Design Details: The Long Dining/Bar Room
Part 7 of a midweek series where I plan to go through every room in my home to work out why the space works and explain what I've done.
When we came to view our house, one of the main things that attracted my children to the property was a pool table. It doesn’t take much to reel my kids in, but a pool table was the icing on the possible new home cake for them. It was situated in what is an extension to our house - the main building was built in 1759 with a two storey addition being built in around the 1920’s, expanding the footprint and making it a perfect size for a family of five. Downstairs, it has created a long room with triple aspect, double doors leading to the garden. Upstairs, it’s two bedrooms. I’m not sure whether they’d get away with adding what was a ‘modern’ extension to a listed property now, but I’m very glad that they did.
Anyway, we moved in and, much to my childrens chagrin, did not keep the pool table. We did, however, keep the bar which was situated in the corner in front of a door that houses the boilers (yes, I know, sorry; keep up). The bar was a very elaborate word for what was basically a wooden frame with a shelf behind for drinks, but I immediately decided that it was the perfect opportunity to create a room that was fun for parties. The rest of the room, however, was quite difficult to manage. At around 30ft long and 13ft wide, it was a classic example of successful zoning in order to make it work for us as a family. However, this has, admittedly, taken around eight years to get right.
Initially, I painted the entire room grey. Downpipe, actually. This was 2015 and Abigail Ahern was all the rage. Cocooning, cosy and atmospheric were the words of the day so I whipped out the paintbrush and transformed the light, bright room into a room of darkness. No one was happy about it. The kids refused to do their homework in it. Nobody went in it as they said it was miserable. It really only worked when we had people over for parties and turned on the neon light. Dark walls have plenty in their favour - plants look great against them, lamps (all 23253 of them that you need in a dark room) create welcoming corners, etc etc - but unless you are REALLY into them, I think that they are quite difficult to live with on a day to day basis. So I painted it white again and the balance returned. Side note: if you are considering painting a room very dark, bear in mind that if you decide you don’t like it it’ll take four coats of best quality white to get rid of it. Lesson learned.
Okay, so I had this big long room, wooden floors, white walls which was great, but I also had problems when trying to zone it and make it flow cohesively. So what did I do to get it right? Eight years later, here’s how it finally ticked the boxes.
