For generations, families ate in their kitchens and only ventured into their dining rooms on special occasions.

But today’s dining rooms are used in more ways than ever before, HGTV host Genevieve Gorder says. They merge comfort and beauty to create a space where people want to linger.

Gorder and interior designers Brian Patrick Flynn of DecorDemon.com and Betsy Burnham of Burnham Design in Los Angeles share the trends they’ve spotted and offer tips to create a perfectly useful dining room.

Multitasking

In many homes, the dining room table is the go-to location for working on art projects, wrapping gifts and doing homework, Flynn says. So people are seeking durable tables that can withstand plenty of attention rather than carefully polished ones that are easily scratched.

Dining room storage has also changed: The dining room may double as a home office, with a laptop and paperwork stashed in the sideboard during meals.

Many people have moved their formal dishes to kitchen cabinets, where expanded storage space allows the good china to be stored alongside the everyday dishes and displayed in glass-front kitchen cabinets.

Dining room storage may now be filled with office supplies or children’s toys.

Mix, don’t match

In designer-decorated homes, you’re more likely to see deliberately mismatched chairs and a table that contrasts starkly with the room’s other furniture.

People are also mixing materials and textures: “The dining table may be some type of stone and the chairs some type of wood,” Flynn says, “and the sideboard may be made with mirror or metal or clad with a decorative finish. Everything has its own evolved, separate look.”

Flynn likes to buy “six or eight chairs that are all different, or maybe just two or three are the same,” he says. Then he paints and upholsters them the same to bring a cohesive look to this eclectic mix of furniture styles.

Dining without fear

We’ve moved away from “the severity of antiques we’re afraid to touch,” Gorder says, and moved toward “the rustic elegance” of the big farmhouse tables you might find in Provence or Italy.

Burnham advises testing out new dining chairs before you buy them, since you want your table to be a place where people will enjoy lingering for hours.

Flynn likes to create new pieces that give a nod to the formality of the past: “For a custom-looking sideboard,” he says, “find an old dining room table at a flea market” that has some ornate woodwork. “Saw it in half the long way, directly down the middle and fix it to a wall, and paint it a bold color.”

Embrace cooking

In the past, “cooking wasn’t something to be looked at” when guests came over, Gorder says. “Now it’s become a performance,” so people are knocking down walls to give the dining table a better view of the kitchen.

“The kitchen is now the stage, where everything happens, where everyone wants to be,” she says. “It’s the sexiest thing going on.”

Over the decades, one detail hasn’t changed: Warm, soft lighting in a dining room remains important. In addition to an overhead fixture, Burnham likes including a lamp or two to bring a gentle, flattering glow.

“It’s always kind to make people look good,” she says.