Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

Well hello there! Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you are doing well, and if you are not, that is okay too - all vibes are welcome here. I am so excited to talk to you about all the cool ways you can make your dining room feel exceptionally chic.

But first at the top of the episode I wanted to remind you, if you didn’t know already we have an ongoing giveaway, and one winner will be announced next week. I am giving away a free 45 minute Creative Consultation to one lucky listener. This is one of my offerings that you can find on my website, softlandingstudio.com and it is a one-on-one video call, where we discuss your specific home goals, aspirations, and pain points. It’s everything you wanted know about interior design but were too afraid to ask. Ask away and we will solve so many things that may feel like they aren’t working for you, I’m telling you these sessions are so much fun and we get a ton accomplished in a short amount of time. I was just having one of these the other week with a new client and we conceptualized paint color applications in under 45 minutes for an entire home, so these session are quite valuable. All you have to do to enter is write a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts and give it a five start rating. Then just take a screen shot of the review and email it to me at amy.everard@softlandingstudio.com - I will of course include that email in the show notes. I will be announcing the winner in next week, so bring on those reviews!

Secondly, if you haven’t download the absolutely free Guide to Getting Started you are in for such a treat - this one page quiz will help you level set before embarking on any project, and help you identify you goals when you just aren’t 100% sure what your space needs to feel amazing. This guide is absolutely free and you can download it by going to my website softlandingstudio.com

And finally, last month I was so honored to be featured in the digital publication Women Who Podcast Magazine. This is an incredible resource for podcast lovers to find great new indie shows to check out, and it’s also awesome if you’re interested in trying to create your own podcast, but aren’t sure where to start or maybe you have some fears holding you back. This magazine covers it all, and I had so much fun chatting with Elaine Best who is a writer and podcaster herself and you can see our conversation at  womenwhopodcastmag.com, check the show notes for a link. On to the dining room! 

Do you have a dining room? I think I technically do, but I use it as my yoga space/ office. Even my clients with larger, dedicated dining rooms, these spaces are often under utilized, ignored, and just plain unloved. So what is it about a dining room that feels so uninviting? How can we reclaim these rooms to be the glorious celebration of breaking bread that we know they can be? Don’t you worry, because today we are going to outline everything you need to get your dining room to be the heart of your home.

When I lived in the suburbs with plenty of space, the dining room somehow felt off limits. We used it for special occasions - highly formal only - holidays, birthdays, graduation dinners. But the room felt more like a museum for inherited dishware, rather than a communal dining and gathering space. We often used the surface of the dining room table for overflow storage - tax document banker boxes, items to be donated. The room was tucked away, behind the kitchen, and even though it was large enough relatively speaking, with the table, chairs, and giant dish cabinets, the room felt crowded and moving around it in felt tight. Restricted. I always felt like I was going to knock something over or stub my toe on the heavy oversized chairs. This experience was not unique to any of the four homes I grew up in, I saw it in relatives homes, and I continue to see it today. We are all so short on space and yet the dining room seems to be this ignored, dead limb that we just assume has to be there. And I want to start off by saying the most controversial point I’ll make today, which is: if you don’t use your dining room more than three times a year, you should be using that room for something else. Whether it gets converted into an office, a play room, a second living room, a game room - anything that will get you in there more often than not.

But if you want to have a dedicated space for eating with a group of two or more, we have to unpack why we ignore these rooms so much. Part of it is outside my area of expertise. With our hectic, non-stop lifestyles, the idea of sitting down at a table to eat a meal is not incorporated into everyone’s routine. Many of us eat in front of the TV, at the computer, out at restaurants, or over the kitchen counter. There are plenty of experts who think a major part of mindful eating is taking dedicated, quiet time to eat meals. But shifting our thinking and habits around eating isn’t easy! And I’m not a behavior expert by any means, but what has worked for me is to try and think about the dining room as my own private cafe or restaurant. There are so many little details and moments that make sitting down for a hot beverage by myself in a cool coffee shop feel extraordinary, but we can recreate those moments and bring them into our everyday lives, so that something as simple as eating yogurt  for breakfast can feel like a moment of restoration for our minds and bodies.

