You want at least 8' table. Most tables are 42-48" across. Then add 3' of push-back space minimum to each side of the table. That means 14' room length and 10' room width. Your room will accommodate this table, but no other furniture (no sideboard, no china cabinet, etc). HTH

Here you go:
Dining Room Width 11 / 11.5 / 12 feet?

The width of a dining room equals: Any piece of furniture you have against a wall, plus circulation space, plus chair space, plus table width, plus chair space, plus circulation space, plus any furniture you have against a wall.

An example would be: 21"+24"+18"+42"+18"+24"+21"=168" or 14'-0"

But fill in your own blanks according to your needs.

Are you trying to figure out how much you could steal from dining room to give to kitchen?

A dining room with no furniture other than a table and chairs will be a pretty barren looking room. Plus, where does a water pitcher etc go. I can't imagine not having a sideboard of some sort in a DR. My daughter's DR is 15x17 and is a nice size. It's still a little tight when there are big men seated at the table. There is a reason that in the past, many DRs were quite large. If there was a servant serving the table, there had to be room to easily get behind a diner and carry a plate at the same time.

I love my house but my almost sq 13x13 DR is way too small.

We are in the process of designing our house and though I'm completely happy with the dimensions of rooms on the second floor and the rest of the house, now that I have the latest plans that show more detailed dimensions I'm not satisfied with the width of my dining room and the kitchen. I'm considering adding 2ft to the whole rear of the house which would allow me to add 1.5ft to the 11ft width (hoping to add the other 6" to the kitchen for wider walkways).

I don't know how much this addition will cost but it may be an option worth the extra money. I may ask for 2.5ft extra to allow for a 13' x 15'-6" dining room. We aren't formal people and rarely host so we probably won't use the dining room daily but we do have a pretty large extended family.

Here is to hoping this 2-2.5ft addition doesn't break the bank. Thanks for all the input everyone!

Our current dining room is 13x17. We wish it were bigger every time we eat there with guests. Just the 4 of us, we don't notice it as much.

Our current dining room is around 12x13 but open to the rest of the house so it doesn't feel confined. It is definitely enough room for us but since the new dining room will be enclosed I think we need more space to accommodate a sideboard (which we don't currently have). I'm hoping 13x15.5 will suffice, sounds like 14x15.5 would be ideal (I'll see if we can do that). Again, I'm not one of those folks who invites many people over for dinner. I actually dislike hosting due to the stress of it all so I'm less concerned with a formal space. Most of my family doesn't live near us (in laws and immediate family live outside of the US) so we rarely have larger dinner parties. In hindsight, I'm expecting this dining room to be more for looks than usage. LOL. But I still think it needs to be a decent size.

I too am more streamlined with furniture. I wouldn't add anything more than a sideboard to my dining room outside of the table and chairs. I don't have the china and whatnot to display either. Thanks Nini804 for your experience and input.

What Mark said. Figure our your size of your furnishings and do the math.

In hindsight, I'm expecting this dining room to be more for looks than usage.

Why are you putting in a dining room just for looks?

The problem so many of us do is we buy or build a home for how we think we want to live or for the possible what if in the future. Meaning we believe that if we put in a formal dining room, we'll suddenly have grand sit down dinners. Or we believe if we leave out a dining room, the house will not be salable. BS!

Put in spaces that you'll actually use. Many homes are foregoing dining rooms nowadays as they realize they are under utilized. I'm building a 2870 sq. foot home and not putting in a dining room since like you, I get hives just thinking of entertaining formally. However I love to entertain informally where I put food out buffet style or we barbecue and grab what we want, so I designed our house to accommodate how we actually live.

Build the house for you and YOUR family and for how YOU live and not for some imaginary future family. After all if you're spending 6 or 7 figures of your hard earned money, shouldn't it work for how you live?

I see what you are saying cpartist but once in a while we do have people over and I prefer to have somewhere we can all sit together. We also don't have another location with a table like a breakfast nook (we plan to use our kitchen island for informal dining space). When our family is in town (3-4 times a year), we do sit all together rather than scattered around the house, so having a decent sized dining room is still important to me. A living room on the other hand... we are not bothering to incorporate. We don't have one now and we don't miss it. Just one great room works for us.

Like you, I'm only having one great room.

Why not combine the kitchen/dining room into one larger space. That's what we did. I find that works great because the dining table is right there so that for dinner each night, DH and I sit at the table. For lunch and breakfast we either eat at the island or outdoors.

My dining table can open up to seat 8 comfortably so if we need to have a sit down, we can do it. And our kitchen/dining is semi open to the living room so if the dining area is too cramped if we want to seat even more, we can easily move the table to the living room.

My point being, see if you can make spaces do double or even triple duty if they're not rooms that are constantly in use.

One other example is our guest bedroom. Being in FL we do have guests frequently. Especially when a snow storm is on the way up north. LOL. We decided in our new build to make the guest bed a murphy bed and instead of adding another room for exercise to combine the guest bedroom into a guest room/exercise room.

Right now we have a very open floor plan with our 'great room', dining and kitchen all open to one another. Though I love the idea of a totally open space, having a completely exposed kitchen doesn't work for my family because we aren't the neatest people. Right now, if our kitchen is cluttered (which is pretty much all the time) the rest of our living space looks cluttered, no matter how neat it actually is. I prefer to isolate the kitchen a bit and we are putting it in the rear of the new house where it isn't necessarily in your face from every angle on the main level. I will say, we will be making sure we have ample storage in the kitchen as well so that we can avoid having that cluttered look but I'm not going to rely on my husband and kids to always put everything away... they don't do it now. LOL

IMO if there are only adults in the house just a LR with T.V works if there are kids then Ilke either a designated media space away from the LR or at least a family room with T.V and a LR for adult conversation when entertaining. As for the DR space it is fine the size it is . This DR is 12' wide and i have a 42

” wide table and a shallow wall cabinet that serves as buffet and for the most time we have 3 or 4 at the table and when there are 10 it is a bit less roomy but still doable

There is a very large basement that we will eventually finish for the kids and they also have a 'family loft' area between their bedrooms that will be for their TV watching and video games.

I think the dining space you've shown does look completely fine size wise but you also have more openings, whether the passage on the right and windows all around. Our dining room won't be quite as open so I'm wondering if having a bit more space around the table will be more visually appealing. I'm trying to avoid having it look like a hallway. Does that make sense?

I think maybe we need to see the space to get a better idea but a room with those dimensions really should not look like a hallway once you have the table and chairs in there . That room of mine was very close to the same proportions.

I would not go with an eleven feet wide dining. It is too narrow and will limit the posibilities (it is ok in smaller houses).

Dimensions are important, but you also need to consider the layout of the room. Consider these layouts:

In the first picture, you only have one entrance to the room, so all your diners will enter through that door and be forced to scootch around the table. During the meal, people at the back of the room will be almost "trapped" by other diners.

In the second picture, an open floor plan, diners have complete access to one long side of the table, and diners who move to the back side of the table don't have to move down the room so far. Better circulation.

In the third picture, people can approach the table from one long side of the table, like above, but access is also possible through the kitchen door. This last picture also shows a breakfast table with similar good circulation.

To get back to your original question: If the first picture above were only 11' wide, it would be an uncomfortable room; however, 11' for the second two dining rooms would work.

Consider, too, the windows in your room. While they provide no help with circulation, they add to the open feel of the room. Here again, that first picture I provided is a real loser.

Thank you again to everyone!! After this discussion we've decided to work with our architect to get the width to be at least 13ft to be safe. I prefer to have too much space than too little.