Three quick ways to enhance this important, yet often overlooked part of the house:

1. Good Circulation

Try to have at least one metre of empty space on all sides of your dining table. This allows for plenty of room to circulate the table, even when the chairs are in use. If you have a small dining room then try to get a small table that can extend to carter more people when you need it.

Feeling cramped means you’re far less likely to enjoy sitting at the dining table (unless it is an event where you need more seats around the table), and you’ll be far less likely to actually use it as you will prefer to sit somewhere else or just go out.

2. De-clutter

If you have to move mountains of papers, handbags and folded laundry before you even sit down for a meal, do you think you will actually use the dining table? Try and incorporate a small table or sideboard in to the dining room for all these sorts of items so to don’t fall into this trap. Also a way how to get things of your table and but you still want to show them to people is by getting a bookcase or display cabinets.

All of these pieces are a great way to free up your table and therefore put the table to use for what it was designed for 

3. Great lighting

A light and airy dining room is perfect, but artificial light is just as important when it comes to eating and entertaining in the evening as well as the day.

Down lights are a good option, as they give strong light – great for family dinner time. But to inject some personality and mood to the room, consider a large statement light over the table. Fabulous for entertaining and having a large feature light means you need less (or zero) table decorations – cutting down further on clutter.