Our Dining Room Design Plans

See my dining room remodel mood board and find out what the plans are to create a contemporary-retro mashup design for our 1970s home.

Our dining room gets a lot of love. Some people have dining rooms that never get used except for Thanksgiving and winter holidays. Not ours. We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in our dining room. We play games at the table on Friday nights, we solve Hunt A Killer mysteries there once a month with moody candles lit all around, and we toss on a record while we sip afternoon tea in the adjacent living room.

The dining room in our house is one of our most cherished spaces. And it deserves to be treated that way when it comes to design. I’ve been working on crafting the perfect plan to make the room feel cozy and inviting but also a little fancy and luxurious. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to mix those two feelings, but it’s not easy.

Here’s the mood board I put together. Usually when I make a mood board, I don’t use exact pieces, but in this case I did because I knew exactly what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to buy. The design is centered around the table. That table belonged to my grandparents and I always loved it so much when I was a kid. When my husband and I bought our first house (two houses before this one) my grandparents gifted me the table as a housewarming present. Seriously the best gift ever.

To balance out the traditional style of the table, we paired it with midcentury molded chairs. Above it will be that gorgeous black and brass ’70s style light fixture, and below will be a super plush rug with shades of rust, ivory, and muted black.

The sideboard will hold all our entertaining dishware and also serve as a place to put snacks and desserts when we host dinner parties and holidays. PS: You can see how I organized the inside of the sideboard here.

The record player and bingo wheel give it the welcoming vibe that pulls guests into a space that makes them want to pull up a chair and have a glass of wine. And the picture frame moulding on the walls will up the fancy factor. I’ve always been so inspired by the incredible moulding on the walls of the CB2 catalog, and I plan on designing my own layout and building them myself.

Speaking of walls, let’s talk about paint colors. The walls are Alabaster by Sherwin Williams and the trim is accessible beige at 70%. See that black paint lid in the mood board? Guess where that’s going…the ceiling!

I can’t wait to reveal this room to you, and even better, I can’t wait to sit down in the finished space to eat our first meal there. Not sure what I should make for the inaugural dining room meal, so I’d love some suggestions of your family’s fave special meals below in the comments!