Dine in colour... inside or out

Kitchen ideas from Food magazine

Whether you go neutral or colourful, or take to the outdoors, here are some great dining room ideas to whet your appetite.

Gorgeously grey

There are many ways to approach the decoration of a dining space. Traditionally, homeowners have sought out a bit of drama to add a sense of occasion to the dining experience, using bold colours and showy centrepieces.

Now, with dining spaces so often part of an open-plan area, it’s trickier to treat them differently without adding to the visual busy-ness of the room. You can anchor the space with a feature wall of colour or wallpaper but for open-plan spaces that rely on a neutral palette, it might be best to keep your feature colour and/or pattern more muted.

This approach also lets the food and table be the stars of the show, and lets you change out the seasons or introduce subtle style shifts without having to refurbish the entire area.

It gives flexibility to chosen themes, be they Scandi, luxe, country or beachy.

Dining room beachy
Left: A painterly botanic pattern adds interest without overpowering this dining area. The wallpaper is from the Grenada collection (367002) from Resene ColorShops. Right: It’s Resene Alabaster all round for a Scandi dining setting created by Indie Home Collective.

kitchen bench and table
Resene Quarter Cararra is a gauzy antique white – a perfect wall colour for this country-style dining and kitchen area.

Table-top colour

Keeping the walls fairly neutral lets you accessorise with colour. With Resene testpots you can upcycle old tableware and accessories.

Top tip: If you’re painting furniture, Resene Lumbersider is an exterior paint that’s perfect for these sorts of projects. It withstands the weather, and takes the knocks. If the timber is weathered, use an undercoat of Resene TimberLock to help the top coat colour adhere better.

colour for accessories
Left: Some masking tape and just one testpot of Resene Drop Dead Gorgeous is all you need for these placemats. Right: Add a flash of colour to a timber tray with testpots in Resene Full Monty, Resene Mozart and Resene Gold Dust. Right bottom: Salad server handles go from drab to fab with Resene Mozart and Resene Gold Dust.

Take it outside

Take it outside ate summer evenings are made for dining outdoors. Are you guilty of overlooking your alfresco dining area, or letting it slide into obscurity with ‘standard’ colour choices of brown and green?

tables outside
Left: Scandi glam comes to the outdoors with a table stencilled in various Resene stains, paints and metallics. The wall behind the bench seat is ombred in a combination of Resene Sambuca, Resene Papier Mache and Resene Martini over a base coat of Resene Resitex and Resene Sandtex.

outside dining colour choices
Left: Spicy tropical tones with a wall in Resene Rumour Has It, and peg stools in Resene Aloha (at back), Resene Malarkey (right) and Resene Celebrate (left and front). The table is in Resene Sambuca, the food cover is in Resene Celebrate and basket platter in Resene Ruby Tuesday. The side fence is in Resene Pearl Lusta and the decking in Resene Woodsman Banjul. Right: Geometric shapes freshen these chairs. The chair at left is stained with Resene Waterborne Woodsman Limed Gum and stencilled with Resene Tasman. The right-hand chair is in Resene Waterborne Woodsman Smokey Ash with stencils in Resene Martini and Resene Intrepid.