Stylish dining tables replace built in kitchen islands.
There are a several choices that allow for eating in the kitchen — such as an island with raised bar, breakfast bar or a low table attached to an island. Toss those ideas out! Forget breakfast rooms and built-in banquettes! Nothing looks more inviting than placing kitchen dining tables and chairs front and center. Décor style doesn’t matter as these all look great. When more prep space is needed, it’s easy to move a chair or two until dinnertime. And with the chairs moved away, the dining table works beautifully for buffets or cocktail parties. Of course, the kitchen must have ample space. And while serving meals in the kitchen may sound informal, in reality nothing is cozier.
A rustic white Atlanta kitchen [top] is cleverly designed to blend a functional kitchen and a dining room. With a mammoth Wolf range and built-in vent hood on one wall, opposite there is a streamlined storage cabinet geared to serving. Unique open shelves, fitted with baskets, have drawers above. A pair of lamps say “dining room.” At the far end, a pair of shuttered wood cabinets with graceful curved pediment tops echo the wood in the ceiling beams. Those cabinets provide storage on either side of the sink and the long counter offers ample prep and clean up space well away from the table. In the center, a trestle table and upholstered high back side chairs brings dining into focus and makes it especially comfortable.
With light streaming in from clerestory windows, a minimalist kitchen features a sleek table with chamfered legs and white low-back chairs right in the center of the action. There is more than ample walking around space, and abundant storage. But the kitchen easily could look sterile without the table, despite the warm wood used for the beams.
Belgian kitchens have been highly influential and contributed to the idea of the kitchen as living — not just a cooking –space. This round table, with tapered legs has great patina and teams up well with has an old Scandinavian style wooden chair.
A sleekly modern all white kitchen steps back from the minimalist aesthetic while remaining firmly rooted in mid-20th century style. As kitchen dining tables go, nothing is more iconic than the Saarinen Oval Dining Table and white Eames Molded Plastic Dowel-Leg Side chairs. Both are classics in every way.
A kitchen table that might have been a work table in another century adds warmth and charm to a suburban white kitchen. Seating is a mix of stools, which are easily moved away, and a slat back bench with wrought iron base.
In an eclectic European kitchen, a narrow, old-fashioned tavern table is combined with paint-decorated eccentric blue chairs with woven rush seats. Along with the green lantern light fixture, the chairs pick up the blue and green colors in the tile backsplash.
(Sources: Atlanta Home Magazine, Architeam, Belgian Pearls, Bill Litchfield Design, Canadian House to Home, Roses and Rust)
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YES! The traditional scrubbed kitchen table, not a cold marble island – let the cook sit down and shell peas.
These all look great. And I know it’s classic and farmy, which are things I usually appreciate. But loose chairs in my workspace, and between me and the counter would aggravate me. I love my kitchen table… off at the end of the room. 😉 But these are wonderful examples and such a variety of looks. Thanks for showing them off.