Dining Table and Dining Room Furniture: A Perth Buyer's Guide to Getting the Whole Room Right

Choosing dining furniture comes down to three moves in order: measure your room, pick a table sized to fit it and the people who'll sit around it, then build the chairs and storage around that table. Get the sequence right and everything else (shape, material and budget) falls into place without expensive guesswork.

This guide walks you through each decision the way we'd walk you through it across a showroom floor: how to size a table to your space and household, how the tabletop materials really differ, what chairs and a buffet add, and what it all costs. It's written with WA homes in mind. Here, 79.7% of dwellings are separate houses versus 72.3% nationally, so most of us are working with a genuine dining space rather than a studio corner.

Where do I start: the table, or the whole room?

Start with the room, not the table. The dimensions of your space and the way your household actually eats decide everything that follows. So measuring comes before you fall in love with any particular piece.

Think of it as a running order:

1. Measure the room: the floor area you can give to dining, and the walkways around it.
2. Choose the table: size first, then shape, then the tabletop material.
3. Add the seating: chairs or a bench, in the right number.
4. Add storage: a buffet or sideboard, if the room has space.
5. Pull it together so the pieces work as one setting.

This is also a natural time to buy the whole setting together. Across WA, 22,602 homes were built in 2024-25, up 25.1%. Plenty of people are furnishing a new or renovated dining room from scratch. Buying the pieces together from the outset saves the mismatched look that comes from buying one item at a time.

What size dining table do I actually need?

Size the table to your room first and your guest list second. Measure the space, then leave enough clearance around the table for people to pull chairs out and walk past. From there, choose a length that seats your household comfortably every day with room to add guests.

When you're planning capacity, weigh how many you seat on a normal night against how many turn up when family comes over. The everyday number sets the table you buy; the guest number tells you whether you need to be able to make it bigger.

Match that to how you live. In Greater Perth the average household is 2.6 people, a touch above the national 2.5. And 44.6% of WA families are couples with children. So many buyers are seating a small household most nights but want to stretch to a larger group when family comes over.

If that describes you, look at an extension table, one with a leaf or panel that lets you make it longer for guests and shorter for everyday. It's the honest answer for anyone whose daily seating and hosting seating are different numbers. And it saves you buying a table that's too big for a normal Tuesday.

Round, rectangular or oval: which shape suits my room?

Let the room's proportions and your household guide the shape rather than any fixed rule. Broadly:

• Rectangular: the workhorse. It tends to suit long or open-plan kitchen-dining zones and seats the most people, and it pushes neatly against a wall when not in use.
• Round: often works well in a square or smaller room. With no sharp corners, everyone can see everyone, though it gets harder to seat more than a handful of people.
• Oval, a middle path: close to a rectangle's capacity, with rounded ends that can ease foot traffic in a busy room.

Once you know your footprint and rough seat count from the sizing step, the shape usually picks itself.

Marble, ceramic, glass or timber: which tabletop is right for me?

The tabletop is the piece you'll look at every day, and the biggest factor in both price and personality. So choose it around your life: kids, pets, sunlight, how much upkeep you'll happily do. Here's how the four materials Adore works with actually differ.

Marble

Natural stone, prized for its veining, the flowing mineral lines that make every top one of a kind. Marble is porous, meaning it has tiny openings that can absorb liquid, so it benefits from sealing and a little more day-to-day care. Choose it if you want a genuine statement piece and don't mind that upkeep.

Ceramic and sintered stone

Engineered stone tops with strong heat and scratch resistance, so they tend to take everyday use more casually than natural marble. A practical pick if you want the stone look with less fuss.

Glass

Usually toughened, that is, specially heat-treated glass. It keeps a room feeling light and open, which can help in smaller spaces.

Timber

Warm and forgiving, with the character coming from the grain and finish. Adore's timber pieces use marri. For a sense of how durable a Western Australian hardwood can be, take jarrah, also native to the state's south-west. It has an air-dry density around 835 kg/m³ and a Class 2 durability rating (15–40 years above ground). Where a piece uses engineered board (MDF) under the finish, look for an E0 rating: the Australian/New Zealand standard for low formaldehyde emission, under 0.5 mg/L. (Formaldehyde is a gas that can slowly release from the glues in cheaper board; E0 means very little of it.)

What chairs and seating should I pair with my table?

Count your seats around the table you've chosen, then pick chairs for comfort and for how well they'll wear. Make sure they have room to sit side by side without crowding, and that they tuck under the tabletop.

Adore offers dining chairs in velvet, faux-leather and other upholstered styles, so a few calls to make:

• Upholstery. Velvet and faux-leather both come down to the look and feel you want and how the surface suits your household.
• Bench seating. A bench can tuck under the table when it's not in use and suits a wall-side setting. That's handy in a tighter room or a growing family.
• Mixing. Chairs don't have to match the table's timber or stone exactly; what matters more is that they agree on style and scale.

Do I need a buffet or sideboard?

A buffet or sideboard is the other half of "dining room furniture": a low storage cabinet that holds your good crockery, linens and serving pieces. It also gives you a surface to serve from at gatherings. You need one if your dining room lacks built-in storage or you regularly host and want somewhere to lay out food.

Size it to sit comfortably along a wall without crowding the walkway you left in the sizing step. Then aim for it to echo the table (same timber tone, or the same stone top) so the room reads as a set rather than a collection of one-offs.

What should a dining setting cost?

Budget for the whole setting, not just the table. And expect the tabletop material to be the single biggest factor in price: natural marble sits at the top, engineered ceramic and toughened glass in the middle, timber varying by species and finish. Chairs and a buffet then add to the total. That's why buying pieces that coordinate from the start is usually better value than replacing mismatched items later.

For context on timing: furniture prices rose 2.9% in the June quarter 2025, so there's little reward in waiting and watching prices drift up. A few ways to manage the outlay at Adore:

• Adore Members Club: member pricing of 15%–50% off RRP, plus a $20 welcome voucher for new members. It's a pricing tier, not a points program.
• 24-month interest-free finance: spread a larger setting over two years. (The RBA cash rate sits at 3.60% as of August 2025, but interest-free is interest-free.)
• Clearance: an ongoing range up to around 60% off selected items, with free Perth-metro delivery on clearance pieces.

Adore also backs its furniture with long warranties.

What should I do next?

Three steps to move from browsing to a room you love:

1. Measure your dining space (the floor area and the walkways around it) and settle on a table length and shape before you shop.
2. Decide your tabletop material based on your household: ceramic or timber for busy family life, marble for a statement, glass to keep a small room light.
3. Plan the whole setting (table, chairs and a buffet) as one purchase rather than three separate buys.

When you're ready, Adore's Living and Dining range brings the table, chairs and storage together in one place, so you can pull the whole setting from a single collection. There's a quiet case for getting the room right, too. Sharing just one extra meal a week is linked to measurably higher wellbeing, an effect noted as particularly strong in Australia.

Adore Home Living. Built on Family, Trust and Community. Call 1300 000 887 or email info@adorehomeliving.com.au to plan your dining room, or browse online.