Indoor or Outdoor Dining? With These Hybrid Spaces, You Don’t Have to Choose

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.

They call themselves TikTok refugees—and the app they are fleeing to is a lot more Chinese than the video-sharing app whose U.S. fate now hangs in the balance.

After Supreme Court justices Friday seemed inclined to let stand a law that would shut down TikTok in the U.S., the Chinese social-media platform Xiaohongshu , translated in English as Little Red Book, has received a flood of American TikTok users. They are looking for a sanctuary or a way to protest the potentially imminent TikTok ban—never mind that they don’t speak Chinese.

Charlotte Silverstein, a 32-year-old publicist in Los Angeles, downloaded Xiaohongshu on Sunday night after seeing videos on TikTok about migrating to the app, which Americans dubbed “RedNote.” She described the move as a “last act of defiance” in her frustration about the potential TikTok ban.

“Everyone has been super welcoming and sweet,” said Silverstein, who has made three posts so far. “I love the sense of community that I’m seeing already.”

By Monday, TikTok refugees had pushed Xiaohongshu to the top of the free-app chart on Apple ’s App Store.

“I’m really nervous to be on this app, but I also find it to be really exciting and thrilling that we’re all doing this,” one new Xiaohongshu user said in a video clip on Sunday. “I’m sad that TikTok might actually go, but if this is where we’re gonna be hanging out, welcome to my page!” Within a day, the video had more than 3,000 comments and 6,000 likes. And the user had amassed 24,000 followers.

Neither Xiaohongshu nor TikTok responded to requests for comment.

The flow of refugees, while serving as a symbolic dissent against TikTok’s possible shutdown, doesn’t mean Xiaohongshu can easily serve as a replacement for Americans. TikTok says it has 170 million users in the U.S., and it has drawn many creators who take advantage of the app’s features to advertise and sell their products.

Most of the content on Xiaohongshu is in Chinese and the app doesn’t have a simple way to auto-translate the posts into English.

At a time of a strained U.S.-China relationship, some new Chinese-American friendships are budding on an app that until now has had few international users.

“I like that two countries are coming together,” said Sarah Grathwohl, a 32-year-old marketing manager in Seattle, who made a Xiaohongshu account on Sunday night. “We’re bonding over this experience.”

Granthwohl doesn’t speak Chinese, so she has been using Google Translate for help. She said she isn’t concerned about data privacy and would rather try a new Chinese app than shift her screentime to Instagram Reels.

Another opportunity for bonding was a photo of English practice questions from a Chinese textbook, with the caption, “American please.” American Xiaohongshu users helped answer the questions in the comments, receiving a “thank u Honey,” from the person who posted the questions.

By Monday evening, there have been more than 72,000 posts with the hashtag #tiktokrefugee on Xiaohongshu, racking up some 34 million views.

In an English-language post titled “Welcome TikTok refugees,” posted by a Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu user, an American user responded in Chinese with a cat photo and the words, “Thank you for your warm welcome. Everyone is so cute. My cat says thanks, too.” The user added, “I hope this is the correct translation.”

Some Chinese users are also using the livestreaming function to invite TikTok migrants to chat. One chat room hosted by a Chinese English tutor had more than 179,900 visits with several Americans exchanging cultural views with Chinese users.

ByteDance-owned TikTok isn’t available in China but has a Chinese sister app, Douyin. American users can’t download Douyin, though; unlike Xiaohongshu, it is only accessible from Chinese app stores.

On Xiaohongshu, Chinese users have been sharing tutorials and tips in English for American users on how to use the app. Meanwhile, on TikTok, video clips have also multiplied over the past two days teaching users the correct pronunciation of Xiaohongshu—shau-hong-SHOO—and its culture.

Xiaohongshu may be new to most Americans, but in China, it is one of the most-used social-media apps. Backed by investors like Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group , Xiaohongshu is perhaps best described as a Chinese mix of Instagram and Reddit and its users increasingly treat it as a search engine for practical information.

Despite its Little Red Book name, Xiaohongshu has little in common with the compilation of Mao Zedong ’s political writings and speeches. In fact, the app aspires to be a guidebook about anything but politics.

Conceived as a shopping guide for affluent urbanites in 2013, Xiaohongshu has morphed into a one-stop shop for lifestyle and shopping recommendations. Every day, its more than 300 million users, who skew toward educated young women, create, share and search for posts about anything from makeup tutorials to career-development lessons, game strategies or camping skills.

Over the years, Xiaohongshu users have developed a punchy writing style, with posts accompanied by images and videos for an Instagram feel.

Chinese social-media platforms are required to watch political content closely. Xiaohongshu’s focus on lifestyle content, eschewing anything that might seem political, makes it less of a regulatory target than a site like Weibo , which in 2021 was fined at least $2.2 million by China’s cyberspace watchdog for disseminating “illegal information.”

“I don’t expect to read news or discussion of serious issues on Xiaohongshu,” said Lin Ying, a 26-year-old game designer in Beijing.

The American frenzy over a Chinese app is the reverse of a migration in recent years by Chinese social-media users seeking refuge from censorship on Western platforms , such as X, formerly known as Twitter, or, more recently, BlueSky.

Just like TikTok users who turn to the app for fun, Xiaohongshu users also seek entertainment through livestreams and short video clips as well as photos and text-posts on the platform.

Xiaohongshu had roughly 1.3 million U.S. mobile users in December, according to market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which estimates that U.S. downloads of the app in the week ending Sunday almost tripled compared with the week before.

Sensor Tower data indicates that Xiaohongshu became the top-ranked social-networking and overall free app on Apple’s App Store and the 8th top-ranked social app on the Google Play Store on Monday, “a feat it has never achieved before,” said Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower.

Run by Shanghai-based Xingin Information Technology, Xiaohongshu makes money primarily from advertising, according to a Xiaohongshu spokeswoman. The company was valued at $17 billion after its latest round of private-equity investment in the summer, according to research firm PitchBook Data.

Not everyone is singing kumbaya. Some Chinese Xiaohongshu users are worried about the language barrier. And some American TikTok users are concerned about data safety on the Chinese app.

But many are hoping to build bridges between the two countries.

“Y’all might think Americans are hateful because of how our politicians are, but I promise you not all of us are like that,” one American woman said on a Sunday video she posted on Xiaohongshu with Chinese subtitles.

She went on to show how to make cheese quesadillas using a waffle maker.

The video collected more than 11,000 likes and 3,000 comments within 24 hours. “It’s so kind of you to use Chinese subtitles,” read one popular comment posted by a user from Sichuan province.

Another Guangdong-based user commented with a bilingual “friendly reminder”: “On Chinese social-media platforms please do not mention sensitive topics such as politics, religion and drugs!!!”

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

Chinese users of Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, welcome Americans fleeing a feared TikTok ban