How to create a dramatic dining room with bespoke joinery
The dining room can feature bespoke cabinetry, perfect joinery and beautiful lighting to create a welcoming ambience for family and friends. Whether it’s for everyday dining or extra-special occasions with a full guest list, a dramatic dining room is a very important feature of the home.
Many of our interior design projects include several dining spaces – there may be an island-breakfast bar in the kitchen, a casual dining space next to the kitchen area, and a separate, statement dining room for more formal occasions. As with all our projects we are focussed on creating a gorgeous yet streamlined look throughout the home, with the colours, textures and materials working in harmony to create a beautiful whole. In the dining room, using bespoke joinery is a way of including design elements and proportions that are featured elsewhere in the home. Creating a unique and perfectly functional dining room that will be a focal point of the home for many years to come is a joyful task - here are some of our ideas and design secrets …
DINING ROOM LAYOUT IDEAS
From a purely practical point of view, it’s preferable to know what size dining table will be required for the finished room, how many guests it will need to seat, what shape it is and whether it will be an extending model or not. Sometimes, once these queries are settled by our clients, the table will be designed by us and made by our Joinery team. The shape of the table – square, rectangular, circular or oval – can dictate the layout of the dining room, allowing us to consider what additional cabinetry and joinery is required. The entrance to the dining room has a bearing on the dining room layout too; whether the table is positioned centrally or to one side, in front of the windows and so on. If the ‘dining room’ is part of an open-plan layout, it’s often the position of other items of furniture that help create the perception of a separated dining space. For example, cabinets or a sideboard can create a visual separation between dining and living spaces.
DINING ROOM CABINETS
Including bespoke Joinery is a way of making a statement dining room a pleasure to use. Our design team can come up with concepts that will provide everything from dining room display cabinets and dining room side cabinets to unique joinery details such as skirting boards, picture and dado rails and storage features. The dining room scheme may include a bar cabinet, bespoke shelving for china and glassware, and perhaps enclosed cabinetry for all the other dining room necessities such as linen, cutlery, table decorations, mats and so on. Our Joinery team can make and build cabinetry, panelling and architectural details to create a traditional look, or perhaps to add a contemporary touch to a classically proportioned and detailed interior. Material options include traditional painted or veneered timbers or perhaps combinations of timber veneers and metal, leather and fabric finishes.
DINING ROOM DECORATING IDEAS
When asked how to design a dining room, we always reply that every single aspect is important. All joinery features, from floor to ceiling, and everything in-between, are carefully thought out, from simple skirting boards to elaborate door and window casings. The dining room has to be practical, inviting, relaxing, comfortable and appealing. It has to have enough room to seat the required number of guests, and room to move around easily. The acoustics are very important. It’s usually a good idea to place the dining table on a rug – but we always make sure that dining chairs can be pulled out easily, without tipping off the edge of the rug. The rug can be a design statement, perhaps adding a swathe of texture and colour. Of course, a rug or room square also helps soften the noise of chair legs on hard floors. A good number of our design projects include smart tech to control sound and lighting, so it’s rather nice to choose a ‘playlist’ at the beginning of the evening to set the mood. Soft furnishings add colour and texture, and in larger dining spaces, sumptuous curtains and blinds can contribute to the acoustic qualities of the room. Lighting a dining room is one of our favourite tasks – we see so many stunning lighting concepts during our design journeys! In most cases a statement dining room will feature a dramatic central light fitting. Our clients may desire a traditional chandelier, sparkling with hundreds of glass droplets, or we may be tasked with finding a super-contemporary minimalist light fitting. A wonderful lighting scheme will also need discreet uplighters and/or downlighters, and our bespoke cabinetry can often include integral lighting. In a formal dining room, there is always the opportunity to include interesting candle holders, lanterns and votives which add a lovely touch to the tablescape.
HOW TO DESIGN A COMBINED KITCHEN-DINING ROOM
We are quite often asked to design a combined kitchen-dining room, particularly if the home is an apartment. Combining a kitchen space with a dining room is often a very practical way of getting ‘more’ out of a large single area. Sometimes it’s better to design a combined space rather than trying to maintain two separate rooms. There can be advantages regarding garden, terrace or balcony views, the amount of light that can come into the space, and the way the flow between kitchen and dining areas can be improved. A large kitchen island is often specified, this in itself provides a casual dining spot, but it can also demarcate the kitchen area from the dining area. Often kitchen islands are designed so that all the practical aspects, such as the dishwasher, crockery drawers, prep areas and so on face away from the dining area. This means that the outer-facing side of the island can become the perceived divide between kitchen and ‘dining room’. One important design requirement for the combined kitchen-dining room is that there must always be the correct amount of floor space for the dining table and chairs. One of the many advantages of our bespoke cabinetry and joinery is that we can create tailor-made pieces to suit the floor space available.