Decorating and furnishing your dining room is essential to completing your home. A well-designed and optimally furnished dining room ensures a warm and homely ambiance where friends and loved ones can dine and spend quality time with each other. According to Grand View Research, the global living and dining room market is more than $149 billion and is expected to further expand at a compound annual growth rate of 4.5% from 2022 to 2028. Part of this growing demand for living and dining room furniture is the rise of smart furniture and an increase in Internet retailers.
Nowadays, consumers are also looking for innovations in the segment, such as foldable, multi-purpose, and technology-driven furniture that fits in smaller areas and can serve different purposes. These furniture items are also prominent in dining rooms, which can be a heavily trafficked area of a home, depending on the time of day.
Another factor boosting the market growth is the rise of low financing rates and smaller furniture companies, making the market more competitive. Of course, aside from reduced financing rates, there are other ways you can be cost-efficient in furnishing your dining room. Here are several tips:
Consider seating requirements
One thing to remember when designing and planning out your dining room furniture is how many people will be using the dining room. For example, a 6-seater dining set may be too much if you’re a small family. Meanwhile, dinner with extended families may not be much fun if people have to fight over their seats at the table.
Still, you may also want to consider special occasions. However, a 4-seater square table may be enough for the usual small family dinner, but it would be nice to have options for when friends and other loved ones come over. In this case, extendable dining tables may help, as they allow you to transform your dining table from a mere 4-seater to a 6- or even 8-seater, with ample elbow space. This also means you won’t need to spend on multiple tables to accommodate varying group sizes. This flexibility also means you can easily fold or collapse the table when the space is too tight or you aren’t expecting guests.
Try alternative seating arrangements
Aside from seeking flexibility in your dining table, the same can also be done with your dining chairs. While multiple chairs are crucial to accommodate larger groups, too many can easily crowd a room and make it difficult for people to move around the space. It can also be overwhelmingly expensive to spend on more chairs in case you have friends coming over for dinner.
Instead, you can consider alternative dining seating options, like a bench. This can visually open up the room, making your dining room a more dynamic and breathable space, thanks to the lack of backrests. Dining benches also mean you can seat fewer or more people without removing or pulling in more chairs from other rooms in the house. Nowadays, you can easily find dining room sets with a bench if you want a more uniform aesthetic or look throughout your dining room. Alongside a bench, these tables can also be paired with matching wood side chairs or upholstered side chairs. This will ensure you don’t have to mismatch the wrong textures or colors with an existing dining set.
Decorate your dining space
Finally, you can also cut costs when furnishing your dining room by making it up in decorations. Dining sets can be expensive, and opting for more affordable options can be a compromise aesthetically, or if you have a room theme, you were gunning for. Fortunately, a little decoration can go a long way in elevating the look of your dining room.
Hanging a framed mirror or painting on the wall can help spice up the look of your dining room. You can also opt for a decorative rug to help add color, texture, and pattern to your dining room. Of course, it’s essential to consider your daily lifestyle when choosing rugs. For example, if you have kids or pets, it may be wise to opt for dark-colored or stain-resistant materials in case of spills and messes. As mentioned, dining rooms can experience a lot of traffic, so choose flat-weave designs or low-maintenance rugs.
As such, there are various ways and alternatives you can try out when furnishing a dining room on a budget. If you’re looking to check out our other posts for more budget-friendly tips, such as our previous post on how to decorate your new home on a budget — where we discuss visual tricks and space-saving storage hacks.
Photo Credit: pexels
I love the benches idea! We got a great deal on a full 1920s DR set (table, chairs, china cabinet, buffet & sideboard) because apparently many folks don’t have a DR large enough for all that furniture.
As for a rug, we’ve always used a pretend oriental one as spills, etc. kind of blend in with the intricate designs! 🙂
Want a really great set of dining room furniture and a beautiful rug for pennies on the dollar? Go shop estate sales and moving sales in upper middle class and upper class neighborhoods. You will find beautiful sets for practically nothing. No matter what the price, NEGOTITATE for cash. I just sold a set of those metal chairs pictured around the table in the dining room with the staircase which were like brand new for $100. for the entire set. Don’t like the dark wood finish? Paint it! Get solid wood, superb quality furniture by buying preowned. The prices are dirt cheap, there’s generally no sales tax. Shop for beautiful, all wool, room sized rugs for your dining room at the same sales. You can have the rug cleaned very cheaply (Most rugs from these expensive houses are clean already!) by a local rug service at a reasonable price. This will get you a high quality, all wool rug for a very small price.