After a bed for the bedroom and sofa for the living room, a dining table is often next on every home owners list of furniture to be bought. A dining table is an integral part of home décor. In India, food is not only a source of nourishment, our lives and celebrations revolve around it. Can you imagine Diwali without a table full of mithai or a birthday party that doesn’t bring everyone together around the dining table to cut a delicious cake. 

Dining tables can be sold as part of a set with coordinated dining chairs or as standalone pieces to be mixed and matched with seating options. If a set of chairs seems too outdated to you, here are a few other interesting alternative seating ideas for dining rooms.

 

Mix and match chairs

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If you’d like your dining room to look youthful and fresh, mix and match chairs to sit around the table. To ensure that the scene looks cohesive, paint them all in the same colour. This style usually works well for wooden chairs but you could try mixing and matching wooden and upholstered chairs as well. When it comes to upholstered chairs, you could also keep the same chair frame and vary the upholstery. 

 

Benches

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Everybody doesn’t really need a chair to themselves at the dining table. A bench that runs along one length of the table can give your dining room an interesting look. Depending on your interior design scheme you could pick between wooden benches and upholstered benches with or without backs. Match the polish of your bench to the polish of your chairs but feel free to play around with upholstery. A backless bench is also a great space saving solution for compact spaces.

 

Wing Chairs

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If you’re looking for something that speaks of grandeur and luxury consider wing chairs at the ends of your dining table. Depending on the design you pick, your alternative seating could give your table a classic or contemporary look. For example, the Arthur could give your dining table a colonial look while the Shelby is ideal for a modern home. If you decide to incorporate wing chairs in your dining room furniture, you may need to get them customized to fit the height of your dining table.

 

Sofa

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Nobody said you can’t have a sofa in the dining room! However, it may be overkill if you use two sofas facing each other. This style works well with square or rectangular tables. A sofa in your dining room makes the space look comfortable and inviting. A few options you can look at for your dining room sofa are the Camelback, Thurston and Indian mélange. Once again, you may need to get these sofas customized to an ergonomic height.

 

Stools

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As homes become smaller, a dining room and kitchen often merge to become one big open space. In such a setting, stools are ideal alternative seating options for your dining table. Stools are fun, playful and space saving and there’s such a wide variety to choose between – wooden, upholstered, wire framed stools and so much more.

 

So how are you going to revamp your dining room furniture?