Traditional style dining room with modernized table and chairs.
Decorating a traditional style dining room can be a fun and interesting project that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Traditional style allows you to incorporate historical details such as large moldings, wainscoting, crown molding and chair rails, which gives you an opportunity to do research by looking at images of similar elegant homes from the past. Some historic homes have hand-painted wall murals or refined wallpapers along with traditional furniture pieces. How you want your dining room to look and function will help you decide the right blend of features to create the dining room you really want.
Walls, Floors and Ceilings
Ceiling with decorative moldings.
Most traditional dining rooms have narrow plank hardwood floors. Often a decorative inlay border is built into the floor along the outer edge of the floor. Oak is a common floor type. More modern traditional floors are wider plank and darker in color. Consider using tall baseboards or wainscoting panels along with chair rails and crown molding to dress up the walls. Above the chair railing, a formal neutral wallpaper in a traditional pattern works well. Ceilings are often painted a light shade of the wall color to unify the room. Drapes are also tonal using formal shapes like jabots and swags or pelmets and tiebacks.
Furniture
Dressy modern and traditional chandelier.
Furnish your room with highly polished cherry, mahogany, maple or oak furniture with carved legs and simple, elegant lines. Center the table under a chandelier dressed with small conical shades. Position a serving buffet along the longest wall and used both arm chairs at the head and foot of the table and armless chairs along the sides of the table. Place the table over a centered formal area rug that picks up the wall and curtain colors. Dress the table with a table runner and a centerpiece.
Table Settings
Traditional-style table setting for a dinner party.
Collect and use complete table settings that allow you to place the same setting before 8 to 12 guests. Your set may include a charger, dinner plate, salad plate, soup bowl, tea cup and saucer as well as specialty plates, glasses and unusual dessert plates and porcelain service accessories. Each setting should have a water glass, wine glass or other stemware. Individual settings might include personal salt and pepper shakers, personal oil and vinegar dispensers or other small serving items. Silver utensils should be provided and positioned at each setting. Linen napkins, silver or upscale napkin rings are also attractive in making the setting cohesive.
Dinner
Platter of food at a table setting.
A formal dining experience would include food served individually to seated guests. This can be modified to a family dining experience with platters of food placed along the center line of the table or positioned close at hand on the buffet. Buffet-style dining, where the guest brings the food to the table, is less traditional in a formal dining room setting but it can work well if there is ample room to walk behind the chairs so that guests who are eating are not disturbed by guests walking behind them.
Tags: dining room, along with, chair rails, crown molding, dining experience, food table