Dining room furnishings you need other than a dining table
Sharing meals and eating together is an important part of every day.
The dining room or dining area is a place for the family to get together at the beginning or end of the day and spend time together.
As it’s an integral part of the home, it requires certain furnishings to give it purpose and make it “homey”.
Many people may prefer to eat their dinner on their laps in front of the TV screen, but as a family, it’s important to make time to eat together and enjoy each other’s company. Also, it really helps to have a designated dining area for when guests come over. It’s more comfortable and intimate to reach around a table than to divide your attention between TV and friends. There’s a reason why the dining and lounge furniture departments are separate.
On that note, there are different types of dining room furniture you can add to your dining room.
Dining table and chairs
When you picture a dining room, the first image that comes to mind is a table and chairs, which is why we’re including it in this article even though it’s not the entirety of one’s dining room. A few things to keep in mind when looking at dining tables and chairs is the space you have to work with and the number of people you need to seat on a daily basis.
You also need to decide the theme for your dining room. You can choose to have a plain dining table and patterned, coloured, cane, metal, plastic or armchair-type seating to add character and colour to the room. If you already have a decorative wallpaper or bold colour scheme, rather stick to neutral colours for your table and chairs, and use table décor to accent that colour on the table itself.
Bar stools or extra seating
Not every home has a designated dining room, it’s more of a makeshift dining area. For example, some people double their kitchen island or kitchen table as their eating area. In those cases, you would need bar stools for seating. If your home is relatively open-plan and your kitchen table is near to your dining area, then this allows you to have extra seating to accommodate a house full of guests.
Additional seating is generally a good option to have in any case. If you can fit an ottoman or occasional chair or two in the corners of your dining room, they can easily be drawn into the corners of the table to make space for a few extra guests. It would also make it easier and more comfortable to manage children from a pulled-up occasional chair than on the lap of their parents’ or taking up an adult seat at the main table.
But having extra seating as an option means you can host more people at a time and not have anyone feel left out or rushed to finish eating so the next person can sit down. Also, there’s no such thing as too much seating in a house. As long as everything fits and has its place.
Cabinets
A useful piece of dining room furniture to add to your dining area are cabinets or drawers of sorts. It adds to the room in more ways than one and should definitely be considered if you have the space for it. And if you don’t have space on the floor, you can put up a wall cabinet that matches the material of your dining table.
These can be used for storage of tablecloths, table runners, napkins, placemats and “special occasion” dinnerware, silverware and crystal glasses. You can also use the surface on top for decorative items such as lamps, flowers and photo frames. Or, you could use it as a dish-up station for large friends and family meal gatherings.
Lighting
You should be able to set a mood in the room to enjoy your meal in. For example, If you want a romantic dinner, you want soft lighting, and if you’re entertaining guests, you want to be able to see their faces, as well as your food, clearly.
Dimmable LEDs are a great way to achieve this but they don’t exactly add any décor to the room. Which is where chandeliers, table and standing lamps come in handy. Having a chandelier or hanging light feature above your dining room table is an effortless way to draw attention to the room.
Artwork
Then you need to think about your walls. Minimalist dining rooms may have plain furnishings but there’s something about them that makes it beautiful. And it’s the artwork on the walls that finishes off the room.
It can be the only colour or decorative item in the room and it will be enough. Find a piece of artwork you like or frame a series of artistic photographs and place them on your dining room’s walls. And if you want to make it seem like there is more space to the room, place a large mirror on the opposite wall.