If you’re thinking about remodeling your house or you’ve just moved into a new one, there are a lot of things to think about. The colors of the walls, the size of the bed, which TV to put in a living room, is the spare room going to be a gym or a home office and so on. One of the things that are also really important when furnishing a new home is your dining room, especially if you have a large family.
The dining room is a place of joy and love. It’s a place where the whole family comes together to eat, talk and spend some quality time with each other. Now, unless you want to eat standing up or over a kitchen counter, you’ll need an appropriate dining table to fit your needs. If you have a large family, you need a large table.
On the other hand, if the room is tiny – you can’t just place a gigantic piece of wood at the centre of it and call it a day. For those and a lot of other reasons, we’ve decided to find some helpful tips on how to choose the right table for your dining room. Let’s check them out.
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Consider Your Needs And Wishes
As we’ve already said, dining tables are a place where the whole family gathers – whether it’s for a pre-school, pre-work breakfast or a Thanksgiving dinner. The first step towards finding a perfect table is to decide in which room it will go in. Will it be in the kitchen or in a separate room – it’s entirely up to you, but you need to know beforehand for a number of reasons.
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Decide On A Material
First of all, you’ll need to think about the material. You have a number of options here and the one people most often opt-out for is the wood. Wood is great. It’s classic. It’s a durable option, it’s not a fingerprint magnet and it fits virtually every style there is.
On the other hand, you can go the marble, glass or metal route if you’re into that kind of thing. Some of them will be easier to maintain than the others, but neither of them should be too hard to maintain.
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Decide On The Style
If you’re placing it in a separate room, your options are pretty much limitless. You can go modern, traditional, minimal – whichever way you want. On the other hand, if it’s a part of the kitchen or a living room, you’ll probably have to match as you wouldn’t want it to stand out a lot.
For instance, glorious, baroque-style tables, like the ones found at homedesignstore.com, wouldn’t really fit the minimal theme – right? So, style is definitely something you should think about before buying a dining table.
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Choose The Right Shape
Based on your room, a number of people in your household or the style you’re going for, you’ll have to choose an appropriate shape of the table. Easily, the most commonly picked shape is the rectangular one. they’re just timeless classics that can seat a number of people, fit most rooms and styles perfectly and are overall a safe option.
However, square, oval or round tables are also a thing. For instance, square tables are ideal for small families or small, square rooms. It just looks better, that’s all there is to it. Round tables have been particularly popular during the 80s, but aren’t necessarily fitting for large groups of people, which we’ll see in a moment, but are still nevertheless a stylish option for square, small rooms.
As for oval tables, they’re basically the same as the rectangular ones just with soft edges. They’re practical, but they’re not all that popular.
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Choose Based On The Number Of People
One thing to keep in mind when selecting a table is how many people are going to be sitting at it on the regular. A general rule of thumb is that an average person needs about 2 feet of eating space to be comfortable.
Based on that, you could easily calculate how big or small a table you need. However, another thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need room for food also, so don’t just multiply 2 feet by a number of household members. For a reference, a classic oval or rectangular one, that’s 4 feet in diameter will comfortably seat up to four people and an 8-foot one will seat up to 8 people at once. You get the math.
As for circular or square ones, it’s not really common for them to seat more than 6 people because they would simply be too large and take up too much space.
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Consider An Extension Table
It’s not uncommon for people to get by on a daily basis with a smaller table. Maybe your kids are out of town, going to college and you only need a larger surface when they come back for the holidays. In that case, you don’t need to waste the precious space and you can easily benefit from an extension table.
However, if you’re choosing an extension type because your dining room is small and you don’t want it too snug unless you absolutely need to, measure everything beforehand. You wouldn’t want it to be too large once it’s time to spread it.
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Think About Table-To-Wall Clearance
When deciding on the dimensions, it’s important to keep the room size in mind for various reasons. One of those reasons is the space between the walls and the table. You want everyone to be able to sit and get out of their seats comfortably no matter where they are seated. In general, it’s advised to leave about 4 feet of extra space between the wall and the seat.
As you can see, shopping for a dining table isn’t as simple as it seems. It takes a lot of planning and deciding. This is absolutely fine, considering how important it actually is and how much time you’re going to be spending behind it. So, take your time and choose wisely and you’ll love it for a long time.
