Dining Room / Family Room

[palacegirl77]

Getting our loft done, so finally dining room will be free of kids toys which will now fit upstairs and spare room will house PC. But now the dining room will just have a table in! Id really like it to remain a family room feel - was thinking about putting bench seating in front of window with table against it, making room for a small settee in there - would that be madness though? Attached a photo of kind of thing im thinking - to make the room multi use, or am I best just having dining table?

That picture looks perfect.
Is the dining room part/attached to the kitchen?
That would be preferable, then have a separate more grown-up snug/sitting room.

Depends on how your family 'live'
Also,do you have a table in your kitchen?
Is dining room for every day or just high days and holidays?
How many would you be wanting to seat - that arrangement only seats 5 - we would never have that small a number at our dining room table, but is that all you need?
Is it literally just for dining or do you use it for other things - jigsaws, homework, colouring, sewing, meetings ?

Personally I dislike bench seats - you can't pull your seat in (or push it out if that suits the individual). They are also uncomfortable to sit for a leisurely hour or more over a nice dinner.

We dont have room for a table in the kitchen so yes very much used as a dining room. We are all often in there as it houses the PC and (for example) last Sunday we all sat round the table doing lego with the kids. So it is a well used, sociable space. I think we could get away with 6 seats )but nice to have to ability to extend as needed) - I get your point about the bench seating (and was thinking that would definitely be the kids side) - just thought the storage option underneath would be useful, but maybe a bench would be better? I guess my main question is would people think it was weird to have a small settee in a dining room?

We don’t have a sofa in our kitchen as if we are in there its because we are sitting round the table, eating, doing homework, LEGO or whatever. I think a larger table would be a good idea. Benches are great too - we have one and when the kids friends come for dinner we can fit loads on them on there! Ours is a storage one so we keep LEGO and play doh in it.

that sounds good coco - any idea what make they are? Im thinking maybe large table with storage and then a quirky chair instead of a settee in a corner might work better then!

We had ours made by the builder who did our kitchen. Benches are great in my opinion as although it can be a pain getting up and down, it saves so much space as it can be up against a wall. Need to allow so much more space for chairs to people can pull their chair out and walk round the table. Made.com and habitat both do cute small sofas which don’t take up loads of room