Your dining room should be inviting and comfortable—a place where people wish to linger, even after the last plate is cleared away.

Decorating a dining room can be a lot more challenging than you may expect. I really underestimated the task until we moved into our new home. Our old apartment had an informal eat-in kitchen. The area was vast and open and the space was perfect for small gatherings. This dining area was easy to decorate because the elements and colors in the kitchen flowed right into dining room décor.

When we found a new home with a formal dining area to decorate, I was thrilled and I thought I was ready for the challenge. However, decorating a dining room that is formal in nature poses some great challenges, especially if your furniture and décor is casual in nature. Finding a way to segue from the kitchen to the new area was very difficult for me.

The appliances in my kitchen are kind-of eclectic. We bought the large kitchen appliances from scratch-and-dent store that had prices we couldn’t pass up. My refrigerator is stainless steel. My stove is black and my microwave is white. Decorating a dining room around this mix is kind of hard because I am really drawn to reds for the area.

Red is an excellent choice for decorating a dining room because the color stimulates the appetite. The problem I have is I still have an eat-in kitchen that is perfectly suited for my new kitchen space, which is black and white. My dishes are black and white as well as my eating utensils. I found that the red color in the dining room just didn’t work.

At first I thought decorating a dining room in red was great but then I dressed the table with the black and white dishes and utensils. My wise-cracking brother said, “What is black and white and red all over?” It looked awful and I was at a loss of what to do about it.

I tired to pull the red elements of the new formal eating area into my black and white kitchen. This worked pretty well. The red made great accents for the area. However, I still had trouble decorating a dining room in red, black and white. For now, things are staying as is.

Once I find formal décor for decorating a dining room in these extreme colors I will make some changes. Until then, I may just look into purchasing some red dishes to create some balance between the two rooms.