A few questions. Do you have one now? Do you use it? Do you entertain? Have family holidays? I'm 66 and for the first time I have a formal dining room. We never use it. We are retired, no kids and seldom have more the a couple people over. I would much rather have a larger space for our breakfast nook that we use every day than a separate dining room. Ours is not much bigger than our breakfast nook so it really isn't more useful to use with more people.

We do not have one now because we are living in small house currently. But we will be entertaining a lot in our new house.

We have one now, and designed the new house specifically to avoid this waste of space. In 15 years it was used may be 10 times. We will have good size living - family area where section can be serve as a formal dining room for an event. Fully expect this feature to be used 3 times max in the next 15 years , lol. Save: ~50k+

It depends fully on your lifestyle. Do you entertain often with more formal parties, or entertain enough that you need the 2 dining spaces? I know for our lifestyle, 1 dining open to other living spaces and a large counter bar top would work best for our family. I have lived with 2 dining rooms,. and they was used, but not often enough to justify me putting it into our new home.

I don't think I would want a house without a dining room. I don't use mine that often, but when that table is set for the special occasion, everything just seems to taste better! I know many people don't like anything formal, but holidays, birthdays, graduations, and the like, deserve a special tablecloth, set with my grandmother's china, and the good wine glasses. Some of my friends don't have a formal dining room and cobble together several smaller tables in their great rooms for a holiday dinner. People are dressed casually and the table is set with an array of tableware that includes the leftovers from college. We have fun, but I don't feel anything more than when we bring pizza in. I think special occasions deserve a special room.

As others said, depends if you would realistically use it. I see them less often, but still do in new builds. IMO with a "bigger" house I expect to see a DR

If you can't decide, design it to be a flex space

I would not have a formal dining room, but I would design the eating area to be able to accommodate an expanded or extra table for when you would need the space.

I like a dining room that is separate from the kitchen- that way you don’t see the mess of dirty pots and pans. We eat a lot of family meals around the dining table, especially with my kids friend over. You can have a “formal” dining room but make it more casual with your choice of furnishings. My DR doubles as an office, so I use it every day.

we designed our new build to have a formal dining room and no breakfast nook. I think two sets of tables and chairs is redundant, but I like eating dinner in a more formal space. our plans were pretty unique, though, since we had a semi open concept with pocket doors between rooms to keep things more or less formal depending on the situation.
we also had seating at the island. i wanted to do a banquette for an actual breakfast space (I couldn't see us eating dinner at a banquette, which is why I chose that style) but we couldn't fit it in.
bottom line, think about how often you'll use it. that should be your guide.

How often would you use a formal dining room?

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Consider a combo space: library or office/dining room.

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Or a room that could be formal dining/informal eating.
https://susanka.com/the-nc-mountain-lake-house/

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Or movable screens or a lighting design to 'hide' the kitchen work space.

Design one good eating space, that is broadly connected to the kitchen, but that can be closed off from that kitchen if you want more separation from the messes. Like with sliding stacking doors.

Dont waste space with a nook, an eating island, a gathering island , an indoor dining room, an outdoor dining room, and a gazebo cafe. Two spots to gather around food are all that is needed. One counter height, and one table height. With the table height one building in the versatility to expand larger, and close off to messes.

How big is your house? Do most homes in the neighborhood you are building have one?

My home (2,750 s.f. + full basement) only have one dining room, semi-open to kitchen and foyer, and if it looks formal or casual has to do with how I furnish it.

We have two more options for eating: Kitchen island (we use it everyday) and outdoor dining at porch.

I do not have a morning room, that would be an overkill as it is only my hubby and I. Instead I have a small flex area off the kitchen that I use as my office, but it could perfectly function as a small breakfast nook.

As anj_p said, maybe design the space as a single space that can be maybe closed off with something like pocket doors (or screens or french doors) to become a more "formal" space for formal entertaining (if that's how you entertain), but can be open when not entertaining to be a regular eating space for family.

