How old are your children? Might you have more than 5 or 6 for a birthday party? Do grandparents ever visit? If your children are young, it is possible that they might have friends over when they're older who could stay for dinner occasionally.

Anne

For banquet seating, guidelines are 4-6 people at a 48" round and 8-10 people at a 60" round. I prefer the smaller of these numbers.

How large is your dining room? I would err on the bigger table if the clearances are sufficient. Seating for 6 with a family of 5 is very tight. Are your kids young? When the get older, they have friends over and you can easily run short.

I gotta ask. You really rarely have anyone eat with you? Not parents? Another couple? Aunts, uncles, etc?

LOL... no, not really... maybe my mother in law. But when we do have people over, it's always way more than one or two (cousins, brothers, nieces and nephews) and it's always buffet style... or eating pizza off the counter. We have seating at our island, too. Sit down dinners are rare, even with just us, with our crazy sports schedules. (kids are 14, 11, 9). So yes, we do entertain, but no, we don't sit around the table with a roast turkey and dressing in the middle of it. :)

We do use our current table to play games. I also worry that a 60" might be too big to reach the board or toss cards in the middle, etc. I know, I'm putting way too much thought into this.

This is in my kitchen eating area, not a separate measurable room, and right now we have a 36 x 60 table in there. It works well whether I have it longways along the slider door or the perpendicular to the slider, so 60" could work, but I've always thought going 60" in both directions would seem huge.

Also, we don't have a formal dining room.... we took that over (no table) and put three desks for the kids to do homework and a computer desk. It's not "Better Homes and Gardens" but works. Would rather spend my money on a nice kitchen table than a dining room table. I'll see if I can't do pictures tomorrow. I always like posts better with pictures. :)

We have a 48" dia. round table outside that easily seats 4, even 6 is still comfortable and our chairs have arms. The 54" should be perfectly comfortable for six people. I love round tables, so nice for everyone seated to have the same conversation.

We plays games around a 42" d table and also on one end of a 42" x 60" oval DR table. Larger than 42" would be a problem.

I have a 54" extender that can sit on the 42" round table. It's been a while since I've used it, but my memory says that there wasn't much space for serving dishes in the center, and 6 could be seated around it but 7 or 8 was crowded, mostly because of lack of space for plates, silverware, knees, etc. Also, I have relatively small chairs; larger ones would be a problem, I think.

We live with my grandparents who had, I think, a 60" round table. 7 of us were seated comfortably, and we would sometimes have an 8th or 9th person. Plenty of room for serving dishes.

Anne

I'm not comfortable at 60". It can get awkward being so far away from the people across the way. I would like the 54" better. Especially since you don't use it often and when you do have company it won't fit the bill at either size with a crowd. I'd rather have the extra walk space in the room for the 90% of the time it's not in use.

We had a 60" table - because that seemed the best size for our eating area - I even had a 60" glass top cut for it (I like to use tablecloths with a glass top over them - It didn't last more than a year...was impractical to try to pass dishes across - had to stand up too often to reach things in the middle - had a hard time finding tablecloths with a reasonable drop. Try cutting a 60" circle and putting it on top of a card table to get an idea.

Our dining table is 40 x 60. When playing a game, I don't like sitting on the 40 inch side because it's too much of a stretch for the board. I have to stand for certain card games that move quickly. I wish we had a smaller table for games.

We have a 60 inch round table outside. Seats 8 comfortably and 10 more closely. I would not want to play a board game on it.