Dining Room Furniture

If you have a separate, dedicated dining room, the chances are it’s one of the ‘best’ rooms in your home, a place that’s used for family meals and special occasions. Most dining rooms have three main items of furniture: a table, a set of chairs and some sort of sideboard or cabinet for storing cutlery and crockery and to act as a servery.

Traditionally, dining rooms have been filled with lots of dark, lacquered wood - African walnut has always been a popular option, as it has a lovely deep colour when varnished, is hard wearing and often costs less than teak and mahogany. If you’re after a dark, traditional look but you don’t want to pay the price of solid hard wood (or do your back in shifting it around) you can choose a particle board construction with real wood veneers. A well-veneered piece of furniture, made using traditional methods and high-quality, regular veneers, can look every bit as good as its solid-wood equivalent.

In recent years, trends have shifted slightly in favour of lighter, softer woods and colourings and - around the turn of the Millennium especially - an increased use of  bare ironwork, brushed steel and chrome. Soft woods are easier to work with, so although soft wood furniture can’t take the punishment a hard wood equivalent can, it’s much easier and cheaper to make - savings that are passed on to you. Soft woods and metals can look great in a dining room as long as you bear in mind three considerations: first, dining room furniture needs to be functional. Second, it needs to be able to survive changing fashions. Third, it needs to survive over a long period of time.

Trends in other dining room furniture have changed quite a lot since the seventies, when many of the classic-design older sideboards and dressers that can still be found in a lot of homes were on sale. These days it’s not always as easy to find high quality dining room side furniture to go with your dining table. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that dining rooms themselves have declined in popularity. New build houses often have kitchen/diners, and in older houses dining rooms have often been turned into home office space, or simply somewhere for the PC and stereo to live. Longer working hours and different patterns of living mean than in a majority of homes mealtimes are much less formal than perhaps they were a couple of decades ago. As such, the market for everyday dining room furniture has declined.

Unless you have a big budget, one of the best options for dining room storage is a good-quality flatpack design. As with all flatpacks, have a look at a fully constructed version of your chosen item of furniture before you buy. There are several things to look out for. First, check the drawers move easily and freely and don’t sag or stick in their runners. They should also have strong, secure bases - poorly designed drawers made out of weak materials are the most reliable sign that a piece of flatpack furniture is not all it should be. Second, does the sideboard or dresser fit together snugly? Are there gaps or cracks around the joins? Third, have a look inside at the method used for holding the whole thing together. Typically, a ‘knock down’ batten rod fitted into the right angle of each corner with screws going into each contact face of the wood, is the most secure design. Individual plastic or metal brackets are only really suitable for lighter items of furniture.

Buying solid, reliable designs and erring on the side of classic styling and simple lines will mean you’ll be investing in dining room furniture that will serve you for years to come.

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