DINING ROOMS

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Function

  • A place to gather in most cases eat (sometimes spread papers out to work, etc)

  • In most cases used at most once per day but typically a dozen or so times a year. (DOES THIS MATTER?

  • Food or drink can be spill at one quick flick of the wrist

  • This room, like the entry, there are few main components to make your statement, so choose wisely!

  • Nothing this world is indestructible, but this is the time to try and get close to that. If not, you have to be the person who a) won’t get upset at their first oil stain on their upholstery or scratch on the DR table or b) can easily afford to have replaced and repaired.

Questions

  • How many people do you need to fit around the table. Try and not determine that based on your huge family who comes every 3 years. Look at it from the more regular perspective.

  • How will it be used, most adults, will they most likely be over served and spilling red wine and whipping their marina sauce on the backs of your chairs? Or will all of your local Nieces and nephews also be dining here for the next 10 years.

  • Use these dims, 48” off wall, plus buffet etc to determine how large the table can be

  • Make sure to have a buffet or credenza

DESIGN PROCESS

Design Concept

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  • In the beginning of designing a dining room you have to select what components you want to be the focal point. There are much less items that go in a dining room than any other space, so make sure you select items that have a presence. Not all of the items, it all comes down to balance.

SELECTIONS

Dining Table

  • Table Shape-We love a round table in a square room and a rectantable or oval in a long room. See our breakdown of table shapes

  • Table Size-Sometimes work backwards and tape off the space with these things to think about.

    • Table should be 48” off all walls, pathways or large pieces of furniture. You want to make sure you can leave space for when the chair is pulled back and also for traffic behind the chairs. Once you do this you will know the maximum size the table can be.

    • If thee are window treatments, is there anything that they will be blocking

    • Is there doors in the room that need to swing past the chairs

    • We like a table that is a minimum of 42” deep as it can handle placemats and either enough room for serving dishes

    • Leave 24” of length per person.



    Dining Chairs

  • Decide on how many you need and if you will order extra to put along the wall in the room. We are ok with this when a chair is on either side of a buffet or credenza. At max we would do 4 chairs along a wall, if you had symmetry with 2 buffet/credenzas on either side of the room. (Provide Image)

  • Decide if the chair is to be upholstered or not. This can be a big decisions. Here are the questions/points we make when coming to that conclusion.

    • We love an upholstered chair as it is a nice opportunity to add additional texture to the space, though there are some non upholstered chairs out there that are beautiful on their own.

    • We often advise our clients against an fully upholstered chair when the chairs get a lot of use or when kids often use them. Options to consider are

      • Just having chairs with upholstered seats and backs that can easily be popped and and reupholstered easily. This is a low cost way of refreshing a chair.

      • A chair that has a removable slipcover, just make sure that the fabric is suitable to be washed/drycleaned.

    • Think about how long you intend people to sit at the table, if that is the case a chair with a higher back is always a nice option so your guest can sit back in the chair without their backs being cut into.

  • Materials that we LOVE but would want you to know that they can take a beating

    • Caning

    • seagrass or lacquered linen

    • acrylic, but can scratch

    • lacquered or painted chairs, love them, but overtime they will chip so have touchup paint on hand or a great future medic number.



    Area Rug

  • You want to make sure that the area rug is large enough so that when the chairs are pushed back the back legs do not get caught on the edge of the rug

  • Materials that are great for a dining ruG:

    • Natural Fiber rug, can be great because of the tight weave the chairs can glide over it, though beware that crumbs can get stuck in the cracks of the fiber. We love them because they tend not to break the budget and can be replaced every 5 years or so without wanting to cry. The natural fibers are very porous and can absorb spills quickly, aka red wine, but we have always been able to get the stains out if we treat them quickly.

    • Indoor/Outdoor Rugs-They are AMAZING in a dining room. You just need to make sure that the weave is sturdy enough that the rug will not pull and gap with the pushing back of the chairs.

    • A tight low pile or woven wool rug is always a great option. These cane considered more of an investment, but they can hold up really well.

  • Materials that you might want to avoid as they are not durable or hard for the chair to glide back:

    • Silk, Linen, Tensil or viscose are really hard to get stains out of

    • A thick long pile rug that would make it very hard to move the chairs back on

    • Plush rugs



    Chandelier

  • Size

    • Height The first thing you should consider is what the height of the fixture should be. You want to measure the overall height of the room and subtract the table height. Then you take that dimensions and subtract between 32”-36” which will leave you the range at which the max height of the fixture should be.

      • When looking at the height make sure that it also includes the height of the canopy. You want the overall fixture height.

      • Read the product specifications to make sure that the fixture does not have a fixed minimum height. If so, review it and make sure that it woks in your space.

    • Width and Length

      • We like to have a chandelier have around 12” of space on the outside of the fixture to the outside of the dining table. For example if the table is 42” W we like a chandelier that is 24”W. Because the volume that a fixture can take up differs greatly we love to see if we can find images of the fixture in a space to see how it reads. There can be 2 fixtures that are both 24” W and one can take up much more space than the other and much more overwhelming.

  • If the chandelier is the only source of light in the space make sure you pick one that can give off enough light.

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Tips

  • Buy extra yardage of your fabric pr leather for your dining chairs incase you get a stain you cannot remove. You will never regret having the extra on hand. The reason you might not be able to do it later, is the die-lots might not match or get discontinued.

  • Use out Fabric Guide (coming soon) to determine fabrics that we think are durable options for dining chair upholstery.

  • Light Fixture. Talk about important features it should have.

  • Look at our rug guide to select your type of rug. You want to choose one that dining chairs can slide over. You want to look for one that has a short pile and is positioned in a way that when the chairs are being slid back and forth from the table that the legs don’t catch the edge of the rug

  • Indoor/Outdoor Fabrics

  • Faux Leathers

  • For Chairs:

  • Wood

  • Upholstered

  • Combo

  • Functions of each ,

  • Once a client said “I am at a stage in my life where I enjoy small dinner parties where we can sit for hours so I want to sit in a chair that I can really sit back in and be comfortable which can means a higher upholstered back, once that isn’t straight up.

  • Layout

  • Look at the shape of the room, minus the buffet to see if the space calls for a round/square table vs. rectangular/oval table.

Dining Room Dimensions

  • Need 24”w per person

  • 6”-8” of space between chairs

  • A table needs a minimum of 36” of clearance around the table (48” off a working kitchen counter)

  • Seating:

  • 4 people

  • 6-8

  • 8-10

  • 10-12