The Dining Difference – Buyers Guide to Dining Furniture

Dining furniture can be a significant investment, and is integral to your family and/or social dining experiences.  In study after study, the beneficial impact of family mealtime has been demonstrated for children of all ages. Better grades, healthier eating habits, closer relationships to parents and siblings, ability to resist negative peer pressure, resilience in the face of life's problems — all these are outcomes of simply sharing dinner on a regular basis. 

So, what should you consider when furnishing your dining room?

LONGEVITY

Dining furniture stays with the family usually for many years: it doesn’t get changed as often as other furniture items, like sofas.  With this in mind, you can easily choose items that you know will go the distance. 

• Value: this doesn’t have to mean spending massive amounts of money - but if this is important to you, buying the lowest priced furniture probably isn’t the way to go either. 
• Materials: look for items where the materials used are of good quality – and suit your home environment – and that are inherently built to last, rather than just the ever-more-common ‘throw-away’ furniture.  Tables that are made from hard woods (ie dense woods) are less likely to be dented or damaged by everyday use.  Understand how the surface is finished: a lacquer or polyurethane finish is more hardwearing than an oiled or waxed finish (ie resistance to spills and staining).  Choose something that could be ‘refinished’ in 25 years if you wanted to renew the finish as a result of extreme wear and tear.  You might also find it useful to take care into account – if you don’t want to clean it every 5 minutes a glass table is probably not ideal.
• Construction: look underneath the table – does the joinery and hardware look like it will stand the test of time? Lift one corner of the table: does the rest of the table bend when you do this or stay strong and flat? Can the table be dismantled if you move house?
• Sustainability: while this doesn’t necessarily affect the longevity of your furniture, eco-conscious purchasing decisions will help the longevity of our planet

SIZE
It’s easy to get wrapped up in grand ideas about hosting huge family Christmas dinners or big dinner parties… but you should base your buying decisions on how your dining room will be used 95% of the time.  A good way to see what size table would work best is to lay newspaper or sheets out on the floor in the dining room to simulate the area the furniture would take up (start with how many people you will be seating most of the time – you need to afford about 60cm of space per person.  Don’t forget to allow for chairs aswell – allow a perimeter of at least 60cm between the edge of the table and the nearest wall or piece of furniture); also lay sheets out for other furniture in the room (sideboard, shelving, etc) so you’ll get a better overall picture of what it’ll be like fully furnished).  You’ll be able to test how easily you can manoeuvre around the room, checking for the best position, size, and fit for your room.  Take shape into account aswell – some rooms suit a rectangular table, some square for example. 

FUNCTION
Who uses the furniture and how?  If you have (or are planning to have) young children around, choosing furniture with a more rustic finish will save you a lot of worry when it comes to the ‘added character’ that comes with child-style use of household items!  The occasional cutlery banging incident or the everyday dumping of school bags will add to rather than detract from the character of the furniture, rather than have you cringing at every meal.  If you’ll be using the furniture in a formal dining room you’ll probably be more interested in flatter, sleeker finish. If you’ll be using it to rest on while writing you probably won’t want too many grooves and bumps. 

STYLE
Think about the mood that you want to set in your dining room: casual, formal, warm, cool, classical, modern, industrial, rustic…. If you’re furnishing from the beginning, using your dining table as an anchor point for the rest of the room is a good start.  Don’t feel you have to match everything: you can achieve coherence with items that are not all the same colour or made from the same material.  If you have existing furniture that you wish to work around, choosing complementary materials/colours can help you avoid the frustrating search for something matching.  Start from the ‘mood’ and choose items that evoke the target personality. 

STORAGE / OCCASIONAL
Most homes have more than just a dining table in the dining room.  Other pieces of furniture that work well in dining rooms can be buffets / sideboards (which can double as a servery, and will provide storage for the inevitable ‘good china’ etc); shelving units (which can be used as room dividers, tie the room together with well-chosen decorative items, display family pictures or conversation starters like travel memorabilia); wine racks (you could select something with doors if this is not something that you want on display / accessible to small hands; or a unit that has an interesting façade so it becomes a talking point);  and a large mirror on the wall can make the room seem more spacious when you have lots of people around. 

Most importantly, if you’re hoping this furniture will become an heirloom to be handed down through generations….choose things that you really love and don’t be afraid to wait for the perfect fit.