Indoor or Outdoor Dining? With These Hybrid Spaces, You Don’t Have to Choose
Homeowners are ditching elaborate dining rooms and separate outside setups for a more blended eating environment
4 min
When building his Sonoma, Calif., home, Mukesh Patel had a request: He wanted a simple way to enjoy farm-to-table meals. He meant it literally.
Mr. Patel had purchased a 100-acre lot with his wife, Harsha Patel, 59, for $5.7 million in 2016 that included a small fruit and vegetable farm. He then worked with architect Christie Tyreus to construct a 2,100-square-foot, two-bedroom home for $3 million.
The home features a glass-enclosed kitchen-dining room with exterior pocket doors that open up on two sides to make it easy to walk from the terrace to pick fresh food: tomatoes, avocados, lettuce. The other side of the dining area leads to the living room. “You pick, you cook, then you eat—it’s a smooth transition,” says Mr. Patel, 64, a technology executive. The two moved into the new house from Pleasanton in 2020 but kept their Pleasanton house as a secondary home.
Homeowners are rethinking their indoor dining setups, replacing formal, enclosed rooms with elaborate spaces that give the feel of dining al fresco, with the option to be protected from the elements.
The interior designs also offer greater access to the kitchen, by direct proximity or by combining the cooking and dining areas in an open plan. At the same time, architects are being asked to make the most of killer views, installing automated glass doors and screens to create a seamless transition with the exterior.
“This is as close to dining outside you can get without being outside,” says Paul Masi, principal of Bates Masi + Architects, an East Hampton, N.Y., architecture firm.
Recently, a dining area Mr. Masi designed included two dining-room tables next to each other, with one indoors and the other outdoors. When the homeowners entertain in good weather, they can open the pocket doors to double the room space. Insect screens make it comfortable to eat even at dusk. Wide-plank Ipe wood floors outside mimic the wood floors indoors, and an oak wood ceiling stretches between the indoor and outdoor spaces to create a uniform look.
Another project includes a dining area that opens directly to the outside via two sides of glass doors, with pocket doors separating the space from the kitchen.
“There is nothing abrupt that changes from the interior to the exterior,” says Mr. Masi. Creating these hybrid dining spaces means there are fewer requests for separate outdoor kitchen and eating areas, especially in colder climates, he adds.
After purchasing a Manhattan Beach, Calif., home for $8.5 million in 2019, Michael Mothner, 41, wanted a dining room the family was “actually going to use.”
During a 2½-year renovation, Mr. Mothner created a formal dining space that borders an upstairs living room and kitchen, and opens up to a private terrace with a view over the family pool and the ocean. The indoor-outdoor setup makes it easier to host family dinners that are casual but not like a picnic. “We wanted something that doesn’t feel super formal and is going to be functional,” says the digital-marketing agency founder.
Wendy Word, an interior designer who worked with Mr. Mothner and his wife, Savanna Mothner, says she was able to extend meals from the dining room to the outside by making the table and the rug easy to position partially outdoors. Another dining table is outside on a covered terrace. “They want to be able to gather spontaneously and be able to use the outdoor footprint,” Ms. Word says.
With open floor plans, setting off the dining room while making it conveniently close to the kitchen is a challenge, says Ms. Tyreus, who worked with Mr. Patel.
Instead of creating a separate space, Ms. Tyreus added three kitchen islands. The island bordering the dining area has a decorative sintered stone facade, making the dining space more like a sleek bar area. Kitchen islands farther away include hidden refrigerator drawers and underneath storage. “When in the dining room, [the counter] looks like this beautiful stone block,” she says.
Los Angeles real-estate agent Rayni Williams says luxury homeowners pay a premium for dining rooms that blend into separate spaces. She sees dining areas that are separated by a wall of art, or another dividing element, from the main living area, providing easy access to the exterior and to the kitchen.
The idea is to create an eating area that gives priority to exterior views. “They know that’s the real money shot—that’s the way to maximise the dollar,” she adds.
Ms. Williams and her husband, Branden, are representing off market a $48 million home in Los Angeles that has nearly 7,000-square feet of outdoor space and a dining area with a large glass wall that can retract vertically to open to the exterior. The dining table inside the home is on wheels to make it easy to relocate throughout the area, including to a spot near an outdoor fireplace, she says.
Even in colder climates, homeowners are finding creative ways to craft scenic indoor-outdoor dining spots. After buying a vacation home for $765,000 in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 2021, Thorsten Hayer, 42, was thrilled to use what he calls a fancy garage as a dining area that opens to the exterior through two sets of barn doors. With a dining table and bar, the exterior room allows him to entertain while enjoying the outdoors.
The main home, built in 1876, has a formal dining area, but the family eats dinners mainly in the outside space. When the doors are open, it feels like they are dining in the garden. “It’s a nice progression from grilling a hot dog on the fire pit and going into a garage space,” he adds.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
With two waterfronts, bushland surrounds and a $35 million price tag, this Belongil Beach retreat could become Byron’s most expensive home ever.
International AI strategist Justin Kabbani will headline the Kanebridge Property Summit in Sydney on June 18, with tickets selling fast.