As obvious as it sounds, it’s important to state that the dining room is simply a room centered around one piece of furniture - the table. Dining room tables are the souls of a dining room - anything else in the room serves to elevate and support the table itself. So the first question we have to ask is how many people do we actually need to seat at our table. This might sound like a basic question, but it’s a fundamental one. A family of two won’t make as much use of a six person dining table as an actual six person family. I’ve had many conversations that center around the concept of a theoretical dinner party hosting, and if that is something that you do every week, or even every other week, it’s important to build in guest seats at the table. But if you host a dinner party four times a year, it’s worth considering choosing a smaller table with an expandable center. It is also an option to add folding tables to your layout and drape everything with table clothes, if you want to host a lot of people. But what I would not recommend is selecting an oversized table purely for the fantasy of having dinner parties. 

An important factor when sizing a table is the size of the dining room itself. At an absolute minimum, there should be three feet between the edge of the table and the next vertical surface, be it a wall, a credenza, or a buffet. This is similar to the approach I mentioned when we spoke about bedroom layout. Three feet is enough to squeeze by, four feet will feel comfortable, five feet can be used for super large dining rooms where the group is more than 10 people, as you might have two people passing each other by on the same side of the table. But any smaller than three feet, and the room will feel cramped, crowded, and uninviting. 

The next decision you’ll want to make is the overall shape of the table. Round dining tables work well in square rooms and in larger rectangular rooms, if you use another piece of furniture like a credenza to fill the rest of the room out. This table shape is a great way to bring that restaurant feeling to your dining room. Large, round tables are used in catering and restaurants for their efficient seating capabilities, but they also create a non-hierarchical seating arrangement. Meaning, there is no head of the table just by the nature of the shape. While round tables for more than six or eight people can become too deep to have comfortable conversation with the person sitting across from you, small to medium sized round tables are an excellent option. Round tables buck the trend we saw in the 80’s, 90’s and early aughts of a more rectangular table, so it’s definitely a more contemporary approach. Round tables typically don’t have expanding capabilities, but once in a while you’ll see one that can grow in size. Adding a center leaf to a round table makes it pill shaped which is a very different aesthetic and it does create heads at either end, but it causes the table to loose a little bit of its magic. 

If having an expandable table is a priority for you, the most variety of options will be in the square and rectangular shape. Rectangular tables are by far and away the most common shape available all together. Whether it’s a simple four seater or an endlessly long communal style table, rectanglular tables are flexible enough to solve a myriad of problems. They can be arranged to create a formal, traditional feeling with two designated “heads of the table” on either end, and they can feel casual and informal enough to have multiple people siting in different sections, having separate conversations!

Square dining tables have similar concepts to round ones - if there’s more than eight people, the depth of the table will be too great to function easily and hold conversations. One of the great things about a square table is its inherent symmetricality. It instantly helps a room feel more pulled together, and because of its depth, the very center of a square table is a great place for a statement center piece like pillar candles or flowers, because frankly no one can reach to the center of a square table anyways! 

Okay basic shapes, check. Now the nuance comes in - there are three main table bases that work with any top shape. These are pedestal, leg, and trestle. Now of course, within each of these is several sub categories, but there are a few important things to consider with different combinations of tops and bases. A pedestal base is my personal favorite, especially for round and square tables. This is when all of the support for the table falls on one large centered post. This creates a cantilevered, almost floating look for the table top itself. But practically speaking, a pedestal base keeps the area under the table clear and maximizes knee space. Pedestal bases can be perfectly straight, or have a profile to them. Either way, this base chose looks modern and chic. 

A trestle base consists of at least two large legs with a horizontal support in between them. This style of base typically has a lot of character, and can show up in craftsman designs, and also industrial tables when the base is made of metal. This is ideal for rectangular tables that span longer distances and need that extra support, and sometimes trestle bases show up just for the aesthetic ornateness. 

