What Happened to Dining Rooms?

You’re probably familiar with the nostalgic scene of a family gathered around a dining room table stuffed with food served on fine china. Eating at this setting was usually for reserved special occasions like holidays, and the room was otherwise largely ignored on other days.

But now, fewer and fewer newly constructed homes actually have dining rooms. To understand where these rooms have gone—they did not, after all, just magically disappear—we have to go back to the roots of what family mealtime used to consist of. 

Meals were usually communal in medieval Europe. For the upper class, they were held in massive rooms known as “great halls” that also served an assortment of other purposes. The poor, though they lived in much smaller homes, would also gather in a multi-purpose open hall.

But once the Victorian era rolled around and single-family homes became more common, the wealthy began having designated spaces for different activities, including a separate room for dining. These dining rooms were meant to be formal: the furniture was high quality, and the homeowner would showcase their wealth by covering the walls with ornate wallpaper and art and displaying their finest glassware and cutlery.

That Victorian era formality faded in the 20th century, and dining rooms became more casual. After World War II, the rise of suburban homes and modern architecture embraced open-plan living, which began to blur the lines between kitchen, dining, and living spaces. People would still eat together at the table, but that table was no longer placed in its own separate room. The rise of the TV dinner then saw Americans parking themselves in front of the tube rather than gathering around a dining room table.

The popularity of open floor plans isn’t the only reason dining rooms have been on the decline. In many houses, there just simply isn’t enough space. According to CBS, the size of new homes was down by 100 square feet from 2022 to 2023, and this shift to smaller models is expected to continue. 

The other probable reason for the decline in dining rooms is that people generally don’t spend as much effort coordinating sit-down family meals. In the U.S., only around 30 percent of families eat their meals together. With dedicated family meal time becoming fairly rare, it doesn’t make sense for modern homes to include a room dedicated to group dining.

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