From Status Symbol to Afterthought: Tracing the Dining Room's Journey Through American Homes
Few people in today's day and age host dinner parties or even sit down to meals in a dining room. Of those who have given up the once-ubiquitous tradition, even fewer question how our society arrived at a point where eating on a living room couch or in a bedroom has become more commonplace than sitting at a table.
This article will trace the evolution of the dining room from the status symbol it was initially, through its normalization to the afterthought it has become.
Dining Rooms Were Once Reserved for the Upper Class
Fully walled-off dining rooms used to be commonplace in American homes. However, there was a time in the country's past when dining rooms were reserved for the upper classes. In the early 20th century, the dining room emerged just as an ascendant upper-middle class began hiring servants to help them around the home.
At the time, upper-class American homes were designed to separate the spheres inhabited by the residents and "the help." These homes contained sectioned-off kitchens, laundry rooms, and sometimes servants' quarters, along with formal dining rooms.
Classic dining rooms gave upper-class families and their guests some place to dine away from the domestic help who produced their meals. Having a dining room in the house could thus be seen as an indicator that the head of the household was successful enough to merit a serving staff.
The Normalization of the Middle-Class Dining Room
Most American households couldn't afford domestic servants. In those homes, the work fell to women. As a new class of homeowners arose, separate dining rooms and kitchens were incorporated into the houses to reinforce a different type of difference. At the time, male and female spaces were generally segregated, and walling off the dining room from the kitchen helped to keep it that way.
Incorporating classic dining rooms into contemporary middle-class homes also allowed a new generation of newly minted homeowners to mimic design choices made by the elites of yesteryear. Walled-off dining rooms were still a status symbol, albeit on a different level than in the early 20th century.
As dining rooms became more accessible, people also began to change how they used the spaces in terms of formality. Where once formal dinners and fine china were the norms, more democratic dishes and informal ways of eating took over. During the 1950s, durable melamine plates became a more popular alternative to fine dinnerware, even in fully walled-off dining rooms. Now, more informal practices and dishware are commonplace.
Modern Interpretations of the Dining Room
These days, men and women no longer live in completely distinct social spheres. Though women still do most of the cooking and cleaning, on average, there are plenty of households where men do their part. Fusing the dining room with the kitchen in a more open floor plan reflects that change.
As all household members begin spending time in all of a home's spaces, those spaces have become more generalized. Open floor plans are more popular than ever, and sharing space makes it easier to share the labor of making meals and cleaning up afterward.
Modern families also tend to be less formal in their traditions surrounding dinner. Most use lightweight plates even on special occasions, and the average meal gets eaten in front of a television, not around a dining room table. Even when homeowners plan dinner parties, they're more likely to use high-quality melamine plates than more dainty and easier-to-break alternatives.
The Rise of the Great Room
If the classic dining room has been replaced in the modern imagination, it's with the "great room." The contemporary great room features an open floor plan with a kitchen on one side and a living room on the other. The dining space bridges the two worlds.
Recently built single-family homes are much more likely to feature great rooms than dining rooms, specifically because developers build what homebuyers want. According to the National Association of Home Builders, 75% of new households feature combined kitchen and dining rooms, but 86% of homebuyers prefer homes with these multipurpose spaces.
The issue is not so much that they don't want dining rooms as they want a different type of space, which takes up too much of the floor plan to include a separate, walled-off room for eating meals.
In most cases, families eating in great rooms prefer to use informal dishware that looks nice but isn’t as easy to break. Melamine plates remain one of the most popular options.
Apartments Lose All Semblance of Dining Areas
In single-family homes, the great room has replaced the dining room. In modern apartments, dining spaces are often eliminated altogether. Apartments are built more for single people than families, and apartment-dwellers are likelier to prioritize bedroom space and walk-in closets than formal dining areas. As a result, most apartments have little more than a kitchen island in the way of prominent eating spots, and few apartment-dwellers have the dishware required to host.
The US Census Bureau data shows that the share of households that contain just one person has tripled from 1940 to 2020. Where a family might want space to sit down to a meal and discuss the days everyone has had, young, unmarried apartment dwellers may feel it's unnecessary.
If anything, young, unmarried people living in apartments tend to have roommates rather than families. This demographic makeup means developers usually sacrifice shared dining spaces to maximize personal space in separate bedrooms.
Unfortunately, this trend means that the share of people eating alone has also increased. Eating out in restaurants peaked in 2020, and more people are eating at home. People eat in isolation instead of sharing those meals with family or friends at casual lunches or dinner parties. This trend tends to exacerbate feelings of loneliness and correlates with many mental and physical health problems.
Do Americans Really Want to Live This Way?
As you can see, the situation surrounding the eradication of the dining room in modern housing isn't as simple as it might seem. Homebuyers cite a desire for combined kitchen and dining areas, but that's not the only force at play.
Building codes in many cities mandate two rows of apartments along each hall, eliminating larger units that could accommodate dining rooms, even as single-family homes grow. While homeowners may seek out open floor plans due to personal preferences, apartment dwellers have little choice.
Why Don't Houses Have Dining Rooms Anymore?
Houses no longer have dining rooms because modern architects try to accommodate their clients' needs and desires. However, the situation is more complicated than that. Dining rooms have also disappeared in part due to the ongoing housing crisis. Families that want classic, walled-off dining rooms may have difficulty finding housing that reflects that desire. The times are changing, and housing reflects those changes.
Just as house configurations have changed, so have people’s dining preferences. Beautiful, easy-to-care-for melamine plates are more popular than fine china, and most hosts forgo elaborate, complicated rituals surrounding eating. Whether they live in small apartments or single-family homes, modern Americans are less formal, and so are their homes.
