Dining Room Furniture

Dining rooms in many homes are small; dining room furniture is often large. The problem in showcasing a dining room is to make it look roomy enough to accommodate you and your extended family. More often than not, we end up removing furniture from the dining room to make it look bigger.

Most dining rooms include a dining room table, six to eight chairs, a buffet or sideboard, and a china cabinet that add up to too much furniture for the space.

Have you been to a retail store and felt like you could hardly see anything because the displays were too crowded and close together? Maybe you got out of there as fast as you could because you were just uncomfortable. Not having enough room to pass between the merchandise and displays without knocking into something else will do that to you.

Lack of adequate walking space is an uncomfortable situation when you’re in a retail store, but it’s intolerable in a house for sale. I like to call this walking space buttbrush room — enough space between and around the furniture so your butt doesn’t brush up against something else. A distance of about 6070cm minimum provides ample buttbrush room.

More often than not, dining rooms don’t offer enough buttbrush room because there’s a dining room table, four to six chairs, a china cabinet, and a sideboard or buffet. These extra pieces of furniture just weigh down the room. Test the space to see whether you need to walk sideways to get around the dining room. If so, keep the china cabinet and store the sideboard or use it in another room. If you do have room to use it in the dining room, use your accessories sparingly; rather than spreading accessories the length of the sideboard, simple art above it and an orchid on it is better.

Sometimes the china cabinet overpowers the dining room. In that case, take off the hutch — the part that holds the glassware and china. Removing the hutch can really open up the dining room and give it a more spacious feeling.

You want your dining room to be a spacious, elegant room for family gatherings and entertaining.

Table and chairs

You want the dining room to look as spacious as possible, so in most cases, we recommend removing a leaf from the table and leaving fewer chairs around the table than came with the dining set.

The room looks more spacious with a smaller table and four chairs (or a maximum of six chairs). Store the extra chairs or use them in another part of the house, but don’t put them in the corners of the dining room — they look like you didn’t have the space for them around the table, and by leaving them you’re eating up the equity in the room.

If at all possible, avoid using a tablecloth on the table because it visually gobbles up space in the room. You want to centre the dining room table under the light fixture, but you don’t have to play it straight

For Those That Have China Cabinets

If you have a small dining room, you may be better off removing your china cabinet and storing it elsewhere. If your dining room is large enough, and especially if you have an attractive niche in the dining room that you want buyers to notice, by all means, keep the china cabinet.

Many china cabinets are in two pieces, with the hutch resting on a cabinet base. When this is the case, we often remove the hutch and use the base cabinet alone to visually open up the space.

Another nice thing about splitting up a china cabinet is that you can use the base cabinet in another part of the house — as a sofa or entry table, or as a sideboard in an eat-in kitchen.

China cabinets are great places to . . . cram everything else that doesn’t fit in the kitchen cupboards. If you use the china cabinet to stage your house, pack and store two thirds to threequarters of all the holiday plates, cups, and décor. Then display one place setting of china per shelf or section so the plate is centred on the shelf in front of a glass door.

Setting up a buffet or sideboard (or not)

To figure out where to put your sideboard, take a look at the ceiling. What shape is it? If it’s rectangular, then try placing the sideboard on one of the short sides of the rectangle. Doing so makes your dining room look more spacious.

Wherever you place your sideboard, make sure that when the dining room table and chairs are in place, you leave enough space for walking between the table and buffet. You need at least 24 inches for clearance. If you can’t leave this much clearance no matter which wall you put the buffet on, then remove it from the dining room altogether.

Softening the room with plants and ambient lighting

The first place the eye rests in a room is the back-right corner. Because the dining room has a lot of hard surfaces (the wood or glass top dining room table, wood or iron chairs, china cabinet, and sideboard), a tree or tall plant adds softness, texture, and balance. For great mood lighting at night, we also like putting an up light on a timer and placing it under the tree. The light filters through the leaves, creating additional texture in the room.

Floral arrangements bring nature and colour into the room, and the centre of the dining room table is a great place for one — but don’t go too crazy. You want buyers looking at the room, not the floral arrangement.

If you have a buffet or sideboard in the room, add soft lighting with a lamp or two. If you use buffet lamps (a pair of matching lamps that are relatively tall and thin), forego arranging them symmetrically on both ends of the buffet. Instead set them next to each other, raising one higher than the other by elevating it on a book. This arrangement is more on trend and appeals to the younger buyer.

Adding artwork and mirrors

The dining room is a perfect place to add colour, and the easiest way to do so is by adding artwork. Rather than using small art pieces, make a statement with one large piece of art or a grouping placed closely together so that the pieces look like one large piece of art. If you want to highlight a view, consider placing a mirror to reflect the view and to bring additional light into the room.

If the artwork is going over a buffet or sideboard, place it so that its bottom edge is 4 to 6 inches higher than the surface of the furniture. When placing art on the wall itself, place it at art gallery height — 54 inches from the floor to the centre of the picture.

Accenting with accessories

Use accessories sparingly or not at all in a dining room. You want buyers to admire the floors or the cove ceiling, not your accessories. Larger crystal and silver objects add elegance and texture, but as is often the case, less is more.