Dining Room Decorating Ideas|Dining Room Design

Hello, I'm Jennifer with Jennifer Decorates, and today's video is going to be all about dining room decorating ideas, so stay tuned. So in this video, I have got seven tips that will help you design a beautiful dining room. Maybe you're just wanting to give your dining room just a little bit of a facelift. All of these tips will apply. Now, in this video, most of the dining room that I'm going to show you is from one of my favorite clients that we did last year, just a lovely couple, and they graciously allowed me to show you a little bit of their home. Let me give you just a preview of how beautiful their home really is. For tip number one, it's going to be to declutter your dining room. Unfortunately, many of our dining rooms become dumping stations, so that is the first thing you have to do. You've just got to clear out the clutter and make up your mind that that room is not going to be a dumping station for everybody's papers and shoes and clutter. Now, I am saying that, but I've also had trouble with that, and I'm going to tell you real quick, this is a book. It's called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo, I believe she's even got a Netflix show coming out. This book really helps you get behind the psychology of why we hang on to things, and I recently lost both of my parents, so it was very difficult for me to figure out what can I let go and what can I keep, and that's a fabulous book, I'll put a link to it below. But that's your first tip, and that is decluttering your dining room. For tip number two, it's going to be paint. Nothing transforms a room quicker and more beautifully than paint. Now, I know paint is extremely difficult. How many of you have over ten samples in your garage of paint that didn't work out? But here's a few quick little tips about what will help you choose paint. I always say if there's a certain color you like, like a certain blue, choose about three different blue colors in that same hue, paint them on a sample, bring them home, put them on your wall, and look at them in the daytime and in the evening. And here's another trick. So here's a sample I've painted, and I know I have my bright lights on, but it looks pretty light. However, if you take a white piece of paper and you hold that sample up to the white, look how much darker it looks. This helps you know how dark that color is going to look on your wall. So tip number two is all about paint. Tip number three is furniture. Now typically when I am designing from scratch a dining room, I like to choose a sideboard or buffet rather than a huge hutch. You know, most dining rooms are very large, so a hutch just tends to really shrink the room. Another reason, and my most important reason, is because if I have a sideboard or a buffet, then I'm going to put buffet lamps on them, and that just adds ambient lighting to the room. Now let's talk about if you've already got furniture. And maybe, I hear this all the time, a lot of clients have beautiful cherry furniture, beautiful table and chairs, and they don't want to get rid of everything. So how can you just update it a little bit? Well, keep the table and keep the chairs on the side, and then switch out with captain's chairs on the end and do parson's chairs or an upholstered chair. And that really softens the look. If you're not as attached, we did this with a client, she was not as attached to her buffet. So you can see in the before picture, there's her old buffet, and then we just brought in a different buffet, and then for her, we changed out her chairs. Alright, let me show you another picture. I love this dining table. Every chair is mismatched except the two captain's chairs on the end, and it works. Now, what if you don't want to change out your buffet or your dining table, or maybe you can't afford to change out the buffet, but you're not as crazy about it? Learn to paint. It will make the hugest difference. Let me show you this picture. Now this is my bedroom dresser, but let me show you the before picture. You can see this is cherry, but it is a beautiful piece. So what I did was I chalk painted it, and it gave it the most beautiful makeover. And it's not that hard to do, I will put a link above, you can click over to my video where I show how to chalk paint furniture. So for tip number four, we're going to talk about lighting, because that can make a huge difference in a room. If your chandelier is out of date and you have it in the budget, it is amazing how updating your light fixture can really change the entire design of the room. Now I spoke about this before, buffet lamps I think are so important in a dining room because if you only have overhead lighting, you just really don't get that warm and cozy feeling. Now let me tell you another secret we use in our house, and that is we call it a lamp remote. You get five of these plug-ins, and you get two remotes. These are wonderful. So you plug them in the wall, and you plug your lamp into them, and you can have them in several different rooms, and then each button controls each lamp that you've plugged in to these little outlets. My husband's so happy now because he says he gets to go to bed 15 minutes earlier now because of all the lamps I have on, whatever. So the fifth tip I want to talk to you about is window treatments. They make one of the most biggest impacts in a room, and especially in a dining room because if you paint in a dining room, your window treatments are going to be essentially the only pattern design in the room. Always hang them above your window as high as you can to bring eye up on the wall. Now everybody's got a particular budget, so with each client I have three different places that are my go-to depending on their budget. If it's a bit tight, I'm going to be at HomeGoods. They have started carrying a lot more ready-made panels, some all the way to 108-inch length. Target carries some great drapes as well. If we have a little more in the budget, I have a wonderful company that I go to online called Half Price Drapes, and I'll put a link to that below as well. I love their French linen line, and they have a lot of beautiful colors, and I've even ordered them before and added a little bit, it's called tape, on the edge of the curtain for a little bit of color and flair. My third go-to is, if we have a good cushion in the budget, is going to be for custom drapery panels. Now, if that's a little overwhelming to you, even just going to a fabric store, having someone come in to help you with that, one of the things we do at my store, if you go online, it's called a virtual consultation, and you'll have that with me. And you go in online, and you sign up on the form, and you're going to send me pictures and measurements of your windows, and I'm going to kind of take a look at everything in the room and send you three to five samples of fabric that I think are going to be your best choice in that room. And then we'll chat back and forth about having the drapes made, kind of what their function is. So just remember that window treatments really do make a huge impact in your dining room. Alright, tip number six is wall decor. Now, I will typically have a mirror in the dining room. I love to have a mirror above the buffet because most home designs, when you come in the front door, there's a dining room either on the left or right, so that as you're coming right into that foyer, and you look, say the dining room's to your right, you look in the dining room, that mirror just reflects everything from the foyer and just makes that whole room look really big. So if I don't put a mirror above the buffet, then that's a perfect place to put some beautiful artwork. And then just for the rest of the walls, you just put on the walls whatever makes you happy, whether it's family portraits or just different artwork. Just remember not to over clutter the walls and to keep in scale with the room. Number seven is accessories. I keep accessories pretty minimal in a dining room. I love flowers, so I'm probably going to either place a floral arrangement on the dining table, and if there is a buffet, maybe if I put it on the buffet, then I might do a really large bowl on the table with two candlesticks on each side. Now, no matter what I put on the dining table, I usually always put a table runner because it just adds a little bit of softness between the wood of the table and then whatever accessories I have placed on top. Now, if I have a hutch in the dining room, I really like to keep that minimal as well, and I'll kind of go through the client's dishes and organize them and then probably take some away and store them somewhere else. Now, if I do have a floral on the dining room table, a lot of times what I like to do is I like to find a really oversized platter, like just a plain white platter, and I will place it on an easel, and that is all I'll put on the buffet because I can sit right in between two buffet lamps and look beautiful. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video about dining room decorating ideas. Be sure to subscribe to my channel because I'm going to have a lot more videos coming out shortly, and I really hope you have a wonderful day.