How to create a more appetising dining room

Luke solutions readers’ questions on design and trendy residing each week. E mail him at lukeedward.hall@ft.com and observe him on Instagram @lukeedwardhall

We’re planning a long-overdue eating room renovation. Eating within the present area appears like consuming inside a jar of applesauce:
the room is an uninspiring shade of sunshine tan punctuated by two outsized bronze wall sconces that emit unsteady, unappetising downward rays of sunshine. We’re contemplating wainscoting and energetic paint or wallpaper: would this be a contemporary and alluring replace?

I ponder if we’ve got kind of mentioned goodbye to the eating room. Nowadays, many people stay in open-plan flats or homes, with an space for eating included into our kitchen or residing area. These with a eating room would possibly discover that they don’t really use it fairly often, or that the room will get taken over for different functions extra typically than it’s used to eat in.

We’ve got a eating room within the nation however, as we’ve got solely two foremost rooms downstairs, it doubles as an entrance corridor (our entrance door opens into it and the staircase sits at one finish). Now that we’re working right here more often than not, it has reworked right into a makeshift workplace. We faucet away on our laptops on the eating desk most mornings.

I’m glad this room will get some further use — once we are right here alone we eat on the little spherical desk near our kitchen. We have a tendency solely to eat within the eating room when we’ve got friends, and it’s enjoyable to decorate the area for dinner.

We painted the partitions a darkish mustard, a really heat color that makes us really feel like we’re in the midst of a fats shiny toffee, notably when flickering candlelight bounces across the room.

I do love the concept of a eating room saved solely for correct entertaining,
an area of wealthy color, plush curtains, good-looking furnishings and atmospheric lighting — a room for events.

For inspiration, look to the eating room of Britwell House in Oxfordshire designed by David Hicks — claret-coloured partitions, shiny pink frothy blinds, upholstered armchairs in a surprising shade of cerise.

Its structure can be fabulous: an oval-shaped room with gilt-topped, white-painted columns, improbable window and door surrounds and an intricate domed ceiling. It was embellished within the Sixties and its furnishings is conventional however its punchy color scheme makes it really feel fashionable.

The introduction of a energetic wallpaper could be a superb option to replace your eating room. See the apartment belonging to Sara Tayeb-Khalifa and her husband Hussein Khalifa on Cheyne Stroll in London’s Chelsea, embellished by New York-based inside designer Patrick Mele.

The library doubles as a eating room and incorporates a refined damask-patterned paper in deep shades of burgundy. A cornice and curtains in an excellent richer shade of darkish pink make the general impact beguiling: someplace you’d need to linger lengthy after plates have been cleared.

Additionally, in case your eating room does need to double as one other room, a library is good. How great to dine surrounded by stacks of books.

The London-based inside designer, painter and potter Gavin Houghton has embellished his eating room-cum-kitchen with a leafy wallpaper known as Espalier, by the French firm Pierre Frey. The treehouse-like impact is made extra entrancing with the addition of charming work, green-painted, chintz-covered, Greek key-trimmed eating chairs and tasselled curtains.

Robust plain color would make an announcement, too. A eating room embellished by Ben Pentreath for a home in Hampstead boasts partitions lined in
a scrumptious chocolate brown grasscloth. From distant the color appears flat; nearer up the grasscloth’s refined texture is revealed.

The deep brown is cocooning, and the right backdrop to a hanging brass-wrapped sideboard and mid-century pendant gentle by Gaetano Sciolari for Stilnovo.

For the eating room most on my thoughts just lately, see the movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Autumn de Wilde. The billiard room
of Firle Place in East Sussex stands in for the eating room at Hartfield and, for the movie, its partitions had been lined in Parakeets and Pearls, a fascinating wallpaper from Adelphi Paper Hangings.

It’s a confection of a design, as its title suggests: an assortment of naturalistic motifs in an arabesque association in a sherbet-toned colourway of coral and inexperienced.

The wallpaper was mixed with rose pink-painted panelling and indulgent curtains, which labored splendidly on display screen. Probably this scheme may be lots to stay with day in, time out, however look no additional for peppy inspiration.

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