Dining rooms join the dinosaurs as 2.9m homeowners knock down interior walls

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More and more of Britain's homeowners are knocking down internal walls to satisfy a desire for open-plan living.

As well as the 2.9 million rooms that have disappeared over the past five years, the latest report from Halifax Home Insurance predicts that a further 2.1 million homes will be losing at least one room each this year.

Once a place strictly reserved for formal occasions and mother's best china, it seems that the formal dining room has become a largely unused space for many Britons.

It is certainly the most popular room to knock through, with 590,000 dining room walls likely to be demolished in the next twelve months. The report, based on a survey of 1,453 homeowners, warns that at this rate the traditional dining room could be extinct by 2020.

But it's not just dining room walls set to topple. An estimated 190,000 living room walls will be lost to create larger lounge areas, around 170,000 utility rooms will be incorporated into kitchen areas and 125,000 studies will be combined with adjoining rooms to create more spacious bedrooms, lounges and bathrooms.

Halifax warns that any damage caused by the one in four homeowners who don't employ a professional is unlikely to be covered by home insurance policies.

The Halifax's head of underwriting, David Rochester, said: "It's sad to see the decline of the formal dining room, but it appears that they may have become superfluous to modern living where people are perhaps less likely to eat together."