How to Accommodate More Guests in Your Small Dining Room

Dining room feel small? Accomodate more guests with these ideas.

Your dining room is one of the most important places in your home. Your family gathers here for meals and to talk about their days with one another. While your dining room is the perfect size for you and your immediate family you may find yourself wondering what to do during dinner parties and the holidays when you have additional guests. While you cannot magically make your dining room larger than it is for a few hours during the holidays, you can work some magic and accommodate more guests in your dining room for special occasions.

Consider Your Life

The most important thing to consider when it comes to accommodating more guests in your dining room is how much you actually entertain. If you have a family of four and you rarely entertain more than a few of your children’s friends at one time you do not need to purchase a dining room table that seats 20 guests. The comfort of your family on a daily basis is more important than accommodating additional guests twice a year during the holidays. If you entertain on a regular basis you should consider purchasing a large dining room table.

If you do entertain only a handful of times each year you might consider renting tables and chairs on those occasions. This is the best solution to your problem because your family can have intimate meals on a regular basis while your extended family can have large family dinners on special occasions.

Group Seating

Group seating is an excellent way to accommodate more guests in your dining room. Rather than having individual chairs at your table invest in bench seats that take up less space and accommodate more people. This is an especially good option for those who have small children who can line up on a bench.

Group seating can also be created at smaller tables in the dining room. Children can have their own smaller table with chairs from desks, the porch or ottomans that are pushed together to create additional seating. Adults can sit at the dining room table and other tables that have been brought into the room to accommodate them for any special occasion.

Leaves

Dining room tables that extend in size are a great solution to accommodating extra guests on occasion. Depending on the size of the dining room table you purchase you can have an everyday table size that accommodates four, six or eight people. When the leaf is added to the table it will allow you to add several more seats. Some tables allow you to add as many as six additional place settings.

Tables with leaves can be purchased as round tables or as square tables. Square tables typically pull apart so that the leaf can be inserted to add more table space and seating. Round table leaves are added to the outside of the table in smaller pieces to create additional space for your dinner guests.

Small Dining Rooms

If your dining room is too small to accommodate additional table space or furniture it might be a good idea to invest in a large portable table that can be taken onto the patio or your back yard to create additional space for your guests.

If your small dining room is open to your living area you can consider moving your living room furniture around and placing a portable table in front of your couch and additional chairs on the opposite side. This allows you to utilize both your dining room and your living room for dining space, and it keeps everyone together during family dinners.

Do you have a tip for accommodating more guests during a dinner party or holiday dinner? Leave them in the comments below or tweet them to @newlywedsurvive.

Image: Sitka Projects LLC

Ben Sawyer writes short tips for everyday situations, covering the topics of household repair and safety at http://www.arvernebythesea.com/ and other places in New York. Here he shared with us some of his most useful tips about how to acommodate more guests in your dining room.