Decorating my Mum’s Dining Room

My mum moved house earlier this year. It’s taken her a good six months to unpack everything and find places for everything, but now that’s all sorted, we’re looking at the decoration. Possibly the wrong way around – it would have made more sense to leave things in boxes if we were planning to decorate – but logic doesn’t really run in my family! We’ve been looking at dining room ideas but it’s a really small space so we need to look carefully for the right furniture.

The first thing we need to look at is the walls; at the moment the room is painted a deep red. I’ve no idea what the previous occupant was thinking, as it’sa small room without much natural light – and who wants to eat surrounded by blood-red walls?!

We’ve been playing around with these colours; I think the walls will need a couple of undercoats before we can put a colour on though. I don’t think it would look right with plain white walls, and my mum is a big fan of purple (is that an age thing?) so we’ll probably go for one of the lower colours here.

Designer’s Name/Homify

This size of table and chairs is ideal; it would fit in the corner, to be pulled out as and when required. I like the wood effect; it would work well with the colour of carpet she already has in the living room. The only problem is the number of chairs! There need to be enough chairs to cater for visitors, so we will probably end up buying some foldable ones to store behind the table when it’s not in use.

I’ve seen tables that comes with chairs folded underneath them, but they always seem a little studenty or temporary. I think we’d rather go with a good, solid table and a few extra chairs. The children who visit are all toddlers at the moment any way, and will happily sit on a stool at the coffee table next to the main table.

Photo credit: Mick Bridge

And of course, no room make-over would be complete without a photo of me! I’m only kidding… well, I’m kidding a little bit. I had this photo taken of us when S was 4 months old, as a present for my mum’s 60th birthday. It’s the only photo she has up on the wall in her new house, so it’ll probably go back up once the decorating is finished (or at least, it had better go back up or there will be trouble)

Normally once a room was decorated we would go on the hunt for new place mats, a nice centrepiece for the table, table cloths, basically all sorts of junk and clutter. But the place my mum has moved into is much smaller than her previous home – so she’s got the junk and clutter sewn up for now, and is under strict instructions not to acquire any more until she’s taken several trips to the charity shop!