Journal

What a Dining Table Sounds Like — Acoustics in the Dining Room

A beautiful dining room that's exhausting to talk in has a specification problem, not an atmosphere problem. Dining rooms are, by construction, some of the most acoustically difficult rooms in a h...

The Dining Room for Two: When Scale Works Against You

A table sized for guests who visit twice a year, occupied daily by two people, isn't generous. It's a room working against the household that actually lives in it. Households of two — couples, empt...

The Winter Dining Room: How the Brief Changes with the Season

A dining room specified only for summer daylight is only half-finished. Winter changes how the room is lit, how it's used, and how its materials actually feel. Most dining room briefs are developed...

Why Table Width Matters More Than Table Length

Length decides how many people can sit down. Width decides whether any of them are actually comfortable once they do. Table length gets nearly all the attention during specification, because it ma...

How Colour Works in the Luxury Dining Room

In a luxury dining room, colour rarely comes from paint. It comes from material — and understanding that shift changes every decision that follows. Colour theory as it's usually taught assumes pain...

The Dining Table in a Second Home: A Different Brief

A table for a home you live in every day and a table for a home you visit six weeks a year are not the same specification problem, even if they look identical in a rendering. A second home dining ...

The Sideboard: Does Your Dining Room Need One?

A sideboard is not a default fixture of a finished dining room. It is a specific answer to a specific problem — and a room without that problem does not need one. The sideboard has become an automa...

Patina: Why Imperfection Is the Point

A table that looks the same in year ten as it did on delivery day was never made from a living material to begin with. Patina gets treated as a problem to manage — something to seal against, polis...

Mixing Chair Styles at One Table: When It Works and When It Doesn't

Mixing chairs at one table is either a considered design decision or a visible mistake. The difference is never taste — it's whether something ties the chairs together. Matching chair sets read as ...

How to Commission a Dining Table — The Conversation to Have Before You Order

A made-to-order table is only as good as the conversation that precedes it. Skip the conversation, and you are ordering a guess. Commissioning a table is not the same transaction as buying one off...