Then there are legs, typically these come in groupings of four and are placed at the outer corners of tables. A leg base can be modern, like a parsons table, or traditional with ornate carvings. Legs give the most visual structure to a table, so if you’re looking for something that really anchors the whole room, legs can help achieve that. Legs also keep the center underneath the table clear for deeper knee space. While you will see four corner legs on all shapes of tables, one thing that’s important to consider is the room they take up at the corners, especially with round and square tables. In many cases, having a corner leg means loosing an entire seat at the table for each leg. Plus those seated next to the leg have less mobility to move in and out or side to side. This is much less of an issue with a rectangular table, as the ends are usually meant for a single person, seats naturally gravitate away from the corners anyway. 

Even though I love wood, if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know I think it’s overused, and dining room tables are a major culprit in this crime. There are so many material options when it comes to dining room tables, both for the bases and the tops. One of the reasons I tend to steer away from wood with dining room tables is the finish on so many traditional wood dining room tables is delicate. Whether it's a veneer that has shellack on it, or an organic live edge, this is not the most durable option for a table top. And gone are the days of draping the table in linens for every meal - the finish of the table needs to be tough and presentable. Just like a kitchen counter top - and in that instance stone becomes a major potential player. Whether you use a wavy grained marble or absolute black granite, stone provides lasting elegance in a dining room and really takes the whole space up several levels in style. You can also consider custom tables with solid surface like quartz or Corian, and if you want to be edgy and modern, consider concrete or even a chunky terrazzo. If you are working with a tight space and you want it to feel larger, consider a clear glass table top. Visibility to the floor and walls below will make the whole room feel larger. An extra elegant material I love using for tables is backpainted glass. This is extra strong opaque glass that has a color applied to the underside, so you can’t see through it, and you can have the surface of the glass sandblasted or frosted to give a matte finish that’s more forgiving of scratches. This looks particularly like a big night out when done in black or another dark color like navy. For the base, wood is actually a great option, but don’t forget about alternatives like metal, fiberglass, and even stone.

When it comes to dining room chairs, because these seats are only meant to hold bodies for around 90 minutes, you can be more playful with your choices - you don’t have to be so focused on ergonomics. A good rule of thumb however, is the more fabric and upholstery on a dining chair, the more formal it appears. You can have all molded polymer dining chairs for a super mod look, wood chairs with turned legs for a more rural vibe, or an upholstered seat and back if you want that Park Avenue feeling. Whatever you chose, just make sure you love it. A lot of my clients like the idea of having a backless bench on one side of a rectangular dining room table, which is a trend I think we’ll see less of in coming years. It’s fun, but it can be a little impractical to get in and out of a long bench. But I do like the idea of having different kinds of seating around a table. I love seeing a long traditional table that's book ended by beefier fully upholstered chairs, with slimmer dining chairs along the sides. This is a great way to break up the monotony of a long dining table. I also love the Kelly Wearstler trick of gathering a variety of vintage wood chairs and painting them all the same fun color like green or orange, so there’s unity, consistency but still some playfulness.

The dining room is also a showcase for what might be the single most important decorative light figure in the house - the light over your table. This light is important because it adds visual height to an otherwise low, flat space. This piece should be treated like jewelry, it needs to have sparkle, and it should catch your eye from across the street. I like to use the shape of the table to help define the shape of the light above it, so rectangular tables get a rectangular or elliptical light fixture, round gets round, you get the picture. This helps visually unify the table and the light, which while they shouldn’t match, they should feel like dancing partners.

Finally we layer in the vibe. I love painting a dining room - all four walls and ceilin - a dark color. This can be anything from ruby red to straight up black. Set the mood, let this room be distinguished from the rest of the home. If your dining room is part of an open layout, choose an accent wall to help anchor it. You can choose a fun active wallpaper, and layer in one large piece of artwork to help create a focal point. Let the display area in the room be for art you really love, keep your dishware tucked away or in another room. Don’t forget to add those little restaurant touches like tea lights or flameless candles, and play the kind of music you want to hear during dinner. I love listening to jazz, electronic music, and even Christmas music all year long. Whatever makes you feel cozy.

Thank you so much for joining me today as we really just begin to scratch the surface at the possibilities of making your dining room feel like an escape to the coolest restaurant in town. I hope you have an amazing day, and I’ll talk to you next time.