Date Night at Home
It’s easier than you think to put together date night at home for you and your significant other! Plan you evening and connect over a delicious meal and fun activities with these simple steps and three separate menus for inspiration.
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2026 Update: This post was originally shared in April 2020. The world has changed a lot since then, but date night at home is always in style. I’ve added more tips, tricks and thoughts for you here!
We’re living in some wild times, friends, and I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to connect with your significant other when the world around you feels out of control.
My husband and I see each other more than normal during any given time during a week since he’s working from home right now, but our routines are different. Our kids are around all the time, too.
Because of this, I wanted to put together a guide of how each and every one of us can make date night happen… even if it’s at home instead of at our favorite restaurant.
In fact, this is something we should do more regularly because it’s fun to share a meal with a person you love. I’ve even put together a simple menu to make it as easy as pie.
This is no different than doing a Valentine’s Day dinner at home or a fancier dinner for the two of you.
Below, I’ve got ideas for any at home date night, including some dinner menu inspiration that includes a menu featuring steak, another featuring scallops and a third featuring a decadent pasta.
Why I love date night at home:
Not only is it a simple way to reconnect with your loved one, but it’s a fun way to do something just for yourselves that celebrates quality time.
For us, that always includes food, but your date night might look a little different.
Here are a few reasons to carve out the time to do this for yourself:
- Choose your own adventure. We love to cook, so we typically make our own food, but you can order takeout, if you prefer. You can make the date night about the meal or you can add in some fun elements, like a movie marathon, board games or a puzzle, etc.
- No babysitter necessary. For those of us with little kids, not having to rely on a babysitter (or shell out the cash for one on top of dinner out) is a nice change of pace.
- Choose your scenery. While we love to chit chat and eat over our dining room table, you can take this outdoors to the backyard. (If it’s chilly out, fire up the fire pit and bundle up in blankets.) Set up in the living room.
No matter what you choose to do, know that these date night ideas at home are something anyone can do with any budget. It just depends on what you like and how you make it happen.
Table of contents
Choose a time and date for your date night at home.
Whether or not you’re both working from home with kids (or one of you is working while the other is tending to the kids), it’s important to put this date on your calendar. Commit to a time and day.
It’s easy to push this aside since life becomes busy and your family has needs… but it’s really important to carve out this time!
Also, if you have children, decide if you want the kids involved or not. Our girls have eaten with us for our Valentine’s Day dinners before, but family date nights tend to be more harried with children involved. For example, we oftentimes won’t find ourselves sitting for long and just chatting because we have a bedtime routine to follow.
We’ve also waited to serve ourselves until the kids are in bed, which is what I recommend because dinner and dessert feel less hurried. It also gives you more time to put together the food. The downside is that you have to make a separate meal for the kids to eat before you eat.
This is your call, obviously.
Some thoughts on including kids for a family date night at home
If you want your kids to be involved in date night, that’s amazing! I find it fun to involve my girls in date night occasionally because date night is synonymous with food that we normally don’t make regularly at our home (like steak, “fancy” fish, more involved pastas, etc.), and it’s exciting to introduce them to something new.
Kids are great kitchen helpers, and I bet you can ask for yours to assist you in the preparations for date night.
Depending on their ages and skill levels, kids can…
- Prep and help cooking portions of the recipes you are making
- Set the table (or assist in setting it.)
- Clean up in and around the area where you plan to eat your date night meal.
You might also consider changing the menu a bit because your kids’ tastebuds aren’t the same as yours. Create a menu that works for them and you while still letting it feel special. (Because it does not HAVE to be a fancy dinner for it to be date night!)
Decide on your menu.
This, obviously, will depend on your tastebuds, diets and what you have available to cook with.
Some things to consider:
- Are you able to run to the store to get ingredients if you don’t have those at home? Do you need to make date night happen from pantry/freezer/fridge ingredients you have on hand?
- Is date night happening on a weeknight or a weekend? This might change your menu, depending on the amount of time you have to prepare the food.
- What do you like to eat?
Another thing to consider: Are you willing to go grab takeout from your favorite restaurant? If so, I cover some date night at home ideas pertaining to takeout here.
Recently, my husband and I have been supporting our favorite local businesses via takeout to make our date night at home feel fancier (and also give us a reprieve from cooking.)
However, if you’re planning to get takeout, there are a few things to consider, too.
