Measure a dining room to find the appropriate-sized table.
A dining table should be sized both for the room it will be in and for the number of people who will typically use the table. Having a dining table that is the correct size will help the flow of traffic in the room and provide the appropriate visual weight for the space. Calculate the correct size for a dining table by taking measurements and doing some simple math.
Instructions
1. Measure the dimensions of your dining room with a tape measure. If you do not have a rigid tape measure, you will need someone else to hold the other end of the tape measure in the corner to get an accurate measurement.
2. Write down these measurements on a piece of paper. For example, your dining room may be 13 feet long and 11 feet wide.
3. Measure the depth of any pieces of furniture in your dining room that you intend to keep in place. Write these down as well. For example, you may have a sideboard that extends along most of the short wall of the dining room and is 1-foot deep.
4. Subtract the depth of stationary furnishings from the applicable room dimension to find the usable floor space of your dining room. In this example, it would be 13 feet by 10 feet.
5. Subtract 6 feet from each dimension to allow 3 feet between each side of the table and the wall behind. This space is essential for people to walk around the table and get in and out of the chairs. In our example, the table space is now reduced to 7 feet by 4 feet.
6. Subtract an additional foot from the dimension of a table if the space behind it is regularly used as a walkway. For example, if a home has a pass-through where people often walk past the head of the table, subtract another foot from the table dimension to leave additional space there, reducing the table size to 6 feet by 4 feet.
7. Add up the total perimeter of the desired table size. In this example, the perimeter is 20 feet.
8. Divide the perimeter by 2 to find how many people you can fit around the table with 2 feet of space each. In this case, the table would fit a maximum of 10 people.
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