Table linens accent the hospitality of the dining room table.
The wealth of products already available for table linens and table runners can make dining room decorating seem a dull necessity. Several approaches to decorating your table will refresh your thinking and produce handsome new results. Concentrating on how your table can contribute to dining room decor when it is not occupied with food and diners frees you to play with seasonal ideas and colors. Making the dining room table functional when decorated presents yet another challenge. A third approach re-envisions materials that can function as dining room decor while not fitting the traditional picture.
Instructions
Complementary Linens
1. Sort linens into main-color and accessory-color categories. Dining room decor can be completely free-standing; linens with red accents blend with red walls and dark polished furniture. Layer tablecloths diagonally one over the other to sustain the color theme while adding the variety of a plaid against a stripe or floral pattern. Use a plain runner to accent the dominant color in a print cloth.
2. Use linens to increase unity in your decor. Especially in small spaces like apartments, the decor of one room tends to be highly visible in the next. If your apartment features a bright turquoise or olive green kitchen, for example, use linens for a dining table to note that color in the overall color scheme without letting it dominate the dining space. A turquoise-and-white striped runner over a floral tablecloth with touches of turquoise acknowledge the existence of nearby decor features without letting them dominate everything. Especially with a very strong color, this may produce more decorative coherence than setting up a contrasting, equally strong color scheme in the next room.
3. Develop one color scheme that allows food to predominate as setting the tone of the table. Soft yellowing greens complement most vegetables, and a wide band of beige-through-gold colors enhance a grain-based meal. A white, cream or soft gray monotone scheme can achieve visual variety through textures of similarly colored textiles while highlighting the meal being served.
Collectible Objects
4. Envision the runner-and-collectibles arrangement on top of your table as a separate decorating area of the home. Regard the area as a dome placed over a dinner plate, to be completely set aside when dinner is served.
5. Plan the space to which your collectibles arrangement can be moved when your table is used for dining. A sideboard or buffet is ideal, although a table in the next room is equally useful. Allow time before a dinner party to relocate your decorative collection.
6. Choose your runner or other textile(s) based on the character of your collectibles arrangement. A spring arrangement, for example, might include a soft green runner, tiny vases for single wildflowers or leaves, a bird's nest and small silver dishes lined to accommodate chunks of moss or fresh green grass and a small bird figurine. Enhance the arrangement with tulle or ribbons in seasonal colors.
New Materials
7. Try out new, nontraditional materials to decorate your dining table. Tablecloths and table runners can have their origins in other uses (more than one hostess has shopped the sheet sales to acquire a bargain-priced cloth for a long patio table). Table runners, in particular, can have begun their lives as potential pillow covers, party-dress fabrics or even gift-wrapping paper.
8. Revive old materials in a new way. Check antique shops for glass or mirrored table tiles. Placed under vases and fruit bowls by hostesses protective of their table surfaces, tiles form a softly or highly reflective table-runner surface.
9. Employ greater quantities of natural materials in table setting. Flat ferns make a handsome runner for a formally set white linen cloth. Wooden or slate tiles make a semi-permanent runner for a rugged dining table, indoors or out. Bamboo or rush matting can be combined with fabrics to function as runners or place mats. Reexamine natural materials to create greener decor.
Tags: dining room, color scheme, dining room table, dining table, room decor