I always feel that if you have a separate dining room you have an opportunity to bring in different look to the rest of the house.
Here are my Top 5 Tips:
1. A sense of Drama is essential, you want your dinner guests to give you a wow, this can be achieved with colour and lighting, dark rooms lit by candle light with splashes of colour, dim main lights and highlight the table with pencil beam spots.
2. Comfortable seats are essential if you want your guests to linger and the conversation to flow.
3. The room should be the right temperature, I love open fires in dining rooms which add to the sense of drama with the flickering candle light.
4. Table settings should geared to the time of the year reds and dark colours in the autumn and winter with spring and summer flowers reflecting the seasonal change.
5. The spacing of chairs around the table is important too much and the atmosphere changes to little and there is no elbow room.