Dinner done right
Advice from design experts on fashioning a splendid dining room
There’s a lot of home decorating advice out there on how to create the perfect kitchen. But what goes into designing a truly great dining room?
As we enter the holiday entertaining season, it’s worth reexamining the dining area. In homes that have formal dining rooms, they often serve doubleduty as homework headquarters, libraries or home offices. These rooms are a decorating challenge, especially if they’re directly in view of the front door.
Here, three interior design experts offer ideas on designing dining rooms that mix serious style with smooth function, and encourage holiday guests to linger over a memorable meal. | chair,” says interior designer Jaclyn Joslin, founder of the retail store Coveted Home in Kansas City. “It’s always cold and hard.”
You also can get creative with seating. Joslin has an upholstered loveseat along one side of her dining table, and she says that’s perfect at the holidays: “You can pile the kids on there.”
And consider adding seating for other purposes, like reading, if the room is large enough. In the Midwest, Joslin says, many homes have a large dining room and also plenty of dining space in the kitchen. So she encourages clients to add a few larger, upholstered chairs to give the dining room a second identity. time of day. “People like it dim,” Burnham says, “but not so dim that they can’t see their plate.”