Top Tips for Transforming Your Dining Room

Your dining room is a place that brings your family together at mealtimes, and it’s also where you gather with friends for dinner parties, so it’s a vital part of your home. There are two main problems with dining rooms that can impact their use as places to gather for meals, so if you want to transform your space, you need to acknowledge which camp your dining room falls into and take the appropriate steps to define its role more clearly again.

• ·         The first problem: When your dining room is used as a dumping ground for all manner of clutter

This often happens in open-plan spaces, where the table is used as a handy place to put down the mail, school bags, shopping, ironing, and so on. In this case, you need to find better places for people to leave their belongings, and don’t let the clutter build up again. Perhaps you need more room for coat hooks or an in-tray in the kitchen or living room where mail is left for sorting.

• ·         The second problem: The dining room that’s cut off from the rest of the house

These dining rooms tend to get dusty and feel unloved, which isn’t conducive to their use as family gathering points. If it’s worry about damage to the contents that makes you keep the door shut, put all your valuables inside a display cabinet, and try to make the room more inviting.

What’s the solution?

In any dining area, the central feature will be the table. Simply replacing your old table and chairs with a modern style like the Cattelan Italia range makes a major difference in how your dining room looks. Redecorating the walls to match the dining table brings harmony to your room, for example. Plus changing a carpet for a hardwood or laminate floor will not only give the room a touch of class but will make it easier to keep clean, so the dining room doesn’t have to stay off limits to kids and pets.

Artworks always set off a dining room nicely, but you don’t need to spend a fortune to make an impact. If you’re handy with a camera, you can take your own photos and have them enlarged to fit a picture frame that you can hang on the wall. If you want to buy art, go for an original work by a little-known artist rather than a copy of a famous painting. It’s more interesting and makes a good talking point for visitors, plus you could be making a good investment if the artist becomes sought after in the future! Flowers or plants in a dining room improve the air quality and keep the space looking fresh and well-cared for.

Ideally, you want a happy compromise between having the dining room isolated from the rest of the house, and it's being used for purposes that hamper its function. Build your new room around a fabulous piece of furniture, and watch your dining room come to life.