Dining rooms seem to have been taken over by home offices or TV room, however people are using dining room tables albeit in the kitchen. With the huge amount of cooking programmes on TV I feel it has inspired people to cook and sit as a family at meal times - and traditional family meal will become part of most peoples lives.

separate dining rooms due still have a use for otherwise open plan living

My dining table gets used every day. I do use more special table cloths and vintage silver cutlery for special occasions but what a waste to only use the space occasionally so we eat at the table with linens, not placemats, daily. Simple pleasures :)

We eat at the kitchen table daily, but use the dining room on Sundays, or when there are too many for the kitchen table. In the summer we eat outside most days.

i currently have a 6 person dining table set just off our kitchen, at which we eat daily, but keep another sqluare extendible table, in a bedroom nook, which is the same height ( usually covered in plants.). So, can bring it in, extend, cover both with a long table cloth and enjoy dinner parties for ten or 12.

i have a theory, that the narrower the dining table, the more jolly and friendly the dinner party conversation.....makes it less magnificent to look at, and set serving dishes on, but it means diners can converse easily in different directions........what does anyone else think?

Dining table gets used everyday as a general storage and dumping area. Gets cleared every now and then when we have friends/family over and can't all fit round the kitchen table.

don't have a dining room but use our table in the kitchen quite regularly. it's especially nice on a weekend morning to have a leisurely breakfast with my other half as it looks out onto our garden.

Up until this summer we had a large formal dining room that only ever got used when we had extended family around. Other than that, the kids used to whizz around the table on their scooters while all the dining was done in our (much smaller) kitchen. So we took the plunge and relocated our kitchen into that big room and extended it to a kitchen/living/diner and are delighted with the results! Formal dining at home is a thing of the past!

We have a dining table (open-plan living room/"diner" ... I hate open-plan) which does get some use - mainly for a group tabletop gaming session roughly every month or so ... otherwise it just gets used to dump stuff pulled from my pockets and bag onto ...

That'll be you and about 99% of the rest of the population, then. lol

We take our everyday meals in our kitchen around a peninsular that, at a squeeze, can accommodate up to six people.

Our dining table is in our dining room. We only use it about once every three weeks but consider it to be a terrific use of space. It’s great to have a room dedicated to “entertaining” dining. A special place for special occasions. A place away from the clutter of the kitchen and somewhere from which the remnants of each course can be removed, thus becoming instantly invisible.

But having said all that it’s not the really the space makes an occasion - it’s the people with whom you are dining.

I use my dining table in the winter if I have guests. I have a large kitchen table that I use everyday and a small table in the conservatory which I sometimes use for weekend breakfast. I have 2 terraces outside both with tables so I am totally spoilt for choice

Rather embarrassingly I have spent far more time dusting it than sitting at it I have been in this house for over a year and never used my big dining table at all, (it does look nice though). The kitchen table suits me fine for eating at.

There are only two of us but we use the dining table every evening unless it is warm enough to sit outside. The breakfast bar is just for breakfast.

I'm weighing in on this one again. I've read all your comments and just wanted to say, for those of you who eat your evening meal either in front of the tv or at a breakfast bar, why? I don't mean that as judgement, I'm really curious. I grew up eating every meal at the table, it was in the kitchen because we didn't have a dining room but for our evening meal there was always either a white or a red and white check table cloth and (paper) napkins. I grew up in Canada but my father is Italian and meals were for the family to be together. Though there were times when someone wasn't home for dinner, we only broke from this daily ritual when I was 18 and no longer going to school. Even when I lived alone I ate at a table. It's a simple thing and putting a table cloth on and talking to your partner/family is worth the ever so minimal effort. :)

In a lot of cases, I suspect the answer would be for the same reason you do eat at a table - it's what people generally grew up doing, it's what they're used to doing and, being part of the television generation, it's just too convenient to do otherwise. Ironically, I don't tend to watch very much television at all, except when I'm sat, tray in lap, eating ...

Another possibility is that not everyone has the space for a permanent formal dining table, and use one with fold-down leaves, for example, which can be hidden away behind an armchair, or somesuch, and wheeled out requiring the moving of other furniture) for special occasions - entertaining, or xmas dinner.

For my own part, it's a combination of familiarity, and the fact that it's simply more comfortable to sit in an armchair, or on a sofa, tray on lap, even if I don't bother putting the television on.

I eat a lot of meals at the island in my kitchen, but I truly enjoy every meal in my dining room. I like to host friends and family regularly, so a separate dining room is a must for me! I'm glad to see people going back to formal sit-down dinners. It's about time we rediscovered conversation over a lovingly prepared meal.

We used to eat in front of the TV often, but since moving to this house last year we only ever have Sunday tea in the sitting room. It's a gorgeous room which we love but we've decided to keep it special and are loving meals at the kitchen table or outside. But we have the option to watch TV as we eat using the computer which is in the kitchen. (We use the sitting room daily, just not for meals.) But at the end of the day where you eat should be whatever works best for your household.