8 REMB THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020DINING AT RESTAURANTShas always been
about more than the food — one of the joys
of going out is the opportunity to enjoy a
new and different environment.
At home, the most ambitious hosts have
long sought to create atmospheric dining
rooms that offer a similar sense of occasion.
And at a time when many of us are spending
the majority of our evenings at home, that’s
especially valuable.
“If ever a room was meant to be dramatic,
it would be the dining room,” said Ken Fulk,
an interior designer with offices in San
Francisco and New York. “Dining rooms
are all about entertainment, they’re typical-
ly used at nighttime, and they’re always
used at special occasions.”
Even if there will be fewer guests around
the table this holiday season, as we keep our
distance during the pandemic, an appealing
dining room can offer a daily escape and
make any meal feel a little more special.
Choose Bold Colors
Much like a powder room, a dining room is a
good place to paint the walls and ceiling a
bold color you love but worry might be over-
whelming in a space where you spend more
time, like the living room.
“If you want drama, that’s how you get it
very inexpensively: with paint,” said Jan
Showers, a Dallas-based interior designer
whose latest book, “Glamorous Living,”
was published in September.
For the dining room in a historic home in
Austin, Texas, Ms. Showers covered the
walls, ceiling and trim in a deep navy blue.
“People think dark colors are going to make
the room look smaller,” Ms. Showers said.
“Well, that’s not true. Dark colors actually
make a room look larger, because the cor-
ners recede.”
The New York-based interior designer
Alexa Hampton also sometimes uses dark
colors in dining rooms. In an apartment she
recently designed in Manhattan, she
painted the dining room walls above white
wainscoting a “really deep, boozy plum col-
or, in high gloss,” she said. Paired with pink
and purple paper lanterns and a rug satu-
rated with similar colors, she noted, “the
room became more of a folly.”
Mr. Fulk is a proponent of blasting walls
with vibrant colors like peacock blue and
grassy green. “Dining rooms can have exu-
berant colors,” he said. “Look at Monticello:
Thomas Jefferson’s dining room was actu-
ally crazy, bright yellow.”
Add a Graphic Punch
A daring paint color isn’t the only way to
give walls extra appeal. Many designers
view the dining room as a good place to use
statement-making wallpaper.
For a dining room in New Orleans that
Ms. Hampton said was previously a “black
hole” of dark brown furniture, she lightened
the mood by installing custom Gracie wall-
paper depicting branching trees that grow
from the floor toward the ceiling, as well as
birds and flowers. “It has an organic qual-
ity” that enlivens the room, she said. “An-
other thing about wallpaper with pattern is
that it alleviates the need to find artwork.”
Mr. Fulk sometimes goes one step further
and commissions artists to paint scenic mu-
rals on the walls. For his own house in
Provincetown, Mass., he recruited painter
Rafael Arana to wrap the dining room with a
mural of the town’s harbor. “I wanted to
have something with some soul, opinion
and depth,” Mr. Fulk said. “You can live in a
painting. It’s something really wonderful,
and it isn’t always cost prohibitive. There
are so many artists who would love that
commission.”
If pattern isn’t your thing, consider add-
ing texture with a wallcovering like grass-
cloth or wood paneling.
Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, the
married principals of Roman and Williams
Buildings and Interiors, have conceived nu-
merous destination dining rooms for New
York restaurants. For their own dining
room in Montauk, N.Y., they added tambour
wood panels from Surfacing Solution, which
resemble rounded vertical slats. “We
wanted that warm tone of the wood,” Ms.
Standefer said. “It just creates a very warm
shell for the table to be in.”
Mix the Furniture
Once upon a time, a popular way to furnish a
dining room was with a matching set of fur-
niture — identical chairs around a coordi-
nating table. Now that a more casual vibe
prevails in many homes, it’s not uncommon
for designers to mix contrasting chairs and
tables, and to introduce other types of seat-
ing as well, for a more laid-back feeling with
extra visual appeal.
“I love having benches in a dining room,”
said James Huniford, a New York-based in-
terior designer whose new book, “At
Home,” features a long table with four
benches on the cover. “It gives that sense of
being able to have an easy conversation
with the people who are there next to you or
across from you.”
Mr. Huniford often mixes chairs and
benches around a rectangular table. On oc-
casion, he has used a settee or small sofa on
one side of the table.
“It’s a much more relaxed sensibility,” he
said, and it helps the dining room serve ad-
ditional purposes, like providing a place for
family games or working from home.Install Mirrors
“Every dining room deserves a great mir-
ror,” Mr. Fulk said. “Sometimes, we’ll use a
crazy antique palace mirror we find and
lean it against the wall. Other times, it’s an
entire wall of antiqued mirror.”
