No dining room, just a table in the kitchen?

[Clementiness]

FTB in expensive SE. Many properties within our budget seem to have a smallish living room/front room and then a dining area in the kitchen, rather than a separate room. Is it weird to have all family meals, including Xmas in the kitchen? I always had a dining room so feels strange but maybe it’s just me?
Would you consider this type of layout?
Space in the kitchen is enough to sit 6 people comfortably, 8 stretching a bit (but almost never have 8 people as it’s usually DH, DC and I + a couple of guests max)

Kitchen diners are massively common, as are living/dining knock throughs. I don't think I know anyone in London who has a desperate dining room tbh!

It's fine. Much better than open plan kitchen/diner/lounge.

Very normal. We knocked through from the kitchen into the dining room in our 1970s house to make a kitchen-diner. We've just finished an extension and didn't even consider a separate dining room.

It's actually lovely at Christmas because it means the person cooking doesn't get isolated from the fun.

Very much the heart of the home (hate that phrase but it works), visitors gravitate to the kitchen table. A dining room would just become a dumping ground for us.

Most people i know either have a kitchen diner or a lounge diner.

Kitchen diners are brilliant for family dining and fine for guests.

Lounge diners are better for guests but worse forfamily dining.

I like a separate dinning room but unless you have a massive house theirs no point. Much better to for 6-8 people in kitchen dinner than 4-6 in dinning room, also if not used all the time dinning rooms become the dumping ground. Also if in the kitchen if you have young kids it's easier to supervise their arts and crafts or homework whilst keeping a eye on dinner.

I do ! I brought all the dahlias into it to dry off, and now the dining room is very unhappy and says I must clear it out before dinner tonight. It says it is the third time it has reminded me, and the situation is getting……

Desperate dining room for desperate housewives maybe?

We have a dining room (we're not in London)! Used a few times a year for entertaining & Christmas. I would happily go without if my kitchen were big enough (we can only fit a small table).

I don’t know anyone in London with a separate dining room. My aunt had one but she knocked through in 1999

I am happy with kitchen one end and dining the other, sure a massive house a formal dining room is fine otherwise I don't see the point

We use our dining room as a second living room, gets used most days. I find dining rooms quite a dated concept and in my experience most people who have them set up as such, only use them as an actual dining room on high days and holidays. The rest of the time the room is either unused or covered in junk for homework or whatever.

wehave a large island in the kitchen, where we eat at, with guests when we have them. I’ve never once thought oh no we are in the kitchen

I’ve lived in 5 houses with a separate dining room. Two out of the five we used it for something else and had the table in the kitchen as we didn’t have or need 2 dining tables.

Currently we do have a dining room that is joined to the kitchen via a doorway with no door. So it’s sort of a kitchen diner but sort of separate which is great.

But I generally like a kitchen diner and that’s definitely the most common.

Yes totally normal.

A separate dining room is pretty unusual nowadays isn't it.

Most people have kitchen diners or a dining table in their living room.

Growing up we had a separate dining room that was never used.

We have this - so we have a lounge and an office / playroom at the front of the house, then the whole back is a kitchen / diner / snug area with sofa.

I LOVE it! As a family its where we spend most of the time. Kids come home from nursery, DH and I home from work, one of us will be cooking (or both) but also we chat about our days, the kids sit and draw or play at their toy kitchen and it just feels like family time before we sit together for dinner :) when we first moved in it was a separate kitchen and dining room and I hated cooking, as I always felt so isolated!

Not in London but the house I grew up in had a separate dining room. When my parents redid their kitchen 5-6 years ago they knocked through and made it into an open plan kitchen diner and it works a lot better - far more sociable for the person stuck cooking. I've never seen anything for sale near me within my budget with a separate dining room - they're either kitchen/diners or have a dining table in the living room (which I'm less a fan of).

@AngelasEyelash Must proof read before pressing send!

Dedicated! I meant dedicated! That said, I don't know anyone with a desperate one either.

I think the issue here is London. There are a lot of houses outside of London with a separate dining room, but in a city where space is at a premium, it makes more sense to many people to have a multifunctional space rather than a dedicated one- you get much more use from it.

That sounds like a fairly big kitchen, op, if you can comfortably fit an 8 seater table in there. It wouldn't bother me.

@Flubadubba , I think my whole house seems desperate.

We've got a separate dining room. Had it all refurbished over a year ago. We've eaten one meal in there. Much prefer the kitchen

Ours was knocked through before we bought it so we have a living/dining room knock through which is really quite big (and difficult to get warm), and a widish but galley style kitchen with no space for a table and a small morning room off of it which seems to mainly consist of doors to other rooms.
If I'd done it myself I'd have a separate living room and a kitchen diner knock through, much better for family life and even when entertaining it's more sociable for the cook, but you do have to be a bit tidier ...

It's really old fashioned now but I once had a kitchen with a serving hatch through to the seperate dining room. That was the best.

The cook could stay engaged with everyone else, food could be transferred easily and dirty plate spassed back just was easily - plus you can shut the hatch to pretend the kitchen doesn't exist during the nice meal!

Houses should bring these back again.

Pretty much everyone I know (London) has a kitchen diner as one room. And many of these are 1 million plus houses. Especially with a young family I can't imagine a separate dining room would ever get used.

We have a separate dining room but don’t use it for dining. It has a dining table, but it is pretty much permanently a craft/lego/processing paperwork table. Save for special occasions, we eat at the table in the kitchen.

They wouldn't have been built like this though, most smaller houses would have had the kitchen in the back extension or beside the dining room (20s/30s semis). The kitchen was for cooking, not sitting down. Not all have been knocked through, I've seen quite a few on RM (at London prices!) with galley kitchens where it's through one or two doors to get to the table.