In order to turn a simple house into a cosy home, it is very important to pay due attention to the decoration. That is why we have prepared a collection of tips for decorating a dining room from scratch, where you will find some interesting ideas and, above all, the solution to some of the most common problems and mistakes we tend to make.

Space and zones, essential for creating the initial design
Before placing the dining room furniture and starting to decorate, it is very important that we study the space available to us carefully.

Each dining room has different dimensions, as well as certain characteristics and peculiarities that are important to analyse in order to achieve a perfect decoration and good accessibility to everything we are going to need.

For example, nowadays there are many dining rooms with open-plan kitchens, while there are still some traditional ones that remain separate from the kitchen, in the same way that there are large dining rooms while others are quite small.

In short, the first thing to do is to study the environment, assess the possibilities, analyse very well all the shapes and elements that may affect the decoration and the placement of furniture such as pillars, windows, doors, etc., and once we have everything well analysed, it will be time to make a first draft in which we will introduce the main elements we want to place.

Remember that the needs will be different depending on whether we also have a living room in the house or whether it is the dining room that takes on this function.

After this, we will have to evaluate the pros and cons of the design and make some tweaks until we reach the final project we will work with.

Lighting when decorating a dining room

A key aspect for decorating a dining room from scratch and achieving good results is to study the lighting carefully.

In this sense we will have two options:

• Natural lighting: we can obtain it from windows and skylights. It is a much healthier type of lighting as well as pleasant, so it is recommended to give priority to this lighting over other alternatives such as artificial lighting or even the placement of furniture, curtains and other elements that may interfere with it.
• Artificial lighting: is that which we produce from resources such as luminaires, lamps, bulbs, strips and others in their different formats. It is very necessary since we do not have natural light all day long, as well as allowing us to create zones and above all to have the necessary lighting based on the use of each space. For example, in a reading area we can have a dimmer lighting but with some luminaire that allows a direct and clear focus on the book, while in the area where we are going to eat, the ideal is a wide and less focused lighting that avoids shadows, thus facilitating visibility without disturbing. We remind you that for artificial lighting, it is best to opt for LED lighting, or better still RGB LEDs that allow you to change the tones and colours as well as regulate the intensity, thus saving a large amount of electricity at the same time.

Study the furniture well, make it practical and beautiful.

Now it is time to place the furniture and for this we are going to look at the final design that we had created in the first step.

Remember that for a piece of furniture to be ideal, it must comply with two maxims:

• Aesthetics: it is important that the furniture is pleasing to the eye, and allows us to create an environment that transmits comfort, security and tranquillity. Remember to combine the furniture well with the different elements in the room, from the colours of the paint to the lighting solutions chosen.
• Practicality: furniture must also be practical, so we must study the uses to which we are going to put it. A sofa can be changed perfectly for a sofa bed and in this way we will be able to sleep in the dining room if necessary, in the same way that the furniture must have adequate storage and good accessibility.

Colour and space resizing

Finally, we must also play with colour, which will help us to modify the sensations.

Remember that each colour will have an effect, so we could summarise it as follows:

• Light colours: they spread the light better and create a feeling of remoteness.
• Dark colours: spread the light worse and bring objects, walls or elements closer.

For example, if the ceiling of our dining room is too high and that makes the sensation less comfortable, the ideal is to use a darker colour for the ceiling than for the walls, thus lowering the ceiling and opening up the space, thus achieving a very efficient resizing.