- What kind of food travels well (and potentially keeps well if you can’t eat it immediately)? While we love Dallas-based steakhouses, we’ve been hesitant to order takeout from them because of this.
- How will you pick up your food? A delivery app? In-person? Curbside? No matter what you decide, it is courteous and kind to leave a GOOD tip.
Some thoughts on cooking together for a special date night
I’ve cooked a date night meal by myself before, but there’s something fun about cooking together.
If you want to cook together, divide the work so that the two of you can work together efficiently to get dinner on the table without stepping on each others’ toes. (Alternately, you can work together on all of the steps, but this will probably take a lot longer and miiiiiiiight lead to some frustrations.)
For example, if you’re a whiz with the knife, you do all the chopping while your significant other prepares something else.
Make a cooking timeline.
This is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to any event, whether it’s a dinner party or laidback date night at home with my husband.
A cooking timeline is something you write out that will help keep you organized. It plots out the cooking and helps to get your dishes on the table around the same time.
I’ve written a detailed post about how to create a cooking timeline.
Here are some tips for staying organized and prepping your timeline:
- Print out your recipes so you can see each of them as you make your timeline and grocery list. This will also help when you’re actually cooking, too, because it’s annoying to cook from your phone.
- Look at each recipe to determine the amount of time it takes (and include extra time for prep work!)
- Work backwards to put the timing elements onto a piece of paper. So, if you want to eat at 7:30 p.m., work backwards tofigure out when to start.
Set the ambiance.
Oftentimes, our date nights at home are at our dining room table with just the two of us.
You can certainly set some ambiance by lighting some candles, opening a bottle of wine (or another beverage you and your partner enjoy), etc.
This can be as fancy or as chill as you want.
And speaking of…
What else will you do?
This article was originally written solely about food, but let’s be real: date night can involve a lot more than your meal, and there should be some fun at home date night activities, too.
Deciding what else to do together is huge, and it can be a lot of fun. It just depends on what kinds of things you enjoy doing together!
Here are a few thoughts:
- Turn it into game night. Plan to play your favorite game, be it a card game, video games, mahjong, etc. As long as you both enjoy a little friendly competition, consider adding it in!
- Make it a picnic and enjoy your meal in the great outdoors. Similarly, you can eat indoors and enjoy dessert outside. Do what feels right for you.
- Do a wine tasting (or something similar.) We always loved to pop a bottle of wine for our date nights, but you can make this into an event. Choose bottles from different countries or regions (like France and Italy) and do a blind tasting and choose a winner. You could easily do a tasting with a bottle or two. You could also do this with local beer, whiskey, cocktails, etc.
- Get crafty! If you and your significant other enjoy crafts, make it a paint night.
- Make it a movie night. Choose a movie you haven’t seen (or one that you both love) and enjoy it on the couch, bundled up with blankets and pillows. Don’t forget the snacks like popcorn! You could also build a fort to watch the movie from.
On the day of your date, get everything in order and enjoy!
When it’s your date night day, make sure you’ve got everything you need on hand. You don’t want to throw off your timeline with a last minute store trip.
Get started on your timeline, and remember: your timeline may go askew. That’s OK.
Don’t sweat it if your timeline gets thrown off. The worst thing that will happen is dinner will be served later than expected, and that’s OK.
Also, don’t forget that this is supposed to be fun. Don’t stress yourself out trying to make a perfect date night happen. Because I bet you and your significant other will just be so happy to be together and eating together.
Need some more inspiration and encouragement for at home date night ideas?
Here are three menu ideas for you to take and use as inspiration for your next date night at home!
Steakhouse-Inspired Date Night Menu
Seafood Date Night Dinner
Pasta Date Night
About the Author:
Erin Parker is a Southern gal living in Texas with her husband and two daughters. She started The Speckled Palate to share what she was cooking as a newlywed… and over the years, it’s evolved to capture her love for hosting. Specifically, the EASIEST, lowest key entertaining because everyone deserves to see their people and connect over good food. Learn more about her…
This is such an excellent guideline for date night in. We have been trying to do this every weekend since all of this craziness began in March. Some weekends are easier than others, and let’s be honest, sometimes it seems more fun than others. LOL. Anything we can do to try and give our lives a sense of normalcy right now is key, I think. Stay positive and stay safe, my friend!