Mirrors can help guests see each other
better, he noted, and when strategically
placed, can bring desirable views from win-
dows deeper into the room. For extra
drama, he suggested, consider a colored
mirror. “It’s certainly time for smoked mir-
ror, à la 1970s,” he said, or gold- or rose-
tinted mirrors.
Ms. Showers hung some mirrors to create
an optical illusion in the dining room of her
country house south of Dallas. On either
side of an intricately detailed 1920s mirror,
she installed floor-to-ceiling mirrors
flanked by curtains that give the impression
of enormous windows.
“I did a little smoke and mirrors — lit-
erally,” Ms. Showers said. “It expands the
room.”Control the Light
The dining room is no place to wash the en-
tire area with overhead light. A chandelier
or pendant lamp above the table is impor-
tant for illuminating the dining surface, butit shouldn’t be the only fixture in the room.
“Having just a chandelier doesn’t work,”
Ms. Showers said. “If you’ve ever been in a
dressing room where all the lighting is over-
head, you look in the mirror and it’s like,
‘Oh, my gosh, I just aged 10 years.’ ”
To help everyone look their best, she said,
“you always need to have adequate eye-lev-
el lighting.” That can be achieved with
sconces, floor lamps in the corners of a
room or table lamps on a buffet.
“You want shades that provide ambient
light,” Ms. Showers said, so look for those
made with translucent material rather than
opaque shades that direct light toward the
floor and ceiling.
Ms. Hampton is a fan of mounting picture
lights above framed pieces of art for a gen-
tle glow that shows off favorite paintings.
Wherever possible, dining room lamps
should be controlled with dimmers, she
said, so they can be cranked up during the
day and dimmed at night. “You have to have
it capable of being set to sexy dining light,”
she said.
And don’t forget the candles. Ms. Stande-
fer likes to illuminate the table with tapers
at various heights. (Her firm has designed
its own collection of candlesticks, offered in
eight mixable heights at Roman and
Williams Guild, for that purpose.)
Sometimes she puts votive candles in re-
purposed glasses. “I love when things do
double duty,” she said. “Put a little water in
the bottom, along with a tea candle or vo-tive, and use them as a basic lantern on your
table,” she said. “And then if you have extra
guests, use them as drinking glasses.”Accessorize With Abandon
Interesting accessories can make any meal
feel special. If you don’t love the look of your
table, consider adding a runner or table-
cloth. “I am still a lover of a tablecloth, even
though people say it’s old-fashioned,” Ms.
Standefer said.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, she added —
she often uses large pieces of plain linen. “I
think it’s a beautiful way to give your table a
different quality.”
For a little pattern, Mr. Fulk sometimes
uses blankets as tablecloths.
On top, “you can make a meadow,” Ms.
Standefer said, with a series of bud vases or
collected bottles — or, in a pinch, old wine
bottles — filled with inexpensive greenery.
“You don’t spend a lot on the flowers,” she
said. “You can literally take, like, a piece of
grass or a piece of dill you buy at the gro-
cery store,” and put one stalk in each vessel.
“When you have eight vessels and all
those little stalks,” she said, “it makes a gar-
den on your table.”
For dinnerware, Mr. Fulk suggested set-
ting the table with antique decorative plates
and colored glassware rather than the min-
imalist white ceramics that have become so
popular in recent years. “I love to mix it up
and give the dining table a collected feel,” he
said, noting that he might use Limoges
porcelain or antique transferware on a table
in a contemporary room, for a visual twist.
“A great way to dress up your dining
room without changing the décor is to
change the tabletop,” he said.
And don’t fall into the trap of saving the
fine china for special occasions, he added.
“If the moment we’re in has taught us any-
thing, it’s to use the good stuff,” he said. “Ev-
ery moment matters.”It Should Be Much More Than a Grub Hub
Here are a few tips on creating
a dining room that lives up
to the food you’re serving.
Top, a San Francisco dining
room designed by Ken Fulk
with a mural painted by Wayne
David Hand that wraps the
walls and cabinetry, and
extends up onto the ceiling.
Center, from left: a dining room
with statement-making
wallpaper; using multiple
shades of pink and purple to
create whimsy in Manhattan;
floor-to-ceiling mirrors flanked
by curtains that create the
illusion of windows. Above,
from left: Jan Showers, a Dallas
designer, covered the walls,
ceiling and trim of a room in
Austin, Texas, with deep navy
blue paint; “I love having
benches in a dining room,” says
James Huniford, a New York
designer; a dining table at
Roman and Williams Guild in
Manhattan shows what can be
achieved with interesting
tableware and accessories.DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN‘Thomas Jefferson’s
dining room was actually
crazy, bright yellow.’THE FIX
TIM McKEOUGHSTEVE FREIHONSTEPHEN KARLISCHMATTHEW WILLIAMSJEFF McNAMARASTEVE FREIHONFREDRIKA STJARNE