The death of the dining room

With grandiose dinner parties a distant 1980’s memory, Meadgate Homes offers the perfect solution for 21st Century entertaining.

The days of elaborate dinner parties and seating guests around an ornately dressed table are long gone. The trend for the hostess to be sweating and swearing in the kitchen unseen by her guests, before wheeling in the next cordon bleu course to take pride of place in a gleaming hostess trolley went out with Dallas-style shoulder pads in the 1980s. And while fondues and Black Forest Gateaux may be experiencing a resurgence in popularity, formal dining rooms are not.

These days it’s all about casual, cosy ‘kitchen supps’ and hearty family meals, where voices compete to be heard, condiments are passed from hand to hand with reckless abandon, and the kitchen is very much in sight.

Cardiff-based luxury housebuilder Meadgate Homes has responded to this change of kitchen culture by ensuring the kitchen is at the heart of their Bibery style home – and that the rest of the house works around it.

Annette Gregory, sales director at Meadgate says: “The days of formal entertaining are long gone, with hosts wanting to chat with their family and friends whilst they prepare meals. We’ve found that nowadays, space is at a premium and traditional dining rooms tend to be turned into studies or family dens – homeowners just don’t see the point in reserving a whole room solely for entertaining guests. It just doesn’t get enough use.”

According to Annette, properties that offer a kitchen diner better reflect today’s style of entertaining and more importantly, the practicalities of family life.

“While we do offer homes with separate dining rooms, having a combined kitchen diner area is what more and more of our purchasers are placing top of their list when it comes to buying their family home”, she continues. “They want an open plan room adjoining the kitchen, large enough to seat a dining table, but cosy enough for it not to feel like a separate room. They want to have comfortable seating and storage space, and not a dusty room full of ornaments only used at Christmas!”

The four bedroom Bibery style house at Meadgate’s Heathfields development in Risca offers the ideal solution. With a large open plan kitchen diner on one side of the house, and a roomy sitting room on the other, the Bibery provides homeowners with enough living space to be the perfect modern family home.

There are just four four bedroom Bibery house types remaining at Heathfields, with prices starting from £244,950. For further information, visit meadgatehomes.co.uk.