Now if you're planning on having sit down formal dinners more than 2x a month, I would say build the formal dining room. However what happens to most of us and it did to me in my last house, is we have a fantasy vision of how we're going to live in our new home. How I was going to have dinner parties all the time even with two very young children. Of course in the 16+ years I lived in the house, I don't think I used that dining room more than 10-12 x because real life has a way of upending the fantasy. But boy was it a pretty room to walk past!

When I built this house which is our retirement home, I again thought not of how I fantasize living but how we actually live. We did build a house for entertaining this time, (since it's just the two of us and the dog), but we have one dining area and it's informal and technically is part of the kitchen. Why? Because the only time I have a sit down dinner all year is Thanksgiving. All our other entertaining is buffet style or cocktail party style utilizing our kitchen island, the dining table and our living room and lanai. For the one time a year we do Thanksgiving, I open up the table and I still serve buffet style. All food on the island and everyone comes up, serves themselves and then sits at the dining table.

So the question is how will you really entertain? To thy own self be true.

We have a formal dining room but we paired it with a breakfast nook that is only large enough for us. So we eat in the dining room whenever there are visitors or family gatherings. In our family, our houses are also complimentary. Others are good for summer parties, or informal gatherings. Ours is the place for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.

For us we skipped. Went from a house with eat in kitchen and playroom off kitchen as well as having formal dining and living. We now have one big open concept main floor with dining and living and kitchen. But we also have a ref room downstairs. So this means we can have kids downstairs playing and adults upstairs and entertain but have more than enough space for all to sit together. I enjoy cooking near my guests and engaging in conversation. I would despise being hidden away

If it’s a custom home and you think you will use it or if you just like to have a formal dinning room, then do it. I have a formal dining room that will be used 4 times a year and I feel good to know it’s there.

Our house is going to be around 4500 sq ft . We are going to have 2 kitchens- one for prep with stove, fridge and dishwasher, sink which can be closed off and other kitchen with stove, double oven with big island and open to living room and dining area big enough to sit in 8 ppl. We do formal gathering 2-3 times a year but mostly do informal gathering.

Sounds like you're doing two kitchens to solve the dining room issue, so I wouldn't think you'd need another dining space. but that's a pretty substantial house so if you want two dining spaces, go for it.

We omitted it in our custom build. Would be a complete waste of space. None of the houses on our street have one and I've visited all of them. YMMV.

It’s really all about how your family lives and what you want.

You’re going to need more than 4500 square feet to fit all of this in. The last house we worked with that had specifications like this was double that size. And had a 2000 sq ft pool house with kitchen too.

So how often do you eat "formally" ?

4500 is totally reasonable. Gosh in our old 2400 square foot house we had a formal living/dining plus casual spaces on main floor.

I doubt the secondary kitchen is luxurious and large and more likely it’s more like a wok or spice kitchen

In our old layout, I eliminated the formal living room years ago...because of the way we live, it was absolutely wasted sqft. I turned it into a dining room and we used it a lot for birthday parties, making puzzles, reading plans etc. When designing our reno/addition, I for sure was going to keep the dining room but took out the eat in kitchen in stead. We added a larger island with seating for 5 (there are 6 of us...when everyone sits down, we use the dining room). We have enough space to seat 12 in the dining room, and also a 6 seater table on the deck outside the kitchen. This works for us. Nothing is formal, every place gets used by everyone.

Our dining room (only about 11x14) in our new build is open to our kitchen, foyer, and living area but is separated visually by a column and dropped headers. We will also have a large island that will seat 5-6. We eat dinner as a family so we will use our dining table daily. It will have extensions to allow more seating when entertaining. We are a casual family and this provides the perfect setup as we can be as casual or as formal as my table settings beckon.

Take a silver dollar and flip it into the air and let it fall to the ground, heads - formal living room, tails - no formal living room.

(unless you are designing your home to meet your needs)

Just because you have a separate dining room doesn't mean it has to be formal. Having a nice large space with a table and lots of chairs in which to entertain is only warranted if it is important to you.

Take a silver dollar and flip it into the air and let it fall to the ground, heads - buy a tuxedo and prom dress, tails - don't buy a tuxedo and prom dress.