Some people have a dedicated space for a dining room, and others don’t…but whatever your house looks like, turkey day is coming, so it’s time to dust off the dining room table.

Oh it’s one of my favorite holidays…I love to cook, and gathering with family and friends to eat is probably my favorite activity. Thanksgiving is the holy grail of food holidays.

The dining room pictured above is a rather grand one we did for a client over a decade ago. I love how it came out. It was originally a very large living room, but she wanted to be able to seat her extended family of 20ish at a real table in a formal dining room so she swapped the living and dining room spaces (there were plenty of other ginormous living spaces in this house so it totally made sense) and she used it. A lot.

BUT many people ONLY use their dining room for holidays and that is a travesty. If you spend hard earned cash money on furnishing a room, it should work more than 4 or 5 days a year!

The answer, according to most of HGTV anyway, is to take down all the walls between the living, dining and kitchen spaces because OF COURSE you want ‘open concept’ (along with gray walls, quartz counters, and a sea of stainless steel appliances … blah blah blah… Yawn.). Thank goodness we are at least over the all-gray-all-the-time now.

And while open concept can be useful in some situations, it is not always the best answer for every house or every homeowner. For example, I don’t want to have to look at the mess I made of the kitchen while we are eating in the dining room - which we do every night!

And while I no longer have a TV, if I did I wouldn’t want to have to hear someone screaming at it because their team isn’t doing so well…or complaining because they can’t hear it over the happy roar of the kitchen appliances whilst I am cooking. Togetherness is only ideal to a point.

Then there is the mess and expense of taking down walls, which may not be practical or possible for many people.

Most older homes were built with separate dining rooms, but here is the good news - these rooms do not need to be restricted to JUST dining! Creating a multi-function space is a great way to use the dining room every day.

The next few images are AI generated imaginary examples of dining rooms with libraries, offices, or craft spaces - or libraries, craft rooms, and offices that contain dining tables…however you want to look at it!

Dining rooms are ideal combined with a library space.

A library/dining space can create an elegant dining room that offers plenty of space to spread out books and offers an inviting dining atmosphere as well.

Imagine afternoon tea at this charming table. The alcove with the painting can double as a sideboard in a pinch, and the windowseat is a lovely place to curl up with a book on a lazy afternoon.

A candlelit dinner in this intimate all black library/dining space would be so fabulous! Both cozy and dramatic.

Dining rooms can also double quite nicely as a home office.

With appropriate storage for all your office supplies, the dining room can make an ideal home office. Most office set ups will need at least a printer, and possibly an extra monitor which could both be tucked into a wall of built-ins or a piece of storage furniture.

But if you plan furnishings to stash the work out of sight at the end of the day, it can convert from chic office to company-ready dining space quite easily.

And an existing china cabinet can even quite easily be repurposed to store office supplies.

A dining table makes an expansive desk surface to work on or can double as a conference table.

It is an ideal surface to spread out paperwork or read an actual newspaper (does anyone still do that?) Be sure to include adequate lighting for whatever type of work you will do in the space.

Dining rooms can double as craft, game, or playroom spaces

A dining table is a great large surface for wrapping gifts or doing crafts, or for playing games or doing puzzles.

This imaginary breakfast room dining alcove would also be an ideal game table.

My parents moved into a retirement community a few years ago and their dining room table is often occupied as a puzzle table. They have a second, smaller table where they eat when they are not entertaining guests, but even if they didn’t, it is easy to move the rotating puzzle board (affiliate link) off the dining table for meals.

We redid the whole apartment to accommodate their furnishings and style when they moved in - you can see more pics HERE.

Or in casual homes with young families, how about double duty as a craft or play space…what kid would not adore making a fort under a dining table?! The key is appropriate storage so your room can transition to dining space easily when it is needed for that.

All of these double-duty rooms call for the same things - storage pieces, table/work surfaces, and seating so making a dining room live large is not only smart, it is easily accomplished and flexible enough to transition to different stages of family life.