My dining room is just a little smaller than 12x12. It is not grand, but I can easily seat 6-8 adults if needed with my table expanded. I also have the luxury of a large opening on one side near the entry and a door to the kitchen on the other for traffic flow. You'll have to decide if entertaining or storage is more important.

How they would be arranged matters. Post a plan of the space, how often you use the DR, and your pantry needs (do you have kids? How would you use your pantry? Food? Small appliances? Other?) for better help.

What does the person designing the house advise?

thank you all, here is the plan, I've been going back and forth and settled with a smaller dining room. But still not sure!

A lot depends on your family size and age, how often you entertain, and if this is your forever home.

When we bought our house for our family of 5, our dining room seemed plenty big.

Decades later, we have added 2 spouses, 9 grandkids and counting. Even using our eat in kitchen table and dining table, we often exceed our seating for meals with extended family. If you have a growing family and can make your kitchen storage work hard - or consider adding an attractive storage piece in the dining room- go big!

If you don’t have a lot of cabinet/storage space, a pantry sure is helpful. And will be utilized daily.

Maybe you could find a compromise and do the larger dining room , but have one wall as a built in pantry. Just a thought.

I'm not a fan of the oven being in a walkway. I would slide it over and then create a large pantry there and into the dining room. Move the wet bar to the alcove on the other side. The walk in pantry sounds great but it is a bunch of shallow shelving and the rest is just foot space.

If you truly use your dining room, you will want the space...

Good luck!

Tape out a 36x60 pantry, with shelving, and see if the space will work for you - you will have very little space for walking into the depths.

Walk in pantry is a must for me.

Do you have another eating area besides the dining room and the island? If so how many can you seat there? Also of that is the case how do you intend to use the dining room. If it is only occasionally as in rarely then a smaller room would be ok, but if it is once a week and you’d have 8 people once a week then it might bug you more. If it is rarely and just a few times a year then I’d also consider doing away with it if you have another eating area and use this dining to enlarge the kitchen/ pantry and the other dining area.

I think you would get just as much usable space with floor to ceiling pantry cabinets that are 15” deep. Saving about 3’ of pantry space.

Put another reach-in closet next to the coat closet, and have it open into the foyer like the coat closet. Use that for the pantry.

thank you all for your thoughtful comments design ideas 😊...truly helpful!!