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 diner means dc can be doing colouring/homework etc while you cook. We didn’t get a separate dining room until our current house which is our third so ftb it’s very normal to have either a kitchen/diner or lounge/diner. Just because you grew up with that, are you really that unaware any how many people live? I find that comment really odd. I grew up in a house with a separate dining room and three sitting rooms but I’m very aware that’s not the norm for most people and my first home was unlikely to feature the same set up.

We've got a large, separate dining room which we hardly use! We always eat at the kitchen table. I'd like to knock through to just have a bigger kitchen/dining area. So it wouldn't really put me off.

The kitchen is the heart of the home! I don’t live in London so space is not at a premium and live in what some may find to be a very large house, we have a large kitchen/diner. What was the formal dining room when we bought it is now my husbands gym

I wouldn’t have a separate dining room now after having a dining-kitchen, separate dining room then having dining kitchen again. It’s far more sociable for me.
(Although I appreciate some people don’t like to look at the mess of the kitchen when eating their dinner)

We had a house like that when I was a child in the 70s and as you say it was quite sociable and easy to pass the meals through. The lounge was separated from the dining room with glass sliding doors if I remember.
I much prefer a kitchen diner to a lounge diner. Our current house has a lounge diner but we just use it as a large lounge. We have a small breakfast bar in the kitchen where we can eat if there are only 3 or 4 of us but otherwise we have a table in the conservatory.
My parents have a separate dining room but they usually eat in the kitchen except on Sundays or for special meals. Otherwise it's a bit of a dumping room with papers all over the table.

Yes, I'm 58 still poor on universal credit and we have a dishwasher which we bought for £100 on Facebook. It's a Bosch, we don't use it everyday but normally at least twice a week and definitely when our 4dc, their partners and gc visit. It makes entertaining much less stressful. We even have an extractor fan though I'm not convinced about that.

We had a dining room which had the piano in it. It was always full of junk and we never ate in there. Now I’ve cleared it out and it has become a cinema room and we use it an awful lot. There’s a table in the kitchen where all the eating happens

We have a separate dining room but I don’t think it’s a great use of space. Our kitchen table seats 8, so we only use the dining room if 9 or more. I wanted a kitchen table that I don’t need to cover. A trestle table would work if the dining part of the kitchen was big enough and more people coming than the kitchen table could seat.

I would say most people prefer a kitchen-diner these days to a separate dining room. The only new build you tend to get with dining rooms are 5-bed houses because they beed to do something with the extra square footage downstairs.

Unless budget restricted me, I would never live in a house in which I couldn’t fit a table in the kitchen.

You get used to it. Only bigger houses have separate dining rooms.

My mum is the only person I can think of that has separate dining room. We are lucky to have a large enough kitchen diner that it’s really a kitchen and separate dining room just with no wall between, and we have friends with an L shaped lounge diner so almost separate, but most people we know have a fully together kitchen diner and the first home most people I know bought had tiny dining table squeezed into kitchen or lounge.

I think it's a shift in cultural attitudes about cooking, away from meals as something that is served to you by a person or people whose primary function is to serve. More egalitarian - there may be one person "in charge" but everyone can help out and cooking the meal is part of the hospitality so its nicer for the meal to be prepared and served in the same room so that those cooking are part of the same group as those not cooking. In my parents old house (they have downsized) there was quite a lot of corridor and half a staircase between kitchen and dining room and a marked separation between those who were expected to and expecting to clear away and bring in the next course (perhaps doing some finishing bits of food prep) and those who could stay seated, and drinking wine and continuing the interesting conversations. See if you can guess the sex-ratios of those two groups?
If I moved to a house with space for a dining room I would be more likely to use it as a study or a second non-TV sitting room and still have a good size dining table in the kitchen.

Can't beat a nice big kitchen with a proper table and comfy seating. The best ones are farmhouse types with an Aga (I dislike them, but the kitchen's always warm). Of the ones I've had, my favourite was as @KaiserChefs described:

"In a house with a rear projection (not an extension; they were built like this to enable the middle room to have windows), the back room would be the kitchen, the middle was the dining room and the front room was the parlour"

I knocked through the original bathroom, kitchen and weird 'middle' room to make a long kitchen the full length of the projection. It had stacks of storage & work surface, lots of windows, a normal-sized dining table and a small sofa. All of life happened there; I could even have done without a living room.

I now have a pathetically small kitchen and feel a bit sad that I have to go in there specifically to do food & laundry-related stuff. I prefer to potter, doing a bit of this and a bit of that. When you have guests, it's much nicer to be together than trucking in & out of your social space to deliver refreshments.

Do people still have dinner parties? Kitchen diners all the way!

We have a lounge diner and a kitchen diner (kitchen was extended prior to us moving in). We never sit at our table in the lounge and prefer the kitchen for all meals (even Christmas). We purposely purchased an extending dining table for the kitchen so that we could host Christmas. When we redecorate the lounge we’ve decided that we’ll downside the table and just have a small one as it will be handy for playing board games but we won’t need to eat at it. We do also have another room downstairs that connects the lounge and kitchen which could be used as a dining room (it used to be a second lounge) but we use it as a playroom/snug. I think formal dining rooms are becoming a thing of the past as they are less social.

In London lots of houses will have had galley kitchens & a separate dining room but many have been combined. Obviously there are houses with kitchen diners & 2 other reception rooms but a house that size will cost or you want to live in outer London.

When we moved house I had to make one compromise - no dining room. There was a table in the kitchen but there wasn't really enough room for it so we have the dining table in the sitting room (which is large). My ideal would be a small eating area in the kitchen and a sofa, and a separate dining room.

I don't understand the atagonism towards those who prefer a dining room! We just have different preferences or lifestyles. I agree, though, that most people prefer a kitchen diner or open plan these days - very few new builds (even large ones), have dining rooms.

Normal. Although I'd much, much prefer a separate dining room. Sadly I'll never have anything other than a small 2 bed.

@housethatbuiltme How on earth^^ is it 'weird' to sit and eat in a kitchen?! The food is cooked in the kitchen! So it's ok to cook in there but not eat in there? I'd rather not carry my food across the house and have it getting cold, tbh

@housethatbuiltme must have a tiny kitchen 🤷🏼‍♀️

😱 The horror! Seeing pans whilst you eat?!? Stuff of nightmares 😱

Oh wowwwwwwwww 🤩 😮 Bloody hell that's a beautiful home.

Never ever in my lifetime.

There’s definitely a difference between a dining table in the kitchen and an open plan kitchen/diner, I’ve attached pics of the difference in my mind.

Which is more like what you are looking at OP?

I am in a new build and when I was looking at it they had 6 different style houses on the same estate, only one of them had a living room/dinner all the rest had kitchen/dinners

i opted for the living room/dinner and I am so pleased I did, but a lot of people who bought a house on my estate were drawn in by the kitchen/dinner and liked the idea of a having a big kitchen however this meant they got a small living room and only now when trying to fit furniture and a Christmas tree are they complaining

me on the other hand did my research and didn’t just opt for the style of house I saw first. I planned for Christmas tree and asked myself would I spend most time in the kitchen and need a bigger kitchen? the answer was no I would cook in there for a couple of hours a day.

shop around because most new builds have different styles on the same estate

We have a big kitchen diner area and small area with sofa and TV on the wall & Xbox for kids in one room. Separate large lounge and office.
We love it. It’s handy for kids doing homework at table whilst I prep food.
old house had a separate dining room, but we much prefer our current set up.