Decorating & Design
February 23, 2021
20 Hardworking Dining Rooms That Do It All
It’s not just a spot to host holiday dinners and gather the family — a dining room can also serve as an art gallery, lounge, home office, display space and storage for all of the tableware that makes sharing a meal together so special. Scroll down to discover 20 hardworking dining rooms that do it all!
Have a tight dining room? This version becomes even more hardworking with a built-in banquette that includes two shelves for extra display. Designer Allison Willson transformed the bland wall into a work of art with a monochromatic landscape mural that adds dimension.
This sturdy oak dining table is able to extend for larger family gatherings in this historic home. Designer Arren Williams created a formal place for the family of six to sit down for dinner with a slim vintage credenza (right) that holds dishes, flatware and table linens.
Not only does this sideboard nestle in perfectly to this niche, the built-ins help frame a stunning floral artwork. Painting out the back of the shelves injects life and color when displaying white serveware, while banks of drawers can be used to stash placemats and linens.
If you’re lucky, your dining room will include a handsome stone fireplace like this Toronto home. Creating a built-in with niches allows for custom options like a long shelf (instead of an abbreviated mantel) which serves as extra display. A gallery wall of family photos gives the gathering place a personal touch. We also love the window seat that makes it a place to read and relax.
Fashion pro Janice Meredith’s dining room serves as a source of inspiration: notes written by her four children are affixed to the Ingo Maurer chandelier. Janice loves to use the shelves as a spot to stage rotating vignettes of her favorite items.
Just because a dining room is sleek doesn’t mean it can’t have a few extras tossed in. In this Spring 2020 Princess Margaret Showhouse, designer Sarah Baeumler introduced a cozy fireplace for atmosphere, and a console that’s generous enough to store extra dishes and serving pieces. The wall also doubles as a canvas for a series of custom feather sculptures.
This traditional dining room in Charleston, South Carolina, has a little secret: jib doors (behind the prints) conceal storage for dishes for the ultimate in low-key organization. This room also doubles as a gracious home office: the owners often work at the Gustavian dining table.
A dramatic circular divider does a ton of work in this artful Toronto dining room. It allows light to stream in from the generous windows, and creates display niches for some impactful objets. The sculptural table, chairs and artwork carry through the gallery vibe of this mod space.
The dramatic box molding in this fresh Vancouver home’s dining room beautifully integrates built-in storage with a mix of glass doors and drawers with cup pulls that look like a piece of furniture. Painting the paneling and built-in the same color creates a seamless effect.
Jackie Kai Ellis uses the dining table in her quaint Paris apartment as a workspace, but it’s the gorgeous antique plate-warming unit in the corner (which no longer works, but serves as a display for a flock of ceramic parrots) that really captured our imagination. This space also doubles as bike storage.
In homeowner and designer Julie Charbonneau’s Toronto dining room, high-backed benches on either side of the fireplace maximize seating and add drama. We love how they frame the fireplace and turn the dining room into a mini lounge.
To create a European farmhouse vibe in this Quebec home, twin built-in breakfront cabinets flank the front windows. This innovative solution makes the most of awkward corner spaces, while the lead-pane glass matches the windows for a cohesive look.
What do you do when you don’t have a huge dining space but want to max out seating? The answer for Sloane Klevin is a custom, deep banquette with comfy back cushions in her Hudson River Valley country house. The sconces also make the window seat a nice spot to read at night or look out at the stars.
A dining room that doubles as a bar makes perfect sense. The iconic Eero Saarinen dining table complements the vintage Venetian bar (to the left) homeowner James Aitken purchased while living in England.
Designers Alexandre Blazys and Benoit Gérard stayed true to this traditional Québécois dining room with a distressed sideboard that’s topped with handy drawers for linen, and they included a modest window seat — a perfect perch to enjoy a cup of coffee or apéritif following a meal.
In Lysanne Pepin’s Eastern Townships cottage on Libby Lake, an open-shelved bookcase of simple hemlock boards not only holds dishware, carafes and treasured objects (see the collection of hats on the top row) in the upstairs living area, it helps define the casual dining area. There’s also space for a wood stove to keep diners toasty and a big basket of wood.
An oval marble table follows the curve of a window seat in a bay window, for an organic look that maxes out space in the home of designer Sam Sacks.
Designer Sabrina Linn knew the dining room in her Georgian home was small, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t turn it into a storage workhouse. Adding double-height glass-front cabinets stashes all her pretty dishes. The bonus of running the cabinetry across an entire wall? All that vignette-friendly surface area.
This dining room can easily segue into a luxe lounge with low profile seating. A metallic mirrored console is a standout storage feature that looks incredibly glamorous.
In her small dining room, designer Alexandra Hutchison didn’t want to contemplate a criss-crossing sea of table and chair legs. She uses a restaurant-style banquette to seat guests in her tiny 640-square-foot Toronto semi, or catch a casual dinner with her husband, chef Craig Harding. She scores extra points for turning the banquette into storage for bulky items like stand mixers.