Dining Room or Second Living Room

[mumsandaunties]

If buying a six bed family home, would you prefer it to have a second large reception room, or a dining room with seating for eight?

We are about to put our family home on the market and I have a dining table that seats 8/10…which I’ve had no success at getting rid of on freecycle etc.

I don’t know whether to ‘stage’ the room it’s in as a dining room for the photos, or bite my lip and take it to the tip. Currently it’s just pushed against the wall as we also have a couch and tv in that room.

Do you have a table elsewhere in the house? If not, I'd keep it as a dining room. Otherwise, a second living room.

I personally feel that you need to show that a home that can possibly house 8 to 10 people , has a space big enough to sit them together to eat

We have a table in the kitchen that can seat six..but it’s really too big for the room and I think it makes the kitchen look cramped. I was planning to take that out as well and put something smaller there instead.

The big dining table only gets used about two or three times a year. We tend to swap between our “main” sitting rooms in the winter as one is better for light evenings and the other for cosy dark ones….so whichever room we’re not currently in has the table IYSWIM. That’s why it’s not a “dining room”…just a room with a big table

I think whichever it just looks better as really, people will change your home to what suits them, my friend changed a guest room to an office, my sister changed a dining room to a playroom

However you set it up you need to show there is room to sit as a family to eat

We have a 5 double bedroom house and the one compromise was - the tiny eating space in the kitchen , but we accepted that as DH is a Builder and We extended the kitchen to an open plan kitchen/diner so now the table seats 8 - even now there's just the two of us now

We will be putting on the market in the next couple of years and will be aiming to the family market so need to show that a family can fit in it

Stage it as a beautiful sociable dining room and get the agent to call it 'dining room/reception 2'. In a six bed house you have to assume some family meals are going on.

You’ve got a 6 bed house with only 2 reception rooms and a small kitchen? That’s very top heavy… assume all the bedrooms are upstairs? Two of them need to look like studies imo. Dining room essential though.

Unless all the bedrooms have beds in - and you will need all those beds in your next home, I would move the sofa and TV into a spare bedroom to create a den, then properly set up the dining table to show off the size of the room.

Not really. It’s three storey, the reception rooms are pretty big and when I say small kitchen I mean 4 metres long by 2.5 wide so not pokey by any stretch.

I’m not sure I’d get a four seater sofa upstairs without taking chunks out of the wall or ending up divorced😱😱😱

Seriously you really do need to show how a family can sit and eat together because you are, like me, aiming for the family home buyer - the family who want the parents and in-laws for christmas and easter etc, because the house is big enough to sleep everyone

Open plan is coming to its end, people are looking to have a dining room again which they can dress up and make look spectacular, without having to shove everything to the side to make room for the room to be used for something else

Seriously , If I was back on the market for that size house, id want it to be proprtional . We bought here as there was just four of us ( 2 generational family ) so we fitted - for a while

Dining room layout it is I guess! Thank you everyone for your input. Our six bedrooms are (since the older kids have left) now four bedrooms, a laundry room and a home office….but I’m assuming that it’ll be growing families looking to move in so the ability to imagine different layouts is probably important.

If your kitchen is big enough, can you get a small cozy dining setup in there and put the sofa in the other end, to dress it up as "kitchen as a hangout", while putting the dining table in the Dining Room/ Reception 2?

I'd say dining room too. It's good to know you can seat the whole family plus if required. You could put some board games / books on shelves if you want to hint that the room could have different uses. A dining table is good for homework, crafting etc too, so maybe some nicely chosen props will help put that idea into less imaginative heads.

You are overthinking this.

The vast majority can look at twi receotion rooms and know that one can be a dining room, a playroom, an extra bedroom, a teenage hang out, a home office etc. You dont need to list every possibility.

I would say dining room as your kitchen sounds small for a large family (2.5mx4m?) and you need a proper eating area. Are the rooms adjacent with the option for a buyer to knock through?

What are the dimensions of the dining room? If you can fit a compact sofa in as well as the table (get cheap from Facebook marketplace) that would be even better, most families I know like a second hang out space downstairs separate to the main lounge.