How to Create a Scandi Dining Room
The dining room occupies a special place in Scandinavian culture. In countries where long, dark winters drive life indoors, the table becomes the centre of domestic life — a place for gathering, for conversation, for taking time over food and company. The Scandi dining room isn't just somewhere to eat. It's somewhere to be.
That philosophy shapes everything about how it's designed. The furniture is built to last and to be used. The lighting is warm and considered. The atmosphere is one of unhurried ease. Get it right and you have a room that makes every meal feel like an occasion, without any sense of formality or fuss.
Start with the Table
The dining table is the most important piece of furniture in the room, and in a Scandi interior it's chosen accordingly. Solid timber is the natural choice — oak above all, for its warmth, its grain, and the way it develops character over years of use. Look for clean lines, honest joinery, and a surface that feels as good to run your hand across as it does to sit around.
Consider how you use the table day to day as well as when entertaining. An extendable table is a practical choice for most homes — compact enough for everyday use, generous enough when you need it. Fritz Hansen and Carl Hansen & Søn both produce dining tables of real quality and considered design, pieces that anchor a room without demanding all the attention in it.
Choose Your Chairs with Care
The dining chair is where the Scandinavian furniture tradition has perhaps made its greatest contribution. Hans J. Wegner alone designed over 500 chairs in his lifetime — each one an exploration of how wood, craft, and the human form could be brought into harmony.
The Wishbone Chair, designed by Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn in 1949, is among the most enduring of them all. Its steam-bent beech frame and hand-woven papercord seat give it a lightness that belies its robustness — a chair that looks beautiful from every angle and becomes more comfortable the longer you sit in it. Available in a wide range of timber finishes and colours, it works as well around a pale oak table as a darker walnut one.
Fritz Hansen's Series 7 chair, designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1955, offers a compelling counterpoint — its moulded shell form and slender steel legs bringing a quietly sculptural presence to the table. The two chairs mix beautifully together, different in character but entirely at home alongside each other. It's a particularly Scandi approach to furnishing a room — choosing pieces that speak to each other without simply repeating each other.
Get the Lighting Right
Dining room lighting is one of the most important decisions in the house, and one of the most commonly underestimated. The overhead light should hang low over the table — lower than most people instinctively place it — creating a warm pool of light that draws people in and makes the food look good.
Louis Poulsen's PH series is the natural choice here. The PH 5 pendant, designed by Poul Henningsen in 1958 and barely changed since, is one of the most perfectly resolved light fittings ever made — its layered shade system eliminating glare entirely while casting a warm, even light that flatters everything beneath it. The PH Artichoke, with its 72 individually positioned leaves, is a more sculptural choice for larger spaces or higher ceilings.
If your dining room doubles as a daytime workspace or family room, consider a pendant on a rise-and-fall mechanism so the height can be adjusted for different uses. And always add a dimmer — the ability to drop the light level as the evening progresses is transformative.
Consider the Sideboard
A well-chosen sideboard does two things in a dining room: it provides practical storage for table linen, serving pieces, and everything else a dining room accumulates, and it gives you a surface for display. In a Scandi interior, both functions are taken seriously.
Andersen Furniture specialise in beautifully crafted Danish sideboards — clean-lined, honest in their materials, and made to be used daily as much as admired. Montana's modular system brings a different approach — configure it low and wide as a sideboard, or build upward for more storage, with an exceptional colour range that lets you complement the room or introduce a deliberate note of contrast. String Furniture's shelving brings a lighter, more open approach — useful if you want storage without visual weight.
Whatever you choose, resist the impulse to fill every surface. A few carefully chosen objects, a plant, a piece of ceramics — leave space between things and the display will breathe.
Caring for Natural Wood
Solid timber furniture is made to be lived with, and a little care goes a long way toward keeping it beautiful for generations. The treatment you choose shapes both the look and the maintenance of the piece.
Soaped wood — a traditional Scandinavian finish — gives timber a pale, almost raw appearance that feels entirely natural. It's maintained simply by washing periodically with a mild soap solution, which nourishes the wood and keeps the finish fresh. It's the most Nordic of finishes and suits lighter timbers like oak and beech particularly well.
Oiled wood has a slightly richer, more saturated tone that brings out the grain beautifully. It's maintained by applying a fresh coat of furniture oil once or twice a year, or whenever the surface begins to look dry. Both soap and oil finishes allow the wood to breathe and age naturally — developing patina rather than hiding behind a hard lacquer.
