Double-duty design
The importance of the traditional formal dining room appears to be diminishing.
Anna Dhillon, of Anna Dhillon Design, recognizes that her clients prioritize designing the family room and breakfast room first.
“They’re recognizing that those are the rooms (they’re) using regularly,” she says.
For breakfast t ables, Dhillon says, she going many routes. In 2014, a client opted for a table at counter height, with the children sitting in high chairs and the adults on stools, so it could also be used as prep surface for the kitchen and be pushed up against the wall to be used as a buffet table for entertaining.
As people are moving into smaller spaces, versatile pieces that offer versatility are becoming increasingly popular — and it’s not limited to dining tables.
Lately she’s been doing a lot of upholstered coffee tables with built-in storage.
“Something that I’m doing quite often for people with youngish children — and that’s probably up until about age 11 or 12 — is upholstered pieces for coffee tables. So it might be a cylinder, or it might be a square or a rectangle but it’s fully in leather or indoor-outdoor fabric, something that has softness on all sides you don’t have to worry about sharp corners or things rolling underneath,” she says.
The materials people are choosing for their table tops is also changing, Dhillon says.
“It used to be in North America we wanted everything to look and feel new, whereas in Europe people would put marble on top for the table and not think twice about the rings and nicks on it, the patina was considered a beautiful thing. Now I’m finding people are interested in making that sacrifice (here). They’re not necessarily looking for man-made stone but they’re interested in going into real marble to get the look they want and appreciate the natural patina of it,” she says.
Clients are favouring tables that have a story, says furniture designer Romney Shipway of Shipway Design, who recently included the family in a very real way in a custom dining table he built for them.
“There’s four members of the family,” he says. “A mom, dad, son and daughter. (I have them each a stick and told them to) live with it for a month, take it to the beach and throw it in the water, stir spaghetti sauce, make it yours. The kids drew on theirs with crazy colours, the mother did some drawings of things she was into — and I took those strips and inlaid them into the back of those legs, so it’s like a little surprise.”
Shipway is moving away from the concrete-and-wood combination found in many of his pieces.
“The No. 1 principle behind my design is sustainability and low impact,” he says. “Going back to pure wood fits my objectives.”
Furniture designer Nicholas Purcell says his low nesting tables have found favour with people drawn to his minimalist, Danish- modern and Japanese- inspired design style and multi- functional furniture.
“They can be grouped together in the middle of the room or tuck under each other,” he says. “It gives you two tiers for starters and interrupts that one big plane of wood (that a standard table provides).”