The Dining Room as a Room Worth Designing

Dining rooms are often the last room people think carefully about and the first room guests notice. There's something worth correcting in that order.

The table is the room. Everything else — chairs, lighting, sideboard — exists in relation to it. Choose the table first and size it honestly: 180cm seats six without crowding. 220cm seats eight. Don't buy a table for the dinner party you host once a year.

Chair selection is where most rooms go wrong. Matching chairs around a rectangular table creates a boardroom. We prefer two carver chairs at the heads and four side chairs along the length — it gives the table an axis without being formal about it.

Lighting should hang low. 70–80cm above the table surface. High pendants light the ceiling, not the food or the faces.

A sideboard against one wall. Storage, surface space, and somewhere to put a lamp that warms the room during dinner.

Designed properly, a dining room becomes the room people linger in longest.