Colours and Rooms 2 - Thoughts about Dining Rooms

So I allow myself the pleasure here to chat to you about favourite colours for several rooms. No need to agree with me, but bare with me the pleasure of thinking about it.

One thing is important and experience has taught me one universal truth: different countries have different needs in colours for  the interior decoration of a house. The colours which work well in Portugal or in Turkey do not easily work in Belgium - the light is different, as is the climate and the "feeling " of the place.

Here in Brussels colours are naturally more muted and calmed down. The sky is flat and most of the time a nondefinitive sluggish colour of grey. Rare are the days with clear blue skies and white clouds - what I miss about Bavaria...  No wonder that the shop "Flamant" is all over the place with greys and browns, blacks or mushy whites combined with wood and a lot of silverish stuff.
When  I arrived 10 years ago from Turkey in Belgium, the yellow striped sofa did not fit into the feeling of the country any longer. I have since changed the furniture tones more to muted terracotta, soft greens and some creamy whites. Strong, bright colours do not work in this climate - they can look out of touch. Strong dark colours are another thing - friends of mine have a dark red diningroom, which is lovely and cosy, definitively made for long dark winter evenings and one can wonderfully imagine the celebrations at Christmas in this jewel coloured, cosy room.




Provisiorial dinning room

But then only fools do not change their mind: I have painted my new dining room in a bright  Canari yellow, with bright yellow curtains and a red carpet. And it is nice as well. I have a dark grey stone floor and big white windows, which pulls it all together. The dining table has been dressed in a soft terracotta coloured  tablecloth with a wildly flowered greyish table square on top. Sounds adventurous, but is nice and until now we have had many a wonderful meal in this room and the children use it as the place to do their homework, when they come home in the dark afternoons from school.
It has the big advantage of having sun in the morning, so it doubles in the true sense in being a classical breakfast room, small, square and friendly, full of light and  generating a happy athmosphere and/or a square smallish cabinet of a dining room in the evening, ligthed by candle light and only a soft lamp in one of the corners.

Always remember, please: NO light from above in a dining room. It makes people always look sick and tired. Better have two or three lamps in different places and lots of candles - so much more becoming to the teint and putting a sparkle in your guests eyes.

Another lovely combination for dining rooms are soft old rose tones and or a muted green with soft rosecoloured curtains. Again thought out for eating in the evening - there is rarely a colour which is so beautiful in daylight and electric light as the right shade of pink. Many people are afraid of using it, but in the right combination with furniture, curtains, flowers and porcelain it is hard to beat.

Naturally many of you will prefer the current fashion of having  a very high tech and cool dining area. Not everybody of us has the luxury or (with the kitchen being too small) the need of having a room or designated area in our homes for the purpose of eating alone.

Funnily enough the dining room is a quite recent invention - until the beginning of the 19th century, i.e. 200 years ago, people used to eat in the place they just where. A small table was brought in and set out to eat where it was convenient. The last  left-overs of this attidute today are the hotel's "Room Service" and, more ironically reverting to olden times, having your dinner in front of the telly.
Dining rooms came up when the upper middle classes became more influential and more keen on displaying their riches and newly aquired tastes and habits.
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Sometimes a dining room seems a waste of space especially in times where only few of us still have personal to wait on us - good bye, Downton Abbey..... So, in the sense of practiciality and also common sense,  there should always be a second or third use to them. The fact of having a huge table in a huge room, as we can still see in may old houses nowadays, was also the pure necessity of making space for big families and their doings. Dining tables do still today double as working tables, to do your homework, sewing or sweating over puzzles, playing monopoly and sitting around with a cup of tea and happily chatting away. I have seen the most beautiful dining table set in a small room full of books - unforgettable athmosphere.

But also very stylish and coming back in fashion is having kitchen dinners - so much fun and so beautiful. But about those more in a post about kitchens - I am thinking already about it.

 Back to some more colour ideas....
Some other very chic chic combinatioon of colours for a dining room is cappuchino brown, white and a third colour - you can choose whatever you think would go well together. Or a simple white room, dark wood furniture and lovely flowers. Or a dove blue with grey and cream... the combinations are endless, just make sure that you do not use more than three dominant colours get the light right, have a pair of candles and some flowers on the table.
Then you need only  a few lovely smiling faces sitting around a good pot of stew, fresh baguette and a good glas of red wine to be perfectly happy.
Sure one of the things you do not need to be rich to achieve.