why Dining Rooms Are Disappearing From American Homes

[littlemissmartypants]

Why Dining Rooms Are Disappearing From American Homes

A once-ubiquitous feature of floor plans is becoming a rarity.
By M. Nolan Gray

JUNE 10, 2024

The dining room is the closest thing the American home has to an appendix—a dispensable feature that served some more important function at an earlier stage of architectural evolution. Many of them sit gathering dust, patiently awaiting the next “dinner holiday” on Easter or Thanksgiving.

That’s why the classic, walled-off dining room is getting harder to find in new single-family houses. It won’t be missed by many. Americans now tend to eat in spaces that double as kitchens or living rooms—a small price to pay for making the most of their square footage.

But in many new apartments, even a space to put a table and chairs is absent. Eating is relegated to couches and bedrooms, and hosting a meal has become virtually impossible. This isn’t simply a response to consumer preferences. The housing crisis—and the arbitrary regulations that fuel it—is killing off places to eat whether we like it or not, designing loneliness into American floor plans. If dining space keeps dying, the U.S. might not have a chance to get it back.

The apex predator of the dining room is the “great room”—a combined living room and kitchen, bridged by an open dining space. “It’s not that Americans don’t want dining rooms. It’s that they want something else, and that takes up space,” explains Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Center for Building in North America, a nonprofit that advocates for building-code reform. “In a single-family home, that’s a great room. And so that’s what developers build.”
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❤️pants

[berniesandersmittens]

1. My dining room table doubles as my desk

It's where I fold my clothes. I sew on it.

I still eat dinner at the table even though I'm alone.

I understand others don't need the space, but growing up it's where we gathered. We talked about our day. It's also where beer pong and spades were played.

[LisaM]

2. "Designing loneliness into American homes".

Yes, it is.

I know a lot of European housing is small, too, but Europeans have more shared neighborhood spaces, the cafes, the pubs, the parks. We're eliminating those, too.

[keopeli]

3. I believe dining rooms should become multi-purpose rooms with a desk that expands into a dining table.

Basically an office space/dining space/entertaining room. I think more homes will need an office space in the future.

[Random Boomer]

4. My house was built in the 1880s

So we do have a dining room.

It's filled with two desks with PCs and our filing cabinets.

[kozar]

5. Good post,

As I live alone now, in a camper. Which obviously doesn't have a dining room. I find myself wanting a "table and chairs" instead of these benches.
So I shopped, small kitchen table and 2 chairs, 200 bucks. Ok, I can do that.

Worker, to come in and take benches out, 2000.
So much for my wants.

Koz

[marybourg]

6. People now want to or are expected to eat

Last edited Thu Jun 13, 2024, 06:57 PM - Edit history (1)

at a kitchen island, facing not each other, but the kitchen sink.Two new construction apartments I saw lately had no space for a table. Only an island, built in.

[Aristus]

7. Our house, which was built in 2003, and which we bought a year later,

has a formal dining room. We bought a nice, long (and very expensive) table and chair set for it. And in twenty years, we've used the dining room for its stated purpose five or six times, and not at all since before COVID-19. Mrs. Aristus and I eat in the kitchen/breakfast nook.

[AwakeAtLast]

8. Dining Rooms require extra work

Setting, serving, clean up. I'm sure women today (because thats who it usually falls to) don't miss that. I know I don't!

[Shermann]

9. I have a kitchen counter that seats 2 and a nearby breakfast nook that seats 4

Those 6 seats get all the action, and the dining room that seats 6 gets shunned. Nobody has ever sat there in the 15 years I've owned the house.

[Mike 03]

10. Really thought provoking

My home has a dining room but I never once considered using it for that purpose and made it an extension of the office so it has book cases and file cabinets.

I never really valued furniture all that much and as a consequence everything I have was handed down to me by my parents or from my sisters. It's not great furniture. What I'm getting at is that I could not "entertain." I could never have a Super Bowl Party or host Thanksgiving Dinner. This is only something that occurred to me as I got older. Maybe when I no longer have dogs (and I have always had very large dogs) I could begin to think about getting real furniture and creating an environment I wouldn't be embarrassed to have people see. My house is fairly clean and organized--it's not disgusting or anything like that. But it's minimalist I'd guess you'd say. It's mostly about books, workspace, tables, computers, radios, and dog toys and dog beds, etc...