Guest Blogger: Tips for Making your Dining Room Multifunctional

Guest Blog Entry #23, Entry #274, September 13, 2010

It always is surprising to see how many different functions a room can carry on.  Your kitchen becomes the entertaining, family, cooking, and recreational area for the kids and it’s a direct sign of the times.  Similarly, the dining room can take on many functions and Rob Stone explains how to make the most out of your dining room area.

-Image from Furniture from Home

Now you may be thinking that the dining room is simply for eating your dinner in, but in fact in today’s family life the dining room has become a very flexible and adaptable room that is used all day long and not just at meal times. For those who are not using their dining rooms much read on for you may find uses for your dining room that you hadn’t thought of.

There is of course the original reason for the dining room but even that can be split. It can be used for Sunday dinner with the family where there is maybe four or five of you including young children. It could also be used for dining with friends in a more social function. For this you may wish to have slightly different accessories such as different plates and cutlery. For this reason the dining room should have a sideboard allowing that extra storage.

Another growing use for the dining room is for the home computer. Obviously years ago when the vast majority of homes were built computers were not even a dream in the inventors eye. They didn’t have purpose built offices or computer rooms. The dining room is the ideal place to put the computer creating a further use for the dining room. The dining room is ideal for this because you will not be using the computer at the same time as the dining table so it can make the most of space.

– Image from Lennoxx files

Of course if you do have a computer in your dining room you can go the next step and create a home office in the corner. With the right furniture you can create an office that is both function and can be almost hidden for meal times and entertaining. This is particularly the case if you use a laptop. It allows you again to use the office during the day and then clear up and change the use of the room for mealtimes.

With the increase in house prices to crazy levels many cannot buy homes large enough and so have had to make the very best of the space they have. This has resulted in dining rooms becoming playrooms during the day especially for the young when home with their mums. For this reason it is important to get furniture that is more children friendly which at the same time is hard if you also want to use the room to entertain.

-Image from Home Designing.com

So next time you think about your dining room think about how you could use the room to the maximum making use of it for more than just meal times. There are so many more uses than you think about. There may even be uses not mentioned in this. If you do you could almost feel like you have a larger house and without the expenses of actually buying one.

Rob Stone writes many articles on Home Improvement from Interior Design to DIY Construction such as Lean To Conservatory Prices available online.

For more Stagetecture posts related to design ideas for living areas, click here.