5 min readWhile the current role of formal dining rooms may now be a hotly debated topic, House Beautiful readers have delighted in admiring these spaces for decades. Some, like the fantastical blue-and-white tiled dining room Mark Hampton designed in 2001, practically beg you to zoom in, gasp, and ogle every detail. Others, like the intimate breakfast room Ken Fulk created beside a courtyard, complete with a trestle table and garden benches, make you want to step right into the photo, run your hand along the tabletop, and settle in for a very good meal. Read on and make yourself at home.
To celebrate House Beautiful’s 130th anniversary, we dug through our archives to find the very best dining rooms ever published in the magazine—along with standout bedrooms, kitchens, and more. Get inspired by these 25 unforgettable spaces, spanning the 1960s to today.
The One in a High-End Tiny Home (1969)
A still-famous Gwathmey-designed home on Long Island that’s just 1,300 square feet features a living/dining room with double-height windows looking over a little pool.
The Pool House That Could Be a Château (1970)
For a family with five daughters, Melvin Dwork designed this Long Island, New York, pool house to mimic the grand Normandy style of their main house.
The Solarium With a Postcard-Worthy View (1971)
On a bare, rocky shore surrounded by towering oak trees, Ruth Merrill and her architect Judith Chaffee devised a house that opens to the woods and seascape.
The “Winter Garden” in an Ever-Evolving Room (1981)
Tacked onto the side of the house, this room began as just an exterior wall, followed by a porch, then a roof, then glass doors.
The DIY Banquette That Predated Our Current Nook Obsession (1971)
An existing table and bench refreshed with new checkered cushions. An old wood chair dyed with RIT. The checkered wall? Stenciled. This is what it used to be like in the Hamptons.
The Breakfast Room That Opened to the Garden (1985)
The name Laura Ashley may be synonymous with floral textiles, but for her Sag Harbor client, an art consultant, the designer leaned into elegant restraint.
The Country House Owned by a Manhattan Shopkeeper (1988)
At home in the country with Barbara Ohrbach, mismatched chairs and an American quilt wall hanging set the scene around a casual dining table.
The Apartment Worthy of Design Royalty (1991)
Young and wildly talented, Katie Ridder and Peter Pennoyer let House Beautiful into their modest but elaborately decorated New York City apartment in a feature that cemented their future as design icons.
The Most Elegant Off-White Apartment (1991)
Voluminous taffeta curtains add a certain softness to all the stately, cream antiques in William Hodgins’s Boston townhouse.
The Impeccable Rental That Looked Like a Full-Time Home (1991)
With its inherent country charm, playful colors, and rustic formality, this country gatehouse defies all preconceived notions of what a rental may be.
The Kitchen Designed Like a Playhouse (1992)
Situated in an old printing press, this New York City loft apartment was essentially one big empty square until architect Michael Rubin added a birch structure with an arched roof to anchor the kitchen and dining area.
The Home With African-Inspired Design Touches (1992)
“A distinguished Houston mansion gets scrubbed down and smartened up with primitive African art and modern American style,” wrote the editors of House Beautiful about this family home that broke the mold of Texas style.
The Parisian Dining Room With Two Tables (1995)
For Barbara Wirth, author of a book on table settings, a fine Parisian apartment was a chance to bring in not one but two dining tables.
The House That Eliel Saarinen Built (1995)
Planning his Michigan home, the famed Cranbrook architect Eliel Saarinen obsessed over all the details, installing a dining table and chairs of his own design in the octagonal dining room.
Albert Hadley’s Compact Manhattan Apartment (1996)
With a big squishy daybed (that doubles as a sleepover spot for guests), the president of Parish-Hadley used his dining room as a studio and library too.
The Hollywood Home That Redefined White Paint (1996)
Designer Barbara Barry gave every room in her elegant Hollywood Hills home a custom paint color: white first, but with a tinge of mustard, oxblood, chocolate, parchment, or green.
The House With a High-Low Sensibility (1997)
The family’s late-19th-century English fern prints have pride of place in this Pennsylvania house, but Jeffrey Bilhuber hung them in simple plastic frames in a jaunty asymmetrical arrangement.
The Art-Filled Texas Home Tucked Into the Suburbs (1998)
Blond maple chairs by Philippe Hurel in a Christopher Norman silk, a Gilbert Rohde dining table, the Ròyere cabinet—somehow, Emily Summers and Bruce Bernbaum made this family’s trove of treasures feel entirely livable.
The House That Surrounded a Courtyard (2006)
With its 1920s trestle table and French garden benches, this breakfast room by Ken Fulk could be set up steps away under the sunshine. “You leave the world behind,” said Fulk.
The Florida Home Filled With Surprises (2006)
Those grasscloth panels on the wall? They are actually grass yoga mats framed in panel moldings, the ingenuity of Bill Brockschmidt and Courtney Coleman.
The Purple Room That Did Magic Tricks (2010)
Drenched in Benjamin Moore’s Purple Haze, David Kahoi’s Manhattan living room was full of surprises: A banquette in the living room doubles as dining room seating when his family wants to sit down to dinner.
The Vase Collection Presented as an Art Installation (2011)
Only Miles Redd could present a collection of celadon vases in such a disarmingly cool way: Each one rests atop a plaster bracket, scattered across a lacquered aqua wall (thanks to decorative painter Agustin Hurtado).
The Texas Dining Room That Felt Like a Jungle (2017)
A Zuber mural paired with moldings painted Pantone Piquant Green is just one of countless colorful moments in the classic 1930s Colonial that Bailey McCarthy overhauled to suit her vivacious personality.
The Best Friends That Revived an Old Stone House (2022)
In 1716, a thick-walled stone house in Rhinebeck, New York, was built to fend off the cold. A more recent owner, Phillip Smith, and his best friend, House Beautiful’s former Style Director Robert Rufino, filled it with warmth: collected keepsakes, endless antiques, and countless fond memories.
The Unapologetic All-Tile Room (2001)
This fantastical Portuguese-inspired dining room on Long Island was the work of Mark Hampton, who used blue-and-white tile (both real and implied) to cover the walls.
