Is your dining room formal or informal, a separate room or part of the kitchen or living areas, this room should always be planned around a table and chairs. Your dining room should be inviting and comfortable-a place where people wish to linger, even after the last plate is cleared away.
What kind of Dining Room do you have?
Most often, formal dining areas are in a separate room, while informal dining areas are more commonly out in the open-frequently attached to the living room, family room, or kitchen.
Before decorating the dining area, you should first determine the level of formality you'd like to achieve. This decision will have an enormous impact on the colors you'll choose, and the overall look of the decor.
- Formal Dining Room:A formal dining room is an excellent place for entertaining. Elegant and refined, these rooms can make even the most casual get-togethers seem impressive. Warm colors such as reds, oranges, and yellows, work especially well in more formal spaces. Psychologically, these colors help to stimulate the appetite, making them an excellent choice for rooms where the primary purpose is food and entertaining. For the best dining experience, use warm hues that are muted or shaded such as golden or creamy yellows, spiced oranges and terracottas, wines, burgundies, and dusty roses.
- Informal Dining Room: Dining rooms don't necessarily have to be formal, especially if they're connected to a living room or kitchen, as is common in many contemporary homes. In these more open and casual dining areas, the decorative style usually follows that of the surrounding environment. Your dining room should look as if it's a natural extension of the rest of your home. For example, putting an ultra-modern dining area into a country-styled home might make the room appear off-balance with the rest of your home. Warm neutral colors-like red-toned or yellow-toned neutrals-work especially well in dining rooms. From warm rosy taupes to golden honey beiges, these colors are calm and comforting, creating a very pleasant dining atmosphere. Open dining areas tend to look best when continued in the color schemes of the rooms that surround them. If cool colors are used in these rooms, try to use warm accent colors-such as touches of red, orange or yellow-to help stimulate the appetite.
- A Place to Linger in: No matter what level of formality you choose for your dining area, make sure that it is comfortable and welcoming. Hospitality is one of the oldest of human impulses, and your goal should be to create a space where you, your family, friends and acquaintances will want to spend time, both during and after meals. Use padded seating to encourage people to linger at the table. Install dimmer switches so you can adjust the lighting to a level that's just right for the occasion
Which style for your dining room?
- Traditional Warmth: A traditional style is generally formal, sophisticated and timeless, using antiques or high quality furniture reproductions, rich woods, overstuffed seating and understated colors. The emphasis is on comfort, style and classic, refined elegance.
- Modern Elegance: The contemporary look treats interior spaces almost as pieces of three-dimensional art, balancing form, shape, color and texture, and banishing clutter and fussiness. Surfaces are plain, colors are usually clean and pure, shapes are geometric.
- Country Comfort: Country today is an assemblage of related styles, with names that include rustic, peasant, pastoral, natural, floral, romantic, nautical, beach, cottage, country house, colonial, New England, Shaker and Proven
