Would you rather have a big living room or a small living and dining room?

[pinkponie]

Planning on looking at properties next year. We currently have a small living room and a dining room separately. We previously had a big living room ( 7.3m by 4.5m iirc) but no dining room. Assume you don’t have space in the kitchen for a dining table. What works better for families as ours have grown?

Two separate rooms if you can’t eat in the kitchen. Otherwise definitely a big living room :)

Also a vote for two separate rooms.

I’d hate a separate dining room. I’d prefer a bigger kitchen so can put a table in there.

I'd rather have separate rooms, or if not, definitely a separate kitchen.
I can still smell last weeks mushroom risotto in my sitting room and it's driving me mad. Opened windows every day, vacuumed, etc. 😒

Two smaller rooms.

We opened ours up when the kids were little and needed room to play in the winter, but now we’re having the wall put back in for 2 separate rooms.

If you can't eat in the kitchen then 2 separate rooms, definitely

I like a big kitchen diner, a lounge can be smaller and cosier for me. I don't see the point of dining rooms and I hate lounge diners.

Two smaller rooms.
A room doesn't need to be labelled as a dining room. It could be a second sitting room with a small sofa and a table and chairs.
Open plan rooms have less flexibility, they might work ok with very small children but as the family grows having two separate rooms is a godsend. Even more once they are teenagers.

I’d need a huge house to justify a diving rioom. What i think you need is two sitting rooms/areas, a snug or part of a kitchen is fine. My kids don’t want to always do/watch what we do, less so as they grow up. As really small kids it being part of the kitchen was great, now it matters less.

We have a big living room and diner. At first it took some getting used to, the table is only used for eating at but it's nice to chat to someone on the couch and kitchen smells are closed away.

We have a large living room, which is currently being used as a gymnastics training area by our dds! I prefer one large space as it allows you to do things which require a large floor area (ours is big enough to do cartwheels or a dance routine).

I think dining rooms are gone really. I’d prefer to be able to eat in the kitchen but if that’s not possible a large space is preferred to two small spaces.

We have a large kitchen, dining, living area and a small cosy sitting room.

Two separate rooms with double doors in-between so the space can be opened up.

I don't really like a totally separate dining room, I've had one before and didn't like it, I find them to be too shut off. So a large living room/ dining room would be my preference.

Our house now has a dining room leading to a lounge through double doors, we removed the doors to open up the room a bit (leaving the wall and doorway in place) it works really well for us - defined areas, but semi open plan. The kitchen is off the dining room, so I was able to keep an eye on the kids at the dining table while cooking when they were young.

Adult child has this exact layout and it works perfectly with the small children. The dinning area doubles up as a playroom too.

I use the dining room all the time, but I'm a bit older and still host dinner parties, or big family roasts with the now grown up kids. It's so much nicer to do that in a separate room away from the washing up, and at a good sized dining table with comfy chairs.

Day to day DH and I eat in the kitchen. When the kids were younger, the dining room doubled as a play room, with the table pushed against the wall and covered in oilcloth for the kids to do arts and crafts, then homework at.

I am moving in the summer (new build) and both living room and kitchen diner are pretty similar size. Kitchen big enough for table, so living room only for sofa / TV etc. I’ve lived in lots of open plan places which have been fine too, but looking forward to this set up.

I would never want a separate dining room. I would only look at houses with a kitchen diner with kids.

A "dining room" is just another room. As long as the kitchen is big enough for table and chairs then the dining room can be whatever you want.
Over the years our dining room has been a dining room, a games room with pool table, a second sitting room when adult DC came to live for a year, and is now a study.

Open plan is useful when there are small children but with older ones especially teenagers the more separate rooms the better.

I wouldn’t want either - I’d be knocking from dining room to kitchen so I suppose separate if knocking through is possible. Currently I have my favourite layout of all my 20 houses: imagine a standard Victorian terrace. Front room is cosy livingroom, with double doors to: middle room which was back room but has been extended into garden and the kitchen now in that middle room space and in the extended bit dining table, large comfy chair, loo off with boiler (preferably this would be under the stairs accessed from hallway, but the fridge with wine rack above takes up half the under stairs space). So while it’s a kitchen diner it feels a bit separate as the kitchen is in a defined space, and there’s even an upright piano against the wall opposite the kitchen. If need be the livingroom can be shut off for privacy/noise.

But I have a big eat in kitchen breakfast room, plus a good sized living room, plus a dining room. Surely that's better than just kitchen diner plus living room?

I agree that in very small houses, if there's no scope to extend, then knocking through a galley kitchen into the dining room for one space is better than a tiny kitchen plus dining room.