Nook & Dining vs. Nook or Dining?
 

We still live in NJ where we have a lovely "nook" in our kitchen as well as a formal dining room. We've noticed that the majority of homes in TV have both a nook and a dining area generally within an open concept floor plan. When we look at these plans, we honestly feel we would prefer either a nook or a dining area (which, with the right furniture, could serve both purposes). If you have both, how much do you use your nook versus your dining area? If you only have one, why did you make that decision? Thanks for any advice.

I should have said that we use our dining room less and less each passing year in NJ.

We rarely use our dining room.
Life is different here.
Restaurant prices are very reasonable.
Usually we eat out with friends.
Or if it's nice, we prefer to eat in our birdcage.
We didn't want two tables.
Our kitchen nook makes a good home office area.

If you're more formal and plan on having a lot of family dinners,
or if you're planning to have dinner parties for friends,
then perhaps two eating areas would make sense.

We use our dining room. Plus I like the traditional look of a living room/dining room, even if it is an open room. Our nook, we use rarely. My husband will occasionally eat lunch there, or spread some paperwork out on the table, but so far we have used our dinging room and kitchen breakfast counter more than our nook. Now that we had the pantry built in that space, I am looking for a small, two-person table & chairs to go in there, but mainly for looks.

Many people have turned their dining room into a sitting room, but I feel in a great room, that would look a little strange to me, having two sets of chairs, sofas, end tables, etc. But that's just my opinion.

You just have to decide what your needs will be. We have company around holidays and have people over to dinner or lunch all year long. We have our lanai set up as a living area, not a dining area. I like having somewhere for people to sit and eat communally, and that's the dining room. I also like having a large buffet in there for dinnerware storage.

In our nook we placed 2 "stressless" ( look alike) chairs, with ottomans. We can sit and read. We did not need 2 tables. And we usually sit at the breakfast bar or dine out

We have a nook, no dining room and we love it. We either have a few people for dinner or a big gathering, so this works for us. No need for the dining area, plus our living room is oversized.

The dining room is a great place for poker games.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts on this. Since we don't play poker, we are leaning toward something without both a dining area and a nook or some other way of using one of the two spaces as has been suggested by some of you.