6 tips to make your home dinner party ready!

Chloe Hines Chloe Hines
BB Interior - Project, BB Interior BB Interior Phòng ăn phong cách hiện đại
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As warmer weather approaches and nights are becoming more bearable for outdoor cooking and entertaining, we begin to realize that dinner party season is upon us! Dinner parties are always fun, yet they can be a stressful endeavor to prepare for. From deciding the menu, decorating the table and cleaning your home, you can start to feel the nerves accumulate.

Worry not! We have prepared all of the tips and tricks you need to throw a successful bash, no matter if there are three people or fifteen. This should be a time for either you and those you live with to come together and get your creative juices flowing.

So clean your linens, make your grocery lists and get browsing – you're about to throw one heck of a party.

Lighting

As we all know, lighting has become a signifier for many things in life. Lights go down right before the movie or show, lights go on when we're ready to get work done and lights become dim when we want to set a romantic or intimate tone with a partner or guests.

Getting the lighting just right at your dinner party will set you up for the rest of the night. If your dinner party consists of eight or more people and you expect to have some loud, obnoxious fun, then turn on the overhead dining-room table lights and light some tabletop candles as well to keep the mood bright and cheery.  If this is a more intimate dinner part of six people or less, dim the overhead lights (if you have them) or just stick with candlelight. As you can see in this example, they use multiple sources of light to really make the space glow.

The unique lighting in combination with the great table and chair set make this a stunning example of a dinner party-ready setting!

Menu

To ensure your dinner party is a success, start preparing well ahead of time before guests arrive. This means setting out ingredients and measurements in bowls, cleaning and chopping all meat and vegetables and keeping drinks nice and chilled. This will do three things for you as a host: one, it will make your home smell great and excite your guests once they arrive – secondly, it will make cooking and baking easier and give you more time to enjoy your guests and lastly it will make everything go faster!

To make it a super special night, either write the menu on a blackboard for everyone to see – include the ingredients, calories and special cocktails as well to make them feel like they're in a 5-star restaurant.  Or, you can print individual menus to lay on each guests' plate to make an incredible impression!

Tableware

Dinnerware is more decorative and should be shifted depending upon the season, colour scheme or type of party.  As seen here, you should stick with the basics for most dinner parties: a small salad plate/bowl, a main course plate, a small bowl for sides, a water glass, a wine/cocktail glass and three silverware settings – a knife, a small salad fork and a large meat fork.

Everything should be laid as you see here, or you can check etiquette books depending on how casual the party is. For more professional, fancy dinners you will need to have silverware on both sides of the plate and the number should always be even.

Colour scheme

Make sure that all the colours in your dining area correspond to the theme you're trying to create. This dining room screams of Scandinavian and Danish design with the table, matching chairs, minimalist light fixture, and wall art.

You are, of course, limited in this aspect because some colours of your dining room are permanent fixtures – it doesn't make much sense to repaint your walls for the sake of a dinner party!  Instead, try to be strategic with the place settings, silverware and any decorative items you choose for the table top.  For example, in this particular dining room we would really suggest all-white place settings and maybe small-to medium-sized cacti as interesting center pieces.

Plants and flowers

Plants and floral center pieces add a little extra pizzazz to a special occasion.  We have all been to dinner parties where the decorative flora was incorrectly placed, or didn't match the theme, or quite frankly, seemed to be on the verge of crumbling to dust. These are all things you should think about before purchasing any plants or flowers for a dinner party.

When you're positioning plants and flowers, make sure that guests will still be able to make eye contact and talk to each other clearly without anything getting in the way! Or keep it simple and select a tall, skinny vase and bouquet as the central figure!

If you want something a bit different, consider tiny, unique plants, like the ones featured here as options to include on your elegantly designed table as you're dining.

Table and chairs

If you're someone that tends to do a lot of entertaining, then you and your family should take this into consideration when choosing a dining room table. We suggest that if you're limited on space, choose a dining table that is adjustable – it's best to choose one that normally seats four people, but can seat up to eight (or twelve, if you need that much room) if need be.

Extendable dining room tables have come a long way from their clunky beginnings, and are now celebrated for their sleek design and how easy it is to adjust them. This Danish-design dining room set with six matching chairs is a great way to go if you have the space and a small family, yet see yourself entertaining often.  

Although the seating arrangement here leaves parts of your party separated (which could be nice depending on the situation – kids, for example) it displays how you can use all the seating at your disposal!

Hopefully that helped you to get your dinner party plans up and running! For more din-spiration, check out these luxurious dining room ideas!

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