I can’t remember when was last time I decorated or designed a dining room. In my parents’ home, Sunday family gathering was a big deal, therefore the dining room was used every lunch and dinner on Sunday, the rest of the week that room was kept in order. After I moved away, nothing was the same. I went to live in European countries where the life style was different from my Italian life style and Sunday dinners were not deemed that important. By the time I arrived in America, I had seen a revolution of customs to make my Sunday dinners affair a memory of an ancient past.
(Click on each photo to view it larger).
©Valentina Cirasola – Photo taken in ZGallery
My youthful friends and clients in America, ate at restaurant often (still do), when they ate at home, sat with a tray of food in front of the TV in the media room, man cave (such an ugly definition) or in living/family room. Most of my clients had a traditional dining room at one point (still do), with a table and seating for eight people, a credenza, a china cabinet storing in plain view an array of tableware never used. Such room was mainly dedicated to Thanksgiving or Christmas and even then, often got invited to someone else’s home, leaving their dining room completely ignored for the entire year.
One might think this society has no social skills anymore and it is not so, at least not in most cases.
Parties or various home social gatherings still happen, not formal sitting down dinners anymore. The new point of mingling is the kitchen, the great room and the outdoor room. I have refreshed some of the existing formal dining rooms my clients had with new colors, accessories and artwork, and still remain unused, the formality of dinners is gone.
All the parties I have been invited to in the last twenty years have been always buffet style. My younger clients don’t even own a dining table.
At this point, I started to think maybe creating rooms without dedicated functions is a better solution.
A dining table can change function into a working table and it doesn’t need to be in a room called dining room. In the photo below, I placed this everyday function rustic dining table in the family room, nearby the kitchen, facing the open living room on the other side of the fireplace and near the game room on the left. The lower level of this house is one large space with multiple functions, one can even take an occasional nap in the large window nook of the living room with the fireplace on.
Today, people work anywhere. A rustic wood table with benches is a modern solution for dining and other functions, it can even turn into a table for business meeting if the office is in the home.
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Except for kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms, all the other rooms can have multiple functions. Single people without kids can get away with sleeping anywhere in the house/apartment. The attitude toward our private spaces has changed, no longer we need to give names to rooms by their functions. No longer we need to place rugs down to defining an area, or relegate artwork only to the best part of the house, we can now have artwork in kitchens and bathrooms. Colors flow not to divide the house in the red room, the blue room , the yellow room, but to unite the spaces and expand the views.
I have beautiful boudoir lamps, floor lamps and artwork, both in my kitchen and bathrooms. I don’t have a dining room, my gatherings with friends happen between the living area and the kitchen. We sit on the floor cushions when seats are not enough.
Large kitchens sell the house. The best way to get a return on investment is to eliminate the dining room completely and take that space to create a larger kitchen.
Ciao,
Valentina
http://www.valentinadesigns.com
Copyright © 2018 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved
In my 28th years of design business I am having more fun than ever, experience eliminates stress and dictates the pace of work. I am evolving in different directions while still helping people realizing their dream spaces in homes, offices, interiors and exteriors. Colors are the main focus of my business today, changing people’s energy and life force just by introducing them to colors they would have never imagined. I am on TV once a month, that is my own TV show produced under my label Valentina Design Universe, bringing fun topics to my audience.
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