Customise your dining experience

Is your dining room the most boring place in the house? It needn’t be! Maya Girish looks at different dining rooms and how to tailor your dining experience to your needs!

While building a house, most people focus on beautiful bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. But in this day and age, when entertaining has become the norm, there is no reason why the dining room cannot take centre stage.

A dining room is one of the more ‘happening’ areas in a house. It’s where the family might sit down to dinner after a long hard day at work or a bunch of friends might discuss news or gossip. A beautiful and unique dining room might be just the thing to show off one’s designer touch. When planning a dining room, there are so many routes to take, anything is possible.

Dramatic

This can be done in a few ways. You could go for a dark look with grey walls with heavy dark metal chandeliers paired with heavy old wooden furniture.

A thick furry rug, heavy candle stands and some animal head trophies. This look can be lightened up with a little white skirting the walls, white ceramic cutlery in the cutlery units or white wall art. If you’re not one for heavy furniture, then delicate metal is the way to go. Pick some delicate metal chairs paired with a light wood and metal table.

Add a delicate vase, geometric carpet in a neutral colour, delicate lighting and some colourful artwork or small table sculptures to alleviate the weight of the grey walls. Wall paper in Asian or Scandinavian designs paired with neutral furniture can also add drama to a room. Here, the walls add colour to the room, so the furniture need not be too dramatic and artwork becomes unnecessary.

Old school

Some of us love the dining rooms of the past, be it from movies or our grandparents’ houses. Old western dining rooms had beautiful heavy oak or teak wood furniture and rather comfortable chairs, though it is difficult to move this kind of furniture around.

Gold or silver chandeliers, brass candle stands, colourful ceramic plates or famous artwork for the walls and some nice brass or metal sculptures in the four corners along with a red or green carpet would add to the look.

If you miss eating on the floor as we were wont to do in the past, the idea is adaptable. Buy some single-seater low Asian tables which can be joined to make one large low table or placed separately. Buy some cushions or small rugs to sit on while at the table.

Use the table as a centrepiece and place any artwork you like on it. The walls can be neutral colours. If you’re going Indian, any form of Indian artwork like Tanjore or Madhubani paintings can be put up; for a more east-Asian look add some lanterns, large vases and some silk table mats.

Go green

Who says dining rooms must always be within four walls? Why not have huge French windows leading out into a beautiful garden? Why not a dining room outside with just a roof overhead or even an umbrella? Why not an indoor garden of potted plants around your dining table?

Modern dining rooms have moved away from the old image of a staid four walled dining room. We first tried open kitchens and dining but have now moved onto open kitchen-dining-garden. White or neutral walls do the trick for this kind of dining room.

Light wood furniture, dark wood/tiled floor and large airy windows with doors leading out into a green landscape. Sounds idyllic? The upside is that you won’t need to spend on any artwork or aesthetic pieces for this room, since nature does it for free! This kind of dining room is ideal for parties large or small, where guests can roam free and still socialise!

Mix ‘n’ match

This is my favourite kind of room. I just buy many different kinds of furniture ranging from pretty plastic to staid wooden chairs, famous artwork to children’s scribbles…mix it all up, throw in some coloured rugs and table cloths and voila! a unique dining room. With this theme, anything goes…multipurpose units are especially fun to have around.

Do you like to wine and dine with your friends, but you have no space for an actual dining room? Invest in an extendable coffee table and pull it up to switch from living to dining in five minutes. Plastic is easy to handle and clean. Mix a few designer and colour plastic chairs with a nice wooden table to minimise the amount of maintenance required.

Coloured plastic also does away with the need for too many accessories, so a vase full of flowers or a fruit basket will do the trick. A funky rug and colourful curtains will enhance the look!

Dining rooms can also be used as a study, have bookshelves or used as buffet areas. Some places for good dining room ideas are your favourite restaurants. There’s nothing wrong with having a dining room that reminds you of your favourite nights out as well as inspires you to cook like a gourmet chef!

You could also do away with the table and just have bar stools at the kitchen counter, using the room like a proper kitchen-cum-dining. Dining room artwork need not always be about food or fruit, use typography, scribbles, hand painting or framed fabric to add some personality to your room.

So don’t overlook your dining room, it may well turn out to be your favourite place in the house if you send some time on it!