Types of Homes

• No design mandate exists that says a dining nook will work in one style of home but not another. However, early 20th-century bungalows with long, narrow kitchens often have booths or lend themselves to such a remodel. Homes with larger kitchens and open floor plans are more likely to have work islands and counter seating for casual dining.
  
  Built-in breakfast nooks were "wildly popular" in the bungalows of the early 1920s, according to the Wardway Homes website. Historical preservationist Rose Thornton of Wardway says that smaller, simpler bungalows became "the craze" as Victorian styling fell out of favor. Early 20th-century kit homes from Sears and Montgomery Wards often included breakfast nooks. Thornton notes that breakfast nooks saved housewives from "frittering away hours" cleaning up formal dining rooms.
  
  

Booth Design

• Most of the early 20th-century breakfast nooks pictured on Wardway show trestle-style tables, but are constructed with a single pedestal support such as the one at Sara Tams
  Remodeling Our Bungalow website. Some homeowners design dining nooks to look like those in restaurants, with Naugahyde upholstery and shiny chrome trim, such as the one detailed at the ObSeussed website, which has an old-fashioned soda-shop theme and is decorated with vintage wall signs. In tiny kitchens, one practical design feature of box-style booth seats is hinged lids, concealing extra storage space inside their base.
  
  

Family-Friendly Uses

• Kitchen booths are useful for children's activities -- such as doing homework and playing games -- while parents work in the kitchen. Victoria Saley of ObSeussed says that she likes to extend her soda-shop theme to include materials, such as menus, that encourage her children's literacy and decision-making skills.
  
  Another mother, interviewed at Apartment Therapy's Ohdeedoh family website, says that her children are "happy to be close by" when she cooks, and that their booth is everyone's favorite spot in the house. Due to its sunny location, it's also the go-to spot for laptop computer work.
  
  

Command Central

• Beginning in the 1950s, television shows such as "Leave It to Beaver" showed family life centered in the kitchen. The Renovation Design Group website says the kitchen is now a multipurpose "Command Central" where children and adults gather throughout the day. The website notes that families seldom use formal dining rooms. Although kitchen booths "can be limiting" for movement once everyone is seated, it suggests that nooks with facing or "U" shaped benches provide a better venue for conversation than counters, where seating is limited to one side.