Staging a Dining Room: Tips & Tricks from a Professional Home Stager

Whether you have a small dining room for intimate gatherings or a formal dining room to host parties and events — dining room staging is a crucial step to take before putting your home on the real estate market to help future buyers imagine themselves dining with friends, family, and guests in this beautiful space.

Helpful Tips for Staging a Dining Room

Before getting started, read our professional home staging tips for staging a dining room to appeal to potential buyers.

1. Clear Away Clutter

If your dining room looks anything like the average homeowner’s, the dining table is probably stacked a mile high with paperwork, mail, and other clutter to serve as a “makeshift office,” and the china cabinet is stuffed with anything but fine china. While using your dining space as a “catch-all” space is fine when you’re living in your home, it definitely won’t appeal to a potential buyer.

Before staging your dining room, clear away all the clutter, including personal items like family photos and artwork created by your kids. The dining room should include a clean dining table, dining room chairs, and perhaps a few accessories or pieces of decor — that’s it!

2. Clean the Room Thoroughly

Before staging a dining room, it needs a deep cleaning. While every space in your home needs to be squeaky clean when showing it to potential buyers, it’s especially crucial for areas where food is prepared and served, like the kitchen and dining room, to be sparkling clean.

Wipe dust from the ceilings, moldings, and baseboards, scrub away fingerprints and scratches from the walls, and refresh the dining room table and dining chairs with high-quality furniture polish or oil. If your dining room furniture is outdated, consider renting new furniture until your home is sold to appeal to modern, style-conscious buyers in your target market.

3. Keep Paint Colors Neutral

It’s wise to stay away from bold colors, like red, blue, or green, in a dining room. It’s much better to choose neutral colors, like white, grey, or “greige” (grey with beige undertones), to ensure your dining room is not too overpowering and appeals to most buyers.

If you have a large dining room, you can probably get away with choosing a more “stately” dark color, like slate. However, if the dining area is smaller, it’s better to stick to lighter paint shades, like white and tan, to make the room appear larger.

4. Update Your Light Fixtures

Dining rooms are the perfect place to install a dramatic light fixture — just make sure it matches the style of your home. For example, a beautiful chandelier would look perfect in a historic dining room meant for entertaining and hosting, but lighting fixtures that are more geometric, modern, and simplistic might look better in a contemporary dining room meant for family dinners.

A professional staging company can help you select a light fixture or chandelier that perfectly matches your furniture and your home’s overall “vibe.”

5. Hang a Large Mirror

Dining rooms are generally small and lack enough natural light, so a great way to make your dining room appear larger is to add a mirror to the room.

Usually, a home stager will place the mirror on a wall across from the nearest window, so it will reflect the window’s natural light and make the space feel more inviting. If you’re worried about having enough light in your dining room — adding a mirror is a great idea!

6. Avoid “Overstaging”

When staging a dining room, it’s important to remember that less is more. Furniture that doesn’t match or isn’t necessary, like extra chairs, should be removed, and dining room decor should add to the room’s overall appearance — not detract from it.

How to Stage a Dining Room Table

Whether you have a small round table or a long dining table, the dining room table is the focal point of any dining room. That said, the most important aspect of dining room staging is staging the table.

These are some of our best steps for staging a dining room table:

• Keep the table centered in the middle of the room — round tables, square tables, and rectangular tables all look best when they are centered.
• Consider using a table runner or tablecloth to cover imperfections or to tie in other design elements (for example, a blue tablecloth might draw attention to a piece of art or picture of the ocean hanging on the wall)
• For a more formal look, set the table for an elegant meal for two, with fancy dinnerware, glassware, and silverware from a matching dining set. For a casual look, consider setting the table with place settings or placemats at every chair around the table and using limited tabletop accessories — just a plate, fork, and knife at each seat are usually fine.
• Add an eye-catching centerpiece to the center of the table, like a vase of flowers, a bowl of fruit, or a beautiful display complete with candles and greenery.

Create an Attractive Dining Room with THE STAGING COMPANY

When you’re ready to sell your home, it’s essential to make your entire space as appealing as possible to future buyers. One of the best ways to do this is to stage the most important rooms in the house — the kitchen, living room, primary bedroom, and dining room!

If you need some help staging your dining room (or even just your dining room table!), our team at THE STAGING COMPANY would be happy to help. We offer professional staging services in San Antonio, Austin, Orlando, Tampa, and other cities across Texas and Florida. Contact us to get started today, and read more about our home staging services for more information.