Kitchen diner or lounge diner?

[Haggled]

Which is preferable and why? Pros and cons please. I'd love to afford a separate dining room but not within our budget right now....

Kitchen diner. I want food smells in one room, makes sense to cook and eat in the same place. I don’t want to be sitting in the lounge smelling the lingering scent of what we had for dinner. And it’s a faff taking plates through etc.

Kitchen diner everytime for me.. I prefer to keep all the eating & mess in one room. Then I can move to the lounge & pretend I don’t have washing up & tidying up to do 😂 I also have young children who make a shocking mess on the floor. My lounge is carpet which would be a nightmare!

Kitchen, I just like it i can't explain why but maybe because I don't want food and living room together I like the divide of food in one place living in another

But we do eat front of the tv so I am not all for or against either really

Kitchen diner, every time. I wouldn't even look at a house for sale if it had a living room- diner.

It's having food smells and mess (I have children) in the living room. In small rooms it's rearranging the table to fit everyone around it too!

Kitchen diner every single time. I like to keep the smells and mess confined to one room!

Kitchen diner.

I’m not a tidy person so I prefer my Food mess all In one room.

I like my living room to be cosy, especially in the winter, I don’t find large living dining rooms to be as ‘homely’.

Kitchen diner every time. You cook and eat in the same space.

Kitchen diner for all of the reasons given above!

Kitchen diner as it's more sociable if you have guests and are cooking. I always wanted a separate dining room but having had one for 8 years now, I've realised that a kitchen diner works much better.

Kitchen diner, IMO, because:

• the nice sitting room will smell, and you’ll have to wash the soft furnishings more often
• “food” areas together (we never eat meals in front of telly though, just snacks, so this may not apply to your family)
• it’s quicker to sit down with your plate than move from kitchen to the other room

I've had both - lounge-diner in previous house and kitchen-diner in this house. (And following extension a few years ago, while we still have original lounge separately, our kitchen-diner now also has a seating area as well).

Personally, I prefer kitchen diner setup. Smells is one thing. And ease of bringing things to table etc. And back to dishwasher.

We have a breakfast bar with stools to sit on between kitchen and dining areas, so people can sit and chat to the chef while they do the cooking. Which is nice. And handy to put things up onto for bringing to the table.

Kitchen diner is tiled - lounge diner was carpeted. May not be an issue, but when DC are small, or if you have messy eaters (I tend to be clumsy at times) then tiles are far easier to clean/wash and far less likely to stain than carpet.

With kitchen-diner, I can use the big table for cooking prep, rolling out big batches of cookies or making pies etc if I need extra space. Whereas I wouldn't do that on the same table when it was in the lounge-diner. Too much mess, and not nearly so easy to move everything.

Also, the table is handy when I bring food shopping home or its delivered, to organise as I am putting things away. And to pull everything out of a cupboard to clean/organise it (the big annual clean of each cupboard in turn kind of jobs).

And the table is also where craft projects tend to happen etc, and colouring in when DD was small. So we can be working together while things cook, or she can work on something in my company but without needing my direct input by being in the same room. And I am not worried about glitter going everywhere or paint spilling on the floor (see tiles above). Just a quick hoover and then mop, and all sorted. I needed plastic sheeting in old house for messy jobs like that.

Kitchen diner. Lounge diner is so old fashioned. Kitchen diner is more conducive to family life and inclusiveness. Not the wife being in the kitchen and brining our tea to the living room. Also dining table tends to be on carpet in the living room.
I don’t understand people choosing them these days as the house layouts seem very old fashioned when you have a choice of both. They really bother me as you can tell!

Kitchen diner.
Food to table - table to dishwasher/sink
Flooring
Smells
Kitchen diner acts as the "hub" of the home during the day, lounge then is a quiet peaceful space both in the day and at night. Love it that way

Kitchen diner as I feel it’s so much more practical and also sociable.

In fact when we bought our house we had a choice between a house with a separate dining room or a 25 foot kitchen diner. We chose the kitchen diner and are so glad we did!

When we have friends over (or should I say had...haven’t had any since March!) it’s a really sociable space. We have a corner sofa in there and of course the dining room table. It means you can be in that room for diner, drinks, board games, lounging around etc. Whoever’s cooking/hosting etc isn’t left out as they aren’t in a separate room. It’s also easy if a mess is made as it’s tiled.

We’re just about to have our first baby and I think it will be great in terms of children too. They can be in the ‘family’ area of the room whilst I am cooking etc. When they are older they can do homework at the table before dinner etc.

I honestly think if we had a separate dining room, we would never use it!

Kitchen diner all day long.

We have a large four bed house but I would never want a separate dining room. We've got a big kitchen across the back which I love. We had separate rooms in our old house and I hated bringing the food through. Especially bad on Christmas day, I was constantly running from one room to another.

Lounge diner is an abomination, I don't want to sit in the room where I've eaten, I want to eat where I've cooked.

Also what @moirasroses and everyone else said about pretending the mess isn't there!

Would not consider a lounge diner. My kids are really messy eaters for a start.

Going against the grain here. We have an extension at the back of the house that was originally going to be a kitchen/diner. We ended up keeping the kitchen in its current location and have a lounge/diner off the kitchen overlooking the garden. I have never noticed bad cooking smells and I don't have to look at dirty pots as I eat my dinner. It also means guests aren't crowded in the kitchen as you plate up. It all depends on the layout of your house and how you use the space.

Kitchen diner.

No one can watch TV, read or chill out in a lounge with pots and pans banging in the background. Whereas kids can sit at kitchen table with play doh if they need supervision while you cook.

I should add we have a separate living room but still spend 99% of our time in what we call the "garden room".

I prefer kitchen diner.

Also bucking the trend, lounge diner. Mainly because the dining table gets used for loads of other things. Craft, board games, I put my sewing machine there at times so can be in same room as others who are reading on the sofa. Homework here too and now wfh also can be done there.

Love shutting the kitchen door on the washing up and being able to sit down after dinner for a card game with DC.

Also means a bigger room for parties, our table has leaves we can put away, push it back to the wall and tonnes more space for dancing, and for doing dvd workouts.

All of this does depend on the overall size of the room.

Kitchen, dining room, living room - all separate.

We've got a separate dining room. I'd swap it in a second for a kitchen diner for all the reasons people have mentioned.

Prefer kitchen/diner to lounge/diner.
I used to have a kitchen diner but now we have a kitchen/diner/living room area and a completely separate living room also. There is only me and dp yet we love it and it's great when our adult dc come over and we the odd party - not this year, really social. It's not enormous so still manages to feel cosy especially with the log burner in the middle of the room.

We have both but we use the diner end of the lounge as our home office. I wouldn't want to bring food through across carpet so I'd prefer a kitchen diner. Ours is actually a kitchen/diner/lounge area plus the seperate lounge so works very well (we extended a lot).