You don’t need new furniture to rejuvenate a dining room
I’m on the phone with Sarah Fishburne, director of trend and design for the Home Depot, one of the best jobs ever. She gets paid to travel the world and go furniture shopping. Where did I go wrong? As we chat, I email her half a dozen photos of my home. I want her thoughts on how to update my dining room, which is stuck in a time warp — an era of big sideburns and wide lapels.
“The rest of the house is transitional,” I say, using the industry buzzword for a style that bridges traditional and contemporary. “Then you get to the dining room, and EEEEEEEKK!” (I make the sound of screeching brakes.) “It doesn’t flow.”
As we speak, she clicks through my pictures. “I’m updated traditional, too,” she says. “I love that you have old pieces mixed with new. It shows a lot of personality, the story of your life.”
Suddenly she’s quiet. I can tell she’s hit the dining room photos. I tell her, “See, when DC and I got married and combined our households and moved into the happy yellow house, our lives fell into place, but our furniture not so much. We’ve been updating the other rooms, but the dining room hasn’t changed since the day we moved in. It needs a refresh.”
Transitional decor is an increasingly popular style, because you can hold onto your classic traditional furniture and fill in with more contemporary items. You don’t have to start from scratch. Overall, the look is cleaner and less fussy, but not stark.
“The room leans European, and has a French country feel, with traditional lines,” says Fishburne. “The bones are good, but...”
I spare her from going there and say, “I’m hoping I can update by changing just the accessories, without, uh, buying new furniture.”
“You absolutely can,” she assures me, adding that in her own dining room, the Drexel Heritage walnut dining room table that belonged to her grandparents sits on a modern rug.
“The mistake people make when inserting something modern in a traditional space is they don’t go far enough,” she says. “One contemporary piece in a traditional room looks like a misstep. Three to five, and the style shift feels intentional.”
Here’s how Fishburne and I rejuvenated my room — without changing the furniture:
n New wall color. By repainting the buttercream walls in Sherwin-Williams Bunglehouse Blue, I tapped a current color trend and tied the room to the rest of the house, which incorporates shades of deep blue as a color thread. Using deep colors makes the space feel more intimate. ($350, including materials and labor.)
n A new rug. Fishburne approved a transitional wool rug that’s a welcome change from its boring, beige predecessor. Transitional rugs often enlarge the scale of a pattern and replace dated colors like gold and burgundy with current ones like terracotta and peacock. “This rug is a great example of all that,” she said. ($578.) n Modern mirrors. Because the dining room is small, I had hung round mirrors, rather than artwork, on either side of the window. The reflective surface made the room look more spacious. The new mirrors feature chunky prism-sculpted contemporary frames. ($399.) Edited accessories. n While we kept the open French country china hutch, I took Fishburne’s suggestion to thin out and rearrange the visible china and crystal, so they looked more organized. “That will help contemporize the space,” she said. ($0) New light fixture. n The original fixture matched those in the rest of the house, but Fishburne gave me permission to mix metals. Injecting a champagne gold chandelier with clean lines lifted the room from its rut. “So often, this one change, which is easy and not hugely expensive, can make the most significant difference,” she said. ($429.)
The total cost for the makeover was $1,756. When all the changes were in place, I sent Fishburne a photo. “Yes!” She wrote back. “This is proof positive that you can make a few updates, complement the pieces staying in the room and refresh it while pumping in new light.”