Home Interior Design Dining Room – The dining room – of all the rooms in our house – is a meeting place. It is a place where we can gather with our families, host our best friends or just enjoy a takeaway. And because it’s so much fun again this year, the dining room is once again in the spotlight, from the table itself to the place settings to the sumptuous dishes you choose to prepare (Baked Alaska, anyone)?
In the past, dining rooms were bad because they were overly formal – or even chilly – places with standing seats, elbow-free surfaces and impeccably behaved children. Nothing more: interior designers are rethinking these rooms as spaces for personal expression, where practically anything goes. Just ask ELLE DECOR Designer Garrett Hunter, who recently remodeled a modern Hollywood Hills for his parents with a dining room drenched in funky ’70s colors and silhouettes.
Home Interior Design Dining Room
But some stylistic parameters are in place, says Hunter. “There are three factors to creating a great dining room: comfortable seating, designer fixtures to create a connection or core, and adjustable lighting,” he says. As for the parents’ house, a beautiful pendant painting by Jeffrey Cheung provides light and a focal point above the “core”, which is an architectural table by Ettore Sottsass surrounded by comfortable chairs by Afra and Tobio Scarpa with their Pringle-shaped backs and upholstered seats.
Dining Room Design: Best Dining Room Interior Design Ideas
Speaking of seating, “there are no rules about what type of seating can be used in a dining room. An important factor to consider is consistent seating height in the dining room,” says Hunter—who once paired a Børge Mogensen wingback sofa with two Christopher Kreiling dining chairs in their own breakfast nook. “It worked well because the sofa is high and created an intimate dining experience in an open space.”
“A rule of thumb is to always test your dining room chairs!” says designer Jennifer Bunsa. “If you’re shopping online, order one to test to see if it’s comfortable. Or, if you can visit a showroom and test in person, that’s ideal.” As for the dining table, “make sure you think about materiality,” he continues. “For example, if you have a young and messy family, make sure the wood is properly treated or use a stone slab, which is more durable.”
Even if your dining room is less of a “room” and more of a dedicated space, storage, or sofa (hey, we won’t judge), there are ways to arrange your space to have a discreet dining area—just don’t let your ambitions get in the way best of you. “The mistake small-space dwellers make is trying to pack multiple zones into one. Creating a hybrid zone works best in small spaces,” says Hunter. Bunsa agrees. In fact, in a recent project in Miami, she incorporated bookcases into the dining room that a fixture that breaks up the home’s open plan, but also adds visual interest. “You can do something fun with built-ins, and you can introduce color or pattern and turn a small space into a design moment,” she tells us.
Just as there are endless styles of kitchens and parties that can be hosted in them, there are countless ways to configure and decorate the dining room. Do you have an open kitchen? Consider a banquet. Are you hoping to make your room the center of attention? Go for a dramatic light fixture. Want to bring nature in? Think of a scenic mural, says Bunsa. Wherever you choose to break bread, these dining room ideas are recipes for great taste.
75 Dining Room Ideas You’ll Love
A mural of a leopard and cherubs) and the dining room was no exception. To delimit this uncomfortable space, she came up with an ingenious solution: turning it into a hybrid library. “The space is in the middle of the house and is the main hallway, so the bookcase helps to define it as a dining area in the larger room,” says Bunsa. “A lot of times a formal dining room isn’t a space that people use that much, so we’ve also added an extra feature.”
This Connecticut home—designed by architect Andrew Bartolotta with interior design duo Jesse Parris-Lamb—may have been inspired by Industrial Revolution factories, but it’s not Dickensian. Here, in the dining room, floor-to-ceiling windows open onto the coastal view, while an Italian travertine table is surrounded by five wooden chairs upholstered in gray leather. Please sir, can we have another one?
ELLE DECOR A-List designer Michelle R. Smith brought her casual yet elegant style to Simon Huck’s Manhattan home (you know him as a regular
) and Phil Reportella. In the dining room, that meant rich wood furniture (we love the Giancarlo Valle chairs) that stand out against their muted vanilla backdrop. A swirling green painting by Ammon Rost presents an array of colors. “I wanted this house to feel like a well-tailored Loro Piana coat,” says the designer. “We used all these cashmere colors, like cream and white, along with the oak.
