Celebrate every meal
An appealing dining room can offer an escape, upgrade dinner
Dining at restaurants has always been about more than the food— one of the joys of going out is the opportunity to enjoy a new and different environment.
At home, the most ambitious hosts have long sought to create atmospheric dining rooms that offer a similar sense of occasion.
And at a time whenmany of us are spending the majority of our evenings at home, that’s especially valuable.
“If ever a roomwas meant to be dramatic, it would be the dining room,” saidKen Fulk, an interior designer with offices in San Francisco andNewYork. “Dining rooms are all about entertainment, they’re typically used at nighttime, and they’re always used at special occasions.”
Even if therewill be fewer guests around the table this holiday season, aswe keep our distance during the pandemic, an appealing dining roomcan offer a daily escapeand make any meal feel a little more special. Chooseboldcolors Much like a powder room, a dining roomis a good place to paint the walls and ceiling a bold color you love butworry might be overwhelming in a space where you spend more time, like the living room.
“If youwant drama, that’s howyou get it very inexpensively: with paint,” said Jan Showers, aDallas-based interior designer whose latest book, “Glamorous Living,” was published in September.
For the dining roomin a historic home inAustin, Texas, Showers covered thewalls, ceiling and trim in a deep navy blue. “People think dark colors are going tomake the roomlook smaller,” Showers said. “Well, that’s not true. Dark colors actuallymake a roomlook larger, because the corners recede.”
TheNewYork-based interior designer Alexa Hampton also sometimes uses dark colors in dining rooms. In an apartment she recently designed in
Manhattan, she painted the dining roomwalls above whitewainscoting a “really deep, boozy plum color, in high gloss,” she said. Paired with pink and purple paper lanterns and a rug saturatedwith similar colors, she noted, “the room became more of a folly.”
Fulk is a proponent of blastingwalls with vibrant colors like peacock blue and grassy green. “Dining rooms can have exuberant colors,” he said. “Look at Monticello: Thomas Jefferson’s dining roomwas actually crazy, bright yellow.” Mixthefurniture Once upon a time, a popularway to furnish a dining roomwaswith a matching set of furniture. Nowthat amore casual vibe prevails inmany homes, it’s not uncommonfor designers to mix contrasting chairs and tables, and to introduce other types of seating as well, for amore laid-back feeling with extra visual appeal.
“I love having benches in a dining room,” said James Huniford, aNewYorkbased interior designer whosenewbook, “At Home,” features a long table with four benches on the cover. “It gives that sense of being able to have an easy conversation with the peoplewho are there next to you or across from you.”
Huniford oftenmixes chairs and benches around a rectangular table. On occasion, he has used a settee or small sofa on one side of the table.
“It’s amuchmore relaxed sensibility,” he said, and it helps the dining roomserve additional purposes, like providing a place for family games or working fromhome.
Control thelight
The dining roomis no place towash the entire area with overhead light. A chandelier or pendant lamp above the table is important for illuminating the dining surface, but it shouldn’t be the only fixture in the room.
“Having just a chandelier doesn’twork,” Showers said. “If you’ve ever been in a dressing roomwhere all the lighting is overhead, you look in the mirror and it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I just aged 10 years.’ ”
To help everyone look their best, she said, “you always need to have adequate eye-level lighting.” That can be achieved with sconces, floor lamps in the corners of a roomor table lamps on a buffet.
“Youwant shades that provide ambient light,” Showers said, so look for those made with translucent material rather than opaque shades that direct light toward the floor and ceiling.
Hampton is a fan of mounting picture lights above framed pieces of art for a gentle glowthat shows off favorite paintings.
Wherever possible, dining roomlamps should be controlled with dimmers, she said, so they can be cranked up during the day and dimmed at night. “You have to have it capable of being set to sexy dining light,” she said.
Accessorizewith abandon
Interesting accessories canmake anymeal feel special. If you don’t love the look of your table, consider adding a runner or tablecloth. “Iamstill a lover of a tablecloth, even though people say it’s old-fashioned,” saidRobin Standefer ofRomanandWilliams Buildings and Interiors.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, she added— she often uses large pieces of plain linen. “I think it’s a beautifulway to give your table a different quality.”
Ontop, “you canmake a meadow,” Standefer said, with a series of bud vases or collected bottles filledwith inexpensive greenery.
“You don’t spend a lot on the flowers,” she said. “You can literally take, like, a piece of grass or a piece of dill you buy at the grocery store,” and put one stalk in each vessel.
“Whenyou have eight vessels and all those little stalks,” she said, “itmakes a garden on your table.”
For dinnerware, Fulk suggested setting the table with antique decorative plates and colored glassware rather than the minimalist white ceramics that have become so popular in recent years.
“I love to mix it up and give the dining table a collected feel,” he said, noting that hemight use Limoges porcelain or antique transferware on a table in a contemporary room, for an unexpected visual twist.
And don’t fall into the trap of saving the fine china for special occasions, he added. “If the moment we’re in has taught us anything, it’s to use the good stuff,” he said. “Every moment matters.”