If you entertain regularly, you’re fond of having people over and sharing the delights of your home with them. You’re no doubt a dab hand in the kitchen, but if you’re here, you’ve probably got beautiful dining room furniture you’d like your guests to notice.
People who entertain often focus on the more temporal aspects of having company around. Good conversation and fine food figure prominently. But the setting is what really makes the evening and that means creating an ambience that makes your guests feel welcome and a little spoiled.
This post focuses on ways to make your dining room furniture to the star of the show. It’s beautiful. You’ve chosen it carefully and now you want to create a setting that does it justice.
Read on.
The mood
If you’ve ever eaten under the harsh lights of a cafeteria, you’ll know how intrusive and annoying overhead lighting can be. That’s why you want to avoid that effect in your dining room.
You’re not just having your friends over for dinner. You’re inviting them into your world. That world is thoughtfully lit with a pendant light which hangs over the center of your dining room suite, illuminating perhaps a large art glass bowl, or a magisterial arrangement of seasonal flowers, flanked by flickering candles.
Wall sconces are also at home in the dining room, providing peripheral light which doesn’t spoil the mood or detract from the central features you want most to highlight – your dining room furniture.
Lighting should cast a glow, not a glare. Choose options which allow your guests to see the beauty around them, while making your dining room furniture the star of the show.
Grounding the space
If you’ve taken our advice about a fixture which illuminates your dining table at its center, then you’re well on your way to grounding the space and sharpening its focus to star of the show, your dining room furniture.
You’ll want to take the extra step of finding just the right rug that will be the final masterstroke toward a refined focus on the room’s central elements.
Here’s where you can go mad. Your rug needn’t match the walls, the furniture, the art, or anything else for that matter. It can reference them, instead, creating an island of dining pleasure by clearly delineating the space and its boundaries.
A good rule of thumb for a dining room rug is to leave 18 inches on all four sides. If that’s not possible, choose something smaller, which leaves an 8-inch border from the back legs of the chairs when they’re pulled out (as though a guest were sitting in them).
Choosing a high impact color or pattern (animal prints like zebra, or patterns which speak of them, are huge right now) grounds your dining room and your dining room furniture becomes the star of the show.
Michelangelo has been bringing the riches of Italian furniture design to the shores of the USA since 1985. We invite Trade professionals to book an appointment.