The Top 6 Design Tips for Creating a Contemporary Dining Room

The dining room is an essential place in any home for various reasons. First, it is where family and friends gather to share a meal and socialize. Second, a well-designed dining room adds value to your home.

 

Dining room designs have evolved significantly over the last several years. They were previously darker spaces without much lighting or design extravagance. Furthermore, there were few design customization options available at all.

Fortunately, the modern age offers several more contemporary designs which are fully customizable to accommodate the design of your house and your personal preferences. You could even put swivel chairs in your dining room if you need to access other tables or items behind the main dining table. The possibilities for modern dining room décor are endless.

 

Here are the top 6 ideas for establishing a contemporary design for your dining room.

 

1) Vibrant Colours

 

A traditional dining room design might make you think of black dining chairs, dark carpets, dark walls, and mahogany tables. But, according to today’s standards, these are sad and depressing colours that few people would want in their dining rooms. In fact, it would not even be good enough to use grey dining chairs rather than black dining chairs.

Try adding furniture, décor, and upholstery with brighter colours like white, blue, orange, and green. You do not have to stick with one or two colours because modern dining room designs have at least three or four vibrant colours.

 

2) Allow Sunlight Inside

 

No modern dining room should have dim lighting and drapes covering all the windows. Therefore, allow as much natural sunlight into your dining room as possible during the daylight hours.

Natural lighting is popular in modern dining rooms because the sunlight helps amplify the brightness of the vibrant colours on the walls and furniture. So even if you have a wooden chair at your dining table, the timber material will shine under the natural lighting from the sun.

 

3) Install Oversized Lighting Fixtures

 

Remember the traditional dining room design from your grandmother’s generation with a large chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling? Chandeliers and massive lighting fixtures are associated with dining room designs from more than 50 years ago.

 

However, oversized lighting fixtures for dining rooms are trending again in the modern age. Now more people want to install at least two large or oversized lighting fixtures on their ceilings to hang over their dining tables. These lighting fixtures don’t necessarily need to be massive crystal chandeliers or anything fancy. But they must stand out and add elegance to the dining room.

You could also add other popular lighting fixtures to modernize your dining room. Some of these fixtures might include circular lights and low-hanging lamps. The idea is to use unique fixtures with a more modern design or feel. You can still use chandeliers, but make sure unique fixtures accompany them in the room.

 

4) All the Dining Chairs Do Not Have to Match

 

One of the most traditional aspects of dining rooms is having all matching oak dining chairs surrounding a wooden dining table. Of course, uniform dining is still practiced in commercial settings like restaurants and cafes, but you could make your home dining room look much more original and interesting.

 

Think about how your dining room would look if you added mismatched chairs or chairs with different shapes and colours. For example, you could add Hamptons dining chairs and cross back chairs around the same dining room table. Then, when you bring guests over to your house, they will be amazed by the originality and creativity of your dining room setup.

Also, you can use rattan dining chairs in a modern dining room setting. Even though rattan furniture appears more traditional, it can still give your dining room a more natural modernized look.

 

Don’t forget that modern décor doesn’t necessarily forbid timber and plant-based materials just because they were popular in the past. However, it would be helpful to offset the classic appeal of the wood and rattan furniture pieces by adding other pieces with more vibrant and unique colours.

 

5) Benches

 

Modern dining rooms do not have to be all filled with tables and chairs. Alternatively, you could replace the dining chairs with benches.

 

For example, add a lengthy upholstered bench or wooden bench to the sides of your dining table rather than a string of chairs. Some people find that long benches help bring everyone closer together at the dining table because they literally force people to sit side-by-side.

Benches would be perfect for large families, close families, or social gatherings where you want to fit as many people at the dining table as possible. And if you still need to add extra seating for a guest, you could always bring in a York chair or bentwood chair and place it at one of the corners of the table.  

 

6) Add a Piece of Art

 

Bare walls with one solid colour are no longer attractive, even if the colour is vibrant. Modern dining rooms require more creativity and artistic appeal.

 

For this reason, add one large piece of art to your dining room wall to make the environment livelier and more exciting. The art piece could be an original painting inside a frame or a digitally printed vinyl wrap.

Cover up as much of the available wall space in your dining room as possible. And try to choose an art design with the same vibrance and positivity as the other colours in your dining room. Perhaps you could add a painting of a beach and ocean, for example.

 

Conclusion

 

A professional interior designer may give you more ideas if you need them. But, for now, you could start with the six ideas outlined above to modernize your dining room and turn it into a comfortable environment for eating and socializing.