Design Your Dream Dining Room in a Day

Your dining room is the one room in your home that you want to look perfect, as it's where you celebrate holidays and entertain your guests. Putting together a design for any room can seem daunting, but if you know where to look, you can create a beautiful dining room in just a day. The secret is finding one store that has everything you need, from furniture to artwork, to table linens. My secret is Pottery Barn.

When my family moved into our new home, I wanted to create a traditional and cozy dining room that would seem inviting and also formal enough to be worthy of Christmas dinners and wedding china. I knew that I wanted mahogany wood and a basic but updated style of dining room décor. Armed with my credit card and my vision, I headed to Pottery Barn. I sat at every table and on every chair and left three hours later very satisfied, knowing that my dream dining room would arrive in three weeks.

The center and focal point of the room is my dining table, so I wanted something with design details, and also a table that could expand to accommodate our huge family gatherings. I selected the Montego Straight Leg Rectangular Table, which normally seats eight and can be expanded to seat twelve. I loved the detail on the legs of the table and the rich color. Once I selected the table, I designed the rest of my dining room décor around it.

I wanted a buffet so that I could store my china inside and also use it for serving food on top of. Rather than buying the matching Montego Wine Bar, I chose the Tucker Buffet in mahogany. The Tucker Buffet offered more space for storing and displaying china than the Montego piece, which was primarily for holding wine and stemware. I also like to mix pieces from different collections so as to not look too matchy-matchy.

To anchor the buffet and give some visual interest to the room, I hung a large piece of artwork by Peter Lik over it that my husband and I purchased on our honeymoon. This really made the room special, because the piece has a lot of sentimental value. Using a mirror over the buffet is another good option for creating visual interest and also making the room appear more spacious.

Besides the artwork on the walls, I wanted to add some more color to the room and break up the darkness of the furniture. I purchased two bright table runners from Pottery Barn with different patterns, but in the same color family. One sits on top of the table and the other covers the buffet.

To add a finishing touch, I created a beautiful centerpiece in Pottery Barn's Glass Sphere Hurricane vase. I added river rock to the bottom of the vase and filled it with calla lilies. This centerpiece sits in the center of the table and I often change it up for the different seasons.