Dining Room Design

Size for your regular household use, not your largest occasional gathering — a table that is comfortable daily for four but can extend to eight with a leaf or additional seating is usually more practical than a permanently large table that dominates the room.

Round or oval tables generally use space more efficiently in a smaller room since they have no sharp corners to navigate around, though a rectangular table seats more people per linear metre in a larger space.

It is not essential but genuinely useful — without one, everyday crockery and serving items end up stored in the kitchen and carried back and forth, or left cluttering the dining table itself between meals.

A pendant or chandelier centred over the table, hung roughly 75 to 90cm above the tabletop, sized to roughly two-thirds the table's width. Supplement with ambient room lighting so the space is not lit only in one bright pool over the table.