How to Avoid the 5 Most Common Dining Room Decorating Mistakes
Advice on sidestepping the decor gaffes that design pros see most often in rooms meant to fire up appetites—from unpalatable wall colours to stingy rugs
3 min
DINING ROOM décor gone awry can kill appetites. Whether your guests are flinching from an eerie portrait their chairs face or squeezing into too-tight seats, bad decorating can take the joy out of even the most well-concocted meal.
Los Angeles-based designer David Netto believes dinner guests are rarely eager to enter these stuffy rooms. “So what a dining room must have, above all, is atmosphere,” he said. Here, interiors pros detail five mood crushers in dining rooms, and palate-pleasing alternatives.
1. Blinding Lights
Ample light helps diners distinguish between mashed yams and potatoes, but cruelly aggressive bulbs inspire squinting, not conviviality. “Nothing will kill the vibe of a dinner party faster than harsh overhead lighting,” said Marina Medina, a Vancouver-based interior designer. No one feels good under 5000K LED bulbs, says Susane Jory, a designer in London, Ontario, “and few of us look good bathed in it.”
Instead: Kelly Finley, a designer at Joy Street Design in Oakland, Calif., relies on “recessed lighting on a dimmer, a chandelier with soft lightbulbs and wall sconces” for a softer shine. Mark Eckstrom votes for the old-timey romance of candlelight. Said the co-founder of Studio Eckström, in Omaha, Neb., “Every guest at your table should have faces aglow.”
2. Tasteless Walls
Think of a dining room’s walls as a platter on which dinner is served. Sterile white dishes with a hospital vibe often don’t flatter food. Nor do chaotically patterned ones. Similarly, when it comes to walls, some color can help, but Mr. Eckstrom returns to the effect décor has on complexions: “Sorry, but nobody looks good in a yellow or chartreuse room.” And Brian del Toro, a New York City interior designer, warns against surfaces with “overly active patterns, colours which are too bright or distracting, and combinations of the two, which aren’t soothing.”
Instead: Save the pattern-on-pattern alchemy for the powder room, and pursue colors like terracotta, rose and aubergine that Mr. Eckstrom says “stimulate appetite and reflect well on guests’ skin.” But know that naked walls don’t make people feel comfortable and sociable either. “Every seat should have a view—a window, art, sculpture, wallpaper, mirror, flowers,” he said.
3. Prissiness
You won’t feel inspired to plop down at your dining table for a casual brunch if it’s surrounded by austere crystal chandeliers and dusty mahogany sideboards. Mr. del Toro finds that most dining rooms skew too formal, dark and “limited,” appealing only for an evening dinner.
Instead: “Most of us lead relatively informal lives,” said Mr. del Toro, who likes dining rooms casual enough for sipping a smoothie or morning latte. Chris Goddard, an interior designer in Springdale, Ark., said he’s partial to installing weathered wood tables that, while inherently chillaxed, can be “dressed to the nines for a festive dinner.”
4. Sound-Bouncing Surfaces
When you ponder your dining room’s décor, remember that happy repasts aren’t silent. Poor acoustics can turn animated chatting into cacophony, said Olle Lundberg, a San Francisco designer. “Hard surfaces like stone flooring, plaster walls and large windows all bounce the sound back into the space, creating reverberation,” warned Mr. Lundberg.
Instead: For a more discussion-friendly space, Mr. Eckstrom prescribes a blend of softer materials like drapery, carpet, tapestries or a tablecloth “that help absorb echoes and promote conversation.” Mr. Lundberg goes further, endorsing the idea of covering walls with fabric or draping it from the ceiling. Many textiles come in “large formats and can often be installed seamlessly,” he said.
5. Failures of Scale
In a dining room, ill-fitting furniture is more than an eyesore—it can result in stubbed toes and dry-cleaning bills. “If you’ve placed a giant table in a small room,” said Ms. Jory, “your guests will invariably be wearing the soup as you squeeze behind them with the gazpacho.”
Even the size of a carpet can throw a wrench in the roast. “Rugs that are too small pinch the overall vignette,” said Jessica Lynn Williams, founder of Hendley & Co, in Newburgh, N.Y., who adds you should never force your guests to scooch their chairs awkwardly over the edge of a too-tiny rug.
Instead: An occupied chair should ideally have 3 feet of space behind it for proper circulation and flow, said Meg Lavalette, founder of Lava Interiors in New York City. And carpets should accommodate sliding chairs—without giving them any lip. Laura W. Jenkins, an interior designer in Atlanta, says that when it comes to light fixtures and rugs, she prefers to err on the side of a little too big.
DIGESTION IMPOSSIBLE
Designers recall meal-spoiling decorating gaffes
“Once I saw a light fixture that hung so low and so close to the edges of the table that even the older kids in that family complained about bonking their heads against it!” —Noz Nozawa, interior designer, San Francisco
“I tried to convince [a client that] even though red was his favourite colour, it wasn’t a great choice for a dining space and that we could bring it in through other avenues—décor, rugs, wallpaper. We ended up not taking him on because he couldn’t get past the red for the dining room, but it was so bad.” —Shaolin Low, interior designer, Honolulu
“I was once seated in a dining room with a table that was too small. The chairs were covered in Fortuny, but not even the chicest choice of fabric could keep my knees from bumping against the person who was sitting next to me.” —Michelle Nussbaumer, interior designer, Dallas
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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