How to Decorate an Elegant Dining Room (57 Examples)

Regardless of whether you’re having your everyday meal, or you’re having guests over, chances are you’ll all be sitting in the dining room.

This is one of the main reasons why creating an elegant dining room design is so important, as this is the room that your guests will most often sit in, and this is where you get to show your style.

There are many ways and things that you can do, but here are a few ideas to help you get on your way.

Be careful with furniture for your dining room

If you’re going for a functional room that feels comfortable, you might want to leave a bit of room. Don’t stick things close together – give them some room to breathe, everything will feel much more natural.

Image source: Rikki Snyder

Patterns are your friend

Patterns can be very interesting when used successfully, such as using a small touch on the windows, or going with oversized candelabras. You can even mix and match the modern with the vintage, and as long as you don’t go overboard, you’ll achieve a very interesting effect.

Make the dining room bright

Go with modern lines, and make sure everything is designed with a touch of minimalism. Put a couple of bright accents, such as yellow, and allow them to shine by combining them with easy-going lines on the windows and walls, or the floor for example.

Image source: Savannah Construction

Mix up the moods

Do you want a polished look? Or do you want to add some industrial charm? Or do you want both? Fresh paint and an exposed brick are an interesting combination, but be careful when you’re mixing them together.

Express nature inside the room

A dining room usually has plenty of accessories, and thus might end up feeling a bit cluttered. You can use things such as floral designs in a muted tone, which will add balance and declutter the entire room.

Image source: Keeping Interiors

Don’t be afraid to go traditional

There are a lot of chairs and tables that might seem a bit frightening when you combine them together, and this is especially true with traditional pieces. However, if you opt for such a combination, use neutrals to balance everything out, it will end up looking better than you would think.

Don’t be too formal when decorating your dining room

You’ll need a completely formal dining room much less than you think, so don’t go too formal with the design. Opt for something that can feel casual and relaxed when it has to, but can be set up in a formal tone without much effort.

Image source: Advanced Building Concepts, Inc.

Emerald can be beautiful

Nobody can stop you if you’re in love with a certain bold color, but contrast is important and going overboard with the color can do much more damage than good.

You can create a pattern with the color of your choice and an alternate color, and continue with the same pattern on places such as the fabric on the chairs or curtains.

Let there be light

If you have a room where there’s potential for plenty of natural light, take advantage of it. Go with bright walls and airy window treatments, to make sure your room keeps the light coming inside. Add some contrasting texture to keep the look under control.

Image source: Coventry Homes

Pay attention to the dining room table

The table is the centerpiece in a dining room, and it is probably the one single thing you will replace the least often.

This is why you might want the table to be that piece that shows off your style and what you like, but keeping it neutral will let you redesign everything around it, and still have it blend in, no matter how the designs and trends change.

Image source: Picó Muebles via Furniture from Spain

When you’re shopping for a dining table, don’t neglect the construction and the quality of the materials used. Natural materials will help keep things neutral, as mentioned before, and you can change things around it in the future with the table still looking good as a centerpiece.

Image source: Clarice’s Design Concepts

Visually control the space with a rug

Since the table is the centerpiece of the room, as concluded earlier, you will find that going with the table all by itself might end up feeling a little empty.

Image source: Oak Hill Architects

To counter this, you can go with a rug, which will also add a touch of color and texture as well. You will also find that, especially if you have a wood or concrete or tile floor, adding a rug

You do need to be careful with the rug, though. You need to make sure there’s enough room for the chairs to be able to slide out, without going over the edge of the rug, but you still don’t want it covering up the entire room.

Image source: Vanessa Francis

Express yourself with art

What revolves around the dining room is the fact that if you’re having guests over for a special occasion, they’ll be sitting there, and it is a great way to express yourself.

Putting an artistic piece somewhere in the room will let you show off your style. Moreover, since most meals on special occasions are enjoyed at a slow pace, people will have plenty of time to admire your piece of art.

Image source: Fratantoni Luxury Estates

You should be careful as far as size goes. Make sure that whatever you choose, it is sized such that it balances out the visual weight within the room.

The wall opposite the table can be decorated with either a collection of smaller pieces, or one big piece that fits within the ambient of the room.

Mismatched dining chairs are a thing

Even though it might seem a bit odd, having dining chairs that aren’t identical to each other has really picked up some steam lately. Even though you might not think of it in that way in the beginning, it does give the space a more relaxed feel.

