Dining Room Decor Hints & Helps
My jurisdiction when it comes to dining room decor! (I used to work in law so that felt fitting haha)
I'll be pointing out design crimes. Don’t shoot the messenger; I’m just doing the work of the decor gods to ensure your space lives up to its full potential.
Dining rooms can be tricky to furnish, but let’s not under-furnish them.
Let's decorate a dining room successfully!
1. Under no circumstances are you to buy tables and chairs that match perfectly. It’s too much of the one finish. Overwhelming colour in one zone will take away from what are most likely gorgeous items on their own.
Think about mixing timber with upholstery, or glass with marble. There are so many stylish combinations available, you’d be mad not to mix up your materials.
2. Don't pick the same colour as your flooring. Not only do you want your table and chairs to have some variance in colour and material, but you want the legs of the table to be a different colour to the floor as well.
If you don’t get this right, it’s as if the table grew out of the floor. Unless you're going for that nature look, "here's my table, gifted by the roots of the soil underneath my flooring", then maybe avoid.
The table top can be the same colour as the floor. Think of it like layers of a cake. You want cream between the sponges!
OR put a rug under the table, but this comes with some warnings too…
3. Some dining rooms don’t need rugs. They may be too small. As a rule, you want to be able to pull your dining chair out, sit on it, and still have the back legs of the chair sitting on the rug.
4. Some people have the lucky problem of having large rooms in their home. I know, tough huh?! But when it comes to buying a dining table for the space, they opt for a smaller one maybe because of budget or only needing 4 chairs. So although you only need 4 seats at the table, if the room is built for a six or eight-seater, you’d be wise to have a larger table. Or perhaps you need to bring in pieces like sideboards to fill the room.
5. Did you go cheap? The budget buyer in you thought, why bother spending loads on chairs? And now you have the chairs, with a side of sore back. I’d recommend you go cheaper on your dining table and invest in the chairs. The table can be dressed and decorated. The chairs on the other hand; will be used every week, by your bum and back! Looks can be deceiving and every bum is different; what your booty needs can be very different from another. So always go in and try them out first.
6. Like I have proven, good things can come in small packages. The dining room is no different. If it’s small, it’s small. Embrace its cosiness and avoid putting too many pieces of furniture in it.
People get very focussed on needing certain items for their room, but they fail to ask the room what it can actually fit. The room won’t answer you, so let me do the talking for it: less is more.
7. Please, do not leave your walls naked. Cover them up immediately. It's just rude. A mirror or piece of art. A mirror will make the space feel larger, but art can be just as wonderful and eye-catching. Make it a large statement piece instead of a cluster of multiple items.
8. Pendant lights! I hear your protests already. Some smaller open plan dining in apartments, just won’t do well with a pendant above the table. But in a large space, go for it, the bigger the better!
9. Last but not least, you need to resolve the tabletop with a delicious style moment. And no, I don’t mean food. Every dining table shape and size is going to dictate a different sort of centrepiece. But every table needs one. Small on big tables never looks right, so go big or go home!
Did you have anything to add to this Dining Room Decor Deep Dive? ✨