Lacquered finishes are more resilient to spills and require less maintenance, but they sit on top of the wood rather than within it, and over time can feel less honest in character. For a dining table in daily use, an oiled or soaped finish paired with prompt attention to spills will reward you with a surface that only improves with age.
Layer Your Textures at the Table
The table itself is a canvas for texture and material. A linen tablecloth or runner — slightly rumpled, not ironed to within an inch of its life — immediately softens the space and adds warmth. Simple ceramic tableware in organic forms, glassware with a little weight to it, candles at different heights.
HAY produce some of the best everyday table accessories in Scandi design — placemats, napkins, serving pieces — that bring quiet colour and considered detail to the table without effort. Set the table as part of the room's composition, not just as a practical arrangement.
Candles are non-negotiable. A dining table without candles on an evening is a missed opportunity — they provide the single most effective shift in atmosphere of anything in the room.
Bring the Outdoors In
A simple arrangement of foliage or seasonal branches in a tall vase, a bowl of fruit on the sideboard, the grain of a timber table catching the candlelight — these small gestures connect the dining room to the natural world and give it a sense of life that no amount of styling can replicate.
Skagerak's approach to design is rooted in exactly this sensibility. Their pieces — whether furniture or objects — feel as though they belong to the landscape as much as the interior, made from natural materials with an honesty and warmth that sits perfectly in a dining room.
What to Avoid
Matching dining sets. A table and six identical chairs from the same range will almost always feel flatter than a considered mix. The Scandi approach is to choose pieces that speak to each other without repeating each other.
Lighting that's too high. A pendant that hangs at ceiling height provides ambient light but no intimacy. Bring it down over the table and the room changes entirely.
Overcrowded sideboards. Less on the surface, always. If everything is on display, nothing stands out.
Cold materials. Glass and metal dining tables can look striking but rarely feel warm. Timber — or at least timber alongside other materials — makes a dining room somewhere people want to linger.
The Brands to Know
Carl Hansen & Søn — the Wishbone Chair and a range of beautifully made dining tables Fritz Hansen — the Series 7 chair and considered Danish dining tables Andersen Furniture — beautifully crafted Danish sideboards Louis Poulsen — the PH series, definitive dining room lighting HAY — accessible Scandi design for tableware and everyday dining accessories Montana — modular Danish storage, ideal as a sideboard String Furniture — open shelving that keeps storage light and considered Skagerak — natural materials and Nordic warmth
Browse our full dining room collection at innes.co.uk, or visit our showroom in Hessle, near Hull, to see the pieces in person.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size dining table do I need? As a guide, allow around 60cm of table width per person for comfortable dining. A table of 160cm seats six with ease; 200cm or more gives you room for eight. If space is limited, an extendable table is the most practical solution — compact for everyday use, generous when you need it. Always consider the space around the table too: you need at least 90cm between the table edge and the wall or any furniture behind it for chairs to be pulled out comfortably.
Can I mix different chair styles around the same table? Not only can you — in a Scandi interior, you probably should. Mixing two or three complementary chair designs around the same table gives a room a more relaxed, lived-in feel than a perfectly matched set. The key is to find a common thread — similar timber tones, a shared material, or a consistent scale — that ties the different pieces together.
How low should a dining pendant hang? As a rule of thumb, the bottom of the shade should sit around 70–80cm above the table surface. This feels lower than most people expect, but it's where the light becomes truly effective — intimate, warm, and flattering. If your table is extendable or you occasionally use the space for other things, a rise-and-fall fitting gives you flexibility.
What's the best way to make a small dining room feel bigger? Keep the furniture low and the palette light. A round table is often a better choice in a small space than a rectangular one — it takes up less visual room and allows easier movement around it. Wall-mounted storage keeps the floor clear. And good lighting, especially candlelight on an evening, draws the eye inward and makes the space feel intimate rather than cramped.
How do I add warmth to a dining room without making it feel heavy? Texture and candlelight do most of the work. A linen tablecloth, a wool runner, natural timber furniture, simple ceramics — these all add warmth without adding visual weight. Candles on the table and a well-positioned pendant at the right height will transform the atmosphere as the light falls, making even a simply furnished room feel genuinely welcoming.
Should I soap or oil my dining table? It depends on the look you want and how much maintenance you're comfortable with. A soaped finish gives a paler, more natural appearance and is easy to maintain with occasional washing. An oiled finish is richer in tone and requires re-oiling once or twice a year. Both age beautifully and feel far more honest than lacquer — which, while low maintenance, sits on top of the wood rather than within it. For a family dining table in daily use, oil is often the more forgiving choice.