Live-edge tables act as a great focal point for your home

Update that dining room for party season

Renovating an entire home can be daunting. Whether you’re looking for a slight change or a complete overhaul, the mere thought of tearing apart the space you live in is enough to put plans on the back burner.

Focusing on one room, either as a full-scale renovation or just a facelift, can bring a breath of fresh air into a home, minus the panic.

With the holiday season around the corner, your dining room is likely to see its fair share of visitors. According to Glen Peloso, principal designer and owner of Glen Peloso Interiors, current trends suggest an open concept kitchen is the way to go — combining it with a living room, where most entertaining is done, leaves the dining area behind.

Take advantage of this time before the holidays to spruce up the elegant room in your house. By implementing a few savvy interior design tips, you can recreate the look and feel of this room without the construction crew.

Changing the colour or texturing of the walls in the dining room is a great place to start.

Peloso recommends painting them a dark shade to change the feel of the space.

“I also like the idea of wallpapering the walls in a large-scale pattern and painting the ceiling in a darker colour to maintain the intimate feeling,” says Peloso.

If going for a more modern look, switching up the chairs in colour or style creates an interesting feel and adds character to the room. “In more avant-garde dining spaces, there is a trend to mix and match different dining chairs and either painting them all one colour or in several different colours for a more eclectic feel,” he says, also noting a trend in alternating seating, such as using chairs on one side of the table and a bench on the opposing side.

Incorporating new furniture and accessories is another way to change the look of the room without doing too much work. Live-edge tables, a style of table based on Japanese woodwork, have increased in popularity over the last few years.

Robert Akroyd, owner of Akroyd Furniture in Toronto’s Distillery District, is an expert craftsman and fan of live-edge tables, having created his first one in 1995.

This type of table boasts the natural, organic grain of the wood while retaining a “live edge” on one or all sides of the piece. Instead of squaring off all planks of wood, the natural curvature and character of the wood is maintained on at least one edge of the table.

He recommends this furniture as a focal point in a modern space, such as a loft, to warm up the room. “I have a live-edge dining room table and I absolutely love it,” Akroyd says. “They have a material character that can’t be faked, they can’t be artificially reproduced. The way that … the annular rings follow the outside edge, it’s so obviously and unmistakably a part of an enormous plant growing outside, which we then turn into usable domestic objects. I just love it.”

Though he admires this style of table for its natural appeal, he admits fashion has played a part in the popularity surge. “Where fashions come and go, as fashion does, I hope that this is something that doesn’t follow that same cycle, because these tables should have good long lives well beyond the temporal fashion cycle,” he says.

If replacing your table is out of budget or commitment, changing simple accents in the room can have a strong effect. Whether it is by reupholstering the chairs, switching the lighting to pot lights or adding in a new chandelier, as Peloso suggests, your dining room will be a fresh and inviting place for guests to be entertained.

As Peloso says, “Combine a few of these ideas, and it won’t feel like your old dining room at all!”

Article exclusive to STREETS OF TORONTO