Dining Rooms May Be Making a Comeback in 2020

This coming year marks the start of a new decade and, according to interior design site Modsy, the comeback of the dining room. Your personal attitude toward the dining room may not have shifted in 2019 (maybe you’ve always had a dining room, or maybe you live in a studio apartment where your dining room is also your living room, office, and bedroom), but overall, Modsy has seen a significant rise in demand for dining room design.

“Dining rooms had one of the largest YoY [year-over-year] growth from 2018 to 2019 (increasing by 156%) for Modsy customers,” Alessandra Wood, Modsy’s VP of style, said in a press release. “Consumers are designing spaces unique to their use, and we’re seeing more separated dining rooms, living rooms and bedrooms (rather than open layouts). This could be due to the fact that people are spending more time at home, so they’re looking to create more functional spaces within every room.”

Meanwhile, combined dining-living room spaces were among the least popular rooms on Modsy this year, coming in at number 10 out of 12 room types for year-over-year growth. From Modsy’s point of view, open-plan spaces are clearly on the way out right now. Along with standalone dining rooms, standalone living rooms have also grown in popularity this year.

If you live in a high-cost-of-living area, dining rooms may seem like a luxury of space you’ll never experience. But a dining room doesn’t have to look like Emily and Richard Gilmore’s formal, chandelier-decked space. Like any other part of a home, they can be playful and resourceful—and mismatched chairs are completely okay.

Along with the dining room, other trends Modsy predicts will rise in 2020 include organic modernism (a looser, more bohemian take on mid-century modern style), minimalist maximalism (combining the clean lines of minimalism and the bold color and patterns of maximalism), and bar cabinets instead of bar carts.