Over the past month, we’ve been designing a dining room with the help of our friends on social media. Each week we posted several options for each piece of furniture on our Instagram and Facebook feeds for our followers to select their favorite pieces building off of the previous week’s selections. This week, we are revealing the final design along with the sources and pricing for the final selections.

As a group, you guys selected the table, chairs, rug, lighting, buffet and artwork. When we put the final design together we added window treatments and a centerpiece to complete the look. We also had a quick vote in Instagram and Facebook stories to help select the wall color because we were torn between navy blue and forest green – navy blue was the clear winner.

interior_design_dining_room_modern_contemporary

The total cost for all of the furniture, artwork and accessories as shown in the final design is $5,926. Just to give you an idea of the possible range in cost of all of the pieces that you voted on, the least expensive option would have been $3,551 and the most expensive option would have been $10,312.

The budget was not a factor in this design exercise but typically when we are designing for clients, the budget does play an important role in the selection process. Sometimes our clients come to us with a set budget that we work into and other times, we help clients develop a realistic budget prior to starting the design process. In either scenario, to make the budget work, we usually select items from a variety of price points. The pieces that need to withstand the most amount of daily use are the pieces we recommend clients spend a bit more on because that’s where you want the highest quality. In a dining room, the table and chairs are going to get the most use so those should be the most expensive/higher quality pieces. To balance the budget, we can select less expensive options for things that aren’t going to need to withstand a lot of use such as the buffet or centerpiece.

What questions do you have about developing a furnishings budget? Let us know in the comments below.

Here are the sources for all of the items from the final design:

Table l Chairs l Rug l Lighting ​​​​​​​l Buffet l ​​​​​​​Artwork l ​​​​​​​Drapery Panels l ​​​​​​​Drapery Hardware l ​​​​​​​Centerpiece and Bowl

Loading Conversation