Dining · Style Guide
Updated · hand-picked by our editors
From October onwards the dining table stops being somewhere you eat and starts being where everyone ends up. The requirements change with it: a table that gets longer, two more seats that appear from nowhere, and somewhere to put the glasses down that is not the floor. This edit is built for that — warm wood, low light and enough flexibility to go from a Tuesday supper for two to eleven people and a trifle, without the room feeling like a function suite for the rest of the year.
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At a glance — our picks
The table that grows
From
Starts at a manageable 180cm for everyday and opens to 260cm when the guest list gets out of hand — the single most useful thing a dining room can own. A pale stone-look top on sculptural walnut-toned bases, so it reads as a designed object rather than a piece of equipment waiting to be extended.
The everyday chairs
Inglesham Spindleback Dining Chairs (Set of 2)From
A limed-oak spindle back with a properly saddled seat — the English country classic, and the reason people linger after the plates are cleared. Buy them in pairs and mismatch the ends if the numbers never quite work out.
The extra two seats
Coxmoor Solid Oak Dining Bench, 2 SeaterFrom
The most efficient seating a dining room can buy: two adults along one side, three children at a push, and it disappears under the table the moment lunch is over. Solid oak, so it will take years of being dragged in and out.
The serving station
Nord Extra Large Low Oak SideboardFrom
Long, low and in pale oak — the piece that turns a dining room into a room that can host. Plates and serving dishes go on top, table linen and the good glasses go inside, and the clutter of a big meal stops migrating onto the table.
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The light above it
Sharnford 5-Light Linear Diner Pendant, BrassFrom
Five ribbed glass shades strung along a slim brass bar, which is exactly the right shape for a long table — even light down its whole length rather than a bright spot in the middle. Adjustable drop, so you can get it down to conversation height.
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The warm floor
Kuza Border Rug, Terracotta, 160 × 230cmFrom
A faded terracotta border on a soft stone ground — warm enough to change the temperature of the whole room, patterned enough to forgive a dropped glass of red. The fastest single change a dining room can make before the clocks go back.
How we picked
Start with the table and work outwards, because everything else is sized against it. Allow roughly 60cm of table edge per person and at least 90cm of clear floor behind each chair so people can actually get out — a table that seats ten on paper seats six in a room that is too tight. A bench along one side is the cheapest way to add seats and the easiest to store, and it tucks fully under the table when the room goes back to normal. Hang a pendant so the bottom of the shade sits roughly 75–85cm above the tabletop: low enough to pool the light on the food, high enough to see the person opposite. And put something absorbent underfoot — a rug takes the hard edge off a long evening in a room full of chair legs and hard floors.
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