Image source: Specctacular Design Photography

The key to executing this without it looking like a mess is keeping one thing that ties together all the chairs. For example, if you have varying shapes, go with the exact same color for each – that will tie them all together and they’ll look like one whole piece.

Keep things clean

If you’re chasing a modern style of design, white is your friend. You can use it on the floors, the walls, the window frames, and often even on the furniture itself. However, if going all white seems a bit harsh, use accents and textures to soften things up – it will look way better.

Opt for a navy theme

A corner bench and a wall hanging oversized map can make things look interesting, almost as if they’re built in a boat. Spice things up with navy stripes to make things look even more authentic.

Image source: Crisp Architects

Add a touch of drama

Go overboard with the wallpapers. Intensive graphics that go from the floor to the ceiling will draw the attention, and gentle curtains will balance things out by looking calm and peaceful.

Want to go even further? Furniture made of well-worn wood will add a bit of rough atmosphere to the entire room. There’s an excellent guide to choosing dining tables made from wood here.

Don’t overdose

Your basic color palette should be full of neutrals, but this might get boring pretty quick, and the entire space might feel a bit tired. To counter this, add floral designs but don’t overdo them, they can look pretty when they’re used carefully.

Give the entire room a ‘grand’ theme

If you want a casual dining room, yet one that looks spacious and formal when it needs to, open it completely to the kitchen. You can even create an archway that will act as a tunnel from the kitchen to the dining room to keep things interesting.

Image source: In-Site Interior Design

A room doesn’t have to be enormous to be formal

Keeping a room formal has much more to do with how you decorate it, than how big it is. The key to keeping a formal setting is elegance, and you can achieve this easily with contrasting light and dark colors, and a couple of sophisticated details.

For example, go with dark ceilings and floors, and bright walls to keep things interesting. Add an elegant pattern to things such as the chairs or the chandelier, and it will look formal no matter how big or small the room is.

Dark can be formal

Creating a room that has plenty of dark shades and materials can look extremely classy. The natural light that comes from the windows can balance out the darker tones from the materials and colors that you’ve used throughout the room, and metal elements can add a touch of class to the entire room.

Image source: Rocco Borghese

Make things royal

A regal touch is another interesting way to make the room look formal, yet elegant and comfortable enough for a daily setting. Combine gray patterns with gold accents, and metallic elements with gold details, and things will look incredibly classy.

Don’t forget that the room needs to stand out

Even though it is indeed key not to go overboard with anything, the dining room isn’t something that should disappear between the living room and the kitchen. It should instead stand out, for example with white walls and chestnut floors. Add a dark, elegant table, and surround it with classy chairs to formalize the entire space.

Image source: Platinum Series by Mark Molthan

Things don’t have to be complicated

You should keep things balanced, and you can do that easily by going with a color palette that doesn’t have a lot of colors, and keeps things at either the masculine or the feminine end of the spectrum.

Whichever end you opt for, add decorations from the opposite one, that will balance out everything and the room will look composed.

Pink is pretty

Even though a little feminine, adding pink touches all around the room can look interesting.

If you opt for a neutral main setting, pink curtains or pink upholstery on the chairs can add an interesting touch.

Use white as a main theme

A table made of clear glass and white leather chairs look incredibly elegant, and making sure that the remaining décor inside the room revolves around the white theme can also look very good.

Image source: Porebski Architects

The sea can be an inspiration

Decorating the entire room with shelves, as well as keeping a navy theme throughout it, can create an interesting look. Blue wicker chairs with a simple, white table, keep up with the navy theme, and a traditional Italian chandelier can finish up the theme.

Natural materials can be incorporated in an elegant way

Using natural materials such as glass, stone or wood, can add a very interesting touch to a room, from making it look extremely comfortable, to making it look classy and elegant.

Image source: Jill Wolff Interior Design

Examples of elegant dining room designs

The dining rooms, those places where we stay all together serving our meals or playing a board game with our friends must be places of calm and serenity. The furniture for dining room is not very complicated, it requires just a table and many chairs around, if it’s possible really comfortable ones.

In my opinion the most beautiful example of a dining room would be a large room with window walls all around and fluffy curtains. Some cabinets can be also added in order to help you store the dishes or a bar for the drinks.

I recommend you not to suffocate this space with plenty decorations and keep it clean and fresh cause, after all, this is the place where you are eating so the cleanness is a must.

Place some photos with your family here in order to create a lovely atmosphere or add some pretty paintings. A good idea would be to use light colors to make the space seem bigger. There are many dinning room design ideas in this article that you can adopt for your space but you know better which one is proper for you.