Why delicious dining rooms? Because dining rooms whisk you away to a whimsical wonderful place where you can experience your food in a fabulous atmosphere. You want to create a wonderful ambiance in your dining room that draws you in and makes you linger, a gathering place for family or friends.

Because the dining room is a place for special occasions, try creating a more theatrical atmosphere with beautiful architectural details, rich colors and fantastic lighting. Have an idea of what you want to create and use warmer colors for an inviting atmosphere. Think about reds, oranges, golds, purples or browns. If you want a high energy room, go with bold vibrant colors, but for a calmer atmosphere think earth tones like gold or brown.

If you’re designing a new dining room, add architectural details that give your room a “wow” factor such as a coffered ceiling, a pavilion with a tray ceiling and inset mirror or a ceiling made of unusual materials. Other great looks include walls defined by massive pillars, arched doorways and insets. The more curves in your room, the more romantic it will feel..

Think about light fixture placement too. You’ll need general or task lighting to handle the functions you want to perform in your dining room, plus accent and fill lights. Some of the hot trends right now in dining room lighting are candle powered chandeliers and electrical light fixtures that appear to look like burning candles in a chandelier or on a tabletop.

To find the right size chandelier for your dining room, select a fixture with a diameter of 12” less than the width of your table or maybe a little larger. Just make sure that your dining room table fits the scale of your room first. The bottom of the chandelier should be approximately 30” above your table and if you have higher ceilings, think about purchasing a chandelier with more height or tiers.

For your accent lighting, directional recessed or mounted lights in the ceiling over your table can add emphasis to your table décor and chandelier, plus sconces or lamps in the room create a wonderful glow. Don’t forget to highlight your beautiful artwork, mirrors or architectural features with accent lighting too. Directional lighting from the front or backlighting adds emphasis. For example, if you have a domed ceiling and chandelier over your table, you could add miniature lights in the domed area to enhance the dome’s features.

The last part of your lighting should fill in the shadows around your dining room. Consider placing ceiling lights toward the darker areas or corners of your room to illuminate furniture, drapes or other accessories. Lighting inside china cabinets or under shelves will showcase not only the furniture, but also the beautiful accessories displayed.

If you want a more traditional look, you might want to use two tall buffet lamps on your buffet, but if you prefer a more contemporary look, then consider a hanging lamp or pendants over your buffet.

Once you’ve determined the lighting scheme of your room, you might want to purchase a dimmer that gives you different options for lighting such as one setting for task lighting and another for a romantic dining experience.

For your table to have ample room for seating, you need 2 feet per person around all sides of the table, plus 2-3 feet behind the chairs for manuevering to and from the table. Make sure that you allow aditional room for other furniture in your dining room too.

As you begin to decorate remember that your focal point in the dining room is your table and the area behind. With that in mind, try to place furniture and accessories in the area behind your table that are bold and dramatic to enhance your focal point. Think about how the room will look from each seated postion and try to create vignettes or decorated areas that will catch the eye of the diners from every part of your table. For example, a diner facing a window, could have a view of the beautiful outdoors, a gorgeous window or dramatic drapes. Or a diner facing the buffet, could have a view of a beatifully carved buffet with a big fabulous mirror reflecting light from your chandelier placed above it..

Think about storage for your linens and dishes also, plus a sideboard for food or drinks. If you don’t have a sideboard, then you might want to use a pantry area to hold food and drinks when you entertain.

Mirrors or mirrored accent furniture, indoor water features, whimsical place settings, dramatic accessories and wonderful fabrics along with architecture details, fabulous furniture, color and lighting can transform your dull dining room into delicious.

Designer’s Eye column was written by Karen Mills of Interiors by Design, Inc. and host, Living Large