Brooklyn Blonde Home Tour
Designed by Georgia Tappert Howe, this combined dining room and kitchen packs a lot of style
Enough storage space. A custom leather banquette and marble kitchen island feature drawers and cabinets—perfect for this Brooklyn family on the go. “You have to keep in mind how much storage space you need,” advises Howe.
Designed by Noz Nozawa, this airy California home is a rarity in that it is surrounded by regal redwood trees. “They love all the nature right outside their door,” the designer explains of the clients, “and they were thinking of making a custom live-edge dining table, so we found a carved piece of wood that would be perfect.”
In this Hudson Valley home, inspiration was literally underfoot: decorator Miles Redd drew an entire color palette from the shades of the rug. However, this seating vignette is a nod to the homeowner’s love of antiques. Here, Biedermeier chairs are drawn to a table from the 19th century. And in our humble opinion, you can never have a flower arrangement that is too big.
5 Delightful Log Home Dining Rooms
Everything is said to be big in Texas, and judging by the high ceilings in this Dallas home, it’s true. Designer Chad Dorsey played with the overwhelming scale of the dining room by installing a series of white pendants that shower the table. This step adds drama while ensuring the sitting area doesn’t get lost in the home’s larger-than-life dimensions.
With such a spectacular view, the interior has to take a back seat – fact designer Nicole Hollis has skillfully navigated this amazing desert escape. Here, the dining room features a custom table surrounded by Jean-Michel Frank and nothing but a vine-like chandelier by Jeff Zimmerman—an otherworldly touch for an out-of-this-world backdrop.
That’s how you enhance the look of a modern farmhouse. For this farmhouse, designer David Netto swapped chintz and antiques for more modern and cozy elements. In the dining room, this included woven Charlotte Perriand seats and an antique Italian table surrounded by simple wooden chairs.
Think in 3D if you’re looking for an artistic moment in the dining room. An art installation by artist Bradley Sabin punctuates this breakfast nook in a Manhattan residence by Lucy Doswell. “They’re all handmade and painted flowers, and he likes to come up with the installation pattern and exact placement,” Doswell says.
Formal Home Dining Room Interior Design
When designer Jamie Bush approached the interior of this Montecito, California. housing went back to basics: primary and secondary colors. The dining room nods to this theme with its gold-coloured swivel chairs and red on the side table.
You can never have too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to entertainment. Here at Park City Ski Resort in Utah, design firm Electric Bowery added a comfortable banquette for casual family meals alongside a more formal dining area. To create cohesion, an open bookcase functions as a room divider.
We love how ELLE DECOR A-List firm Retrouvius limited the palette of this distinctly modern Parisian dining room to just two colors: cream and gold. Our favorite part? The wardrobe door (on the right) was made from a salvaged parquet floor.
With few walls in the Brooklyn loft belonging to Orior’s creative director Ciáran McGuigan, the furniture designer created distinct groupings of furniture to define different functions. “We knew we wanted to have as much open space as possible,” he says. Here, between the original wooden column and the mint green credenza, he tucked in the Orior table and surrounded it with electric blue chairs – a shade found throughout the apartment.
Summer Dining Room Update: A Fresh White Table Setting
Hey, we hear you: Maybe you prefer all-white walls to a maximalist look. But before you ditch the bold florals altogether, check out this elegant room by Toronto designer Sam Sacks. Here she introduced pattern through striped chairs and rugs and color through a crimson antique tapestry.
At first glance, this dining room may look like an ultra-formal space reserved for dinners with your great-grandmother. But on your next visit, you’ll appreciate how fashion designer Marc Valeanu has pushed the envelope with color and shape. Note: the celery green walls, the barely black chandelier by Tommaso Barbi, the canary yellow table by Konstantin Grcic and