12 of the Best Dining Room Redos We Saw in 2022

Whether with your extended family, friends, or a good book, ’tis the season to cozy up around the dining room or kitchen table. And if you’re looking for a little dining setup inspiration for this fall and winter, you’ve come to the right place, because Apartment Therapy featured more dining room redos than ever this year!

Want to help get your creative sparks flying when it comes to creating a cozy backdrop for your next meal? Check out the 12 redos below for inspiration. There’s a style to suit everyone.

The elongated moulding in Momina’s (@momina.zee) dining room redo makes the room appear taller and more spacious — and of course it’s going in the best of 2022 list because the moulding is painted sage green, (Behr’s Jungle Camouflage), aka one of the trendiest paint colors of the year. And Momina’s upgrades aren’t just limited to the walls. She also refurbished her new (to her) dining room chairs, a Facebook Marketplace find.

If you like a little bit of bold color but not wall-to-wall neon, this redo’s for you. Alyssa Yost’s (@alyssayosthome) “dark even during the day” dining room was in need of wall-to-wall white paint (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White) to make it brighter, but she didn’t want to skip out on color altogether — hence the hot pink chairs. “The pink was not part of my original design, but I love how fun they are, and they ended up being the perfect color,” Alyssa says. She used spray paint on the chairs, and the table in the room is refurbished, too.

Zero-tools-required redo alert! DIYer Ashley (@our_gaff_) used IKEA mirrors and black paint for her dramatic dining room accent wall. The IKEA LOTS and LONSAS mirrors (similar to BLODLÖNN mirrors in the U.S.) have adhesive strips on the back for mounting, meaning they don’t require any tools to hang. Ashley says she went with a mirrored look because her dining space is somewhat small, and the mirrors effectively make the room look brighter and larger.

What makes a space more original than one-of-a-kind artwork?! This blue-turned-pink dining room features a hand-painted mural by owner Natalie Metzger (@beholdinghome) herself; it’s inspired by the 1858 painting “A Pastoral Scene” by Asher Brown Durand. The other inspiration for the room? Natalie’s family heirloom wedding china. Natalie pulled the pink color of the walls (Farrow & Ball’s Setting Plaster) and the blue in the reupholstered velvet chairs from the plate pattern.

This makeover by Melissa Doucet trades dated ditsy floral “very thick layers on layers of wallpaper” for dramatic black paint (Sherwin-Williams’ Caviar). During the dining room renovation, Melissa and her husband had to add a bulkhead for plumbing for their primary ensuite, which actually turned into a statement-making ceiling feature despite Melissa’s initial nervous feelings. “What I thought was going to be an eyesore became my favorite feature!” she says.

An Apartment Therapy “best of” list wouldn’t be complete without an IKEA hack, and here’s one you can copy in dining rooms both large and small. DIYer Alexis Nicole (@alexisnicolemakes) used two IKEA KALLAX units to create L-shaped seating (and storage!) in her dining room corner. “We wanted the storage to be entirely within the bench, so I opted to turn the bookcases on their backs so the storage is on top, and then I added some trim to the sides and topped with wood to act as a lid,” Alexis explains. Her curtains are also a DIY project made from drop cloth, tension rods, iron-on adhesive, and a hand-drawn windowpane pattern.

The guiding force behind this bold dining room redo was the heron wallpaper from Hygge & West, of course. “I made that decision in less than five minutes, and then figured the rest of the room out from there,” homeowner and designer Katherine Thewlis (@hausmatter) recalls. The rest of the room consists of plum-colored paint (Sherwin-Williams’ Rookwood Dark Red), a cool acrylic chandelier, which Katherine had waiting in storage and was waiting for the perfect project to use; the leather chairs, which she stained to achieve their jet-black color; and the white tulip table, which she chose specifically for its shape. “All of this romanticism really needed some modern, graphic punches,” Katherine says. Her end result? A whimsical-meets-edgy, graphic-meets-romantic dining room.

Another design trend that stands out in 2022? Arches, everywhere. This dining room redo by Sav Gordon trades regular rectangular doorways for something a little more sculptural — and it took two or three tries to nail the look. “What they say is true: When you start renovating an old home, every wall you open has a surprise,” Sav says. In this case, at the top of both doorways in the dining rooms, there were support beams that couldn’t be moved, which meant it took a couple of tries to keep the arches from looking too square when framed. Once the arches were framed, the drywall was custom cut to match and installed, and the arches were mudded and sanded to perfect the shape, then painted Behr’s Ultra Pure White. If you’re a renter and can’t actually cut your walls, you can still add arch-shaped interest to your doorways with funky trim or peel-and-stick silhouettes.

A dining room and library in one? Yes, please! DIYer Lindsey Boehmke (@hilltown_house) added floor-to-ceiling shelving on one side of her dining room to store recipes, dishes, and her LEGO collection. On the other walls, she added a thin brick treatment, and on the ceiling, she added shiplap. The result is 360-degree warmth and texture, a far cry from the “cold and disconnected” dining room before.

OK, this one’s technically a kitchen redo, but we have to call out the cozy (and totally budget-friendly!) dining corner just off the bar in Sarah Sherman’s (@simply.sarah.home) lake house cottage. A professional carpenter built the banquette seating, which has hidden storage, and Sarah and her husband painted it navy (using a Sherwin-Williams paint color-matched to their cabinets) themselves. Their table was a $50 Habitat for Humanity find, and the bentwood chairs were $15 each on Facebook Marketplace.

Black paint isn’t what typically first comes to mind when you think of calming spaces, but it certainly helped center this bright yellow room, which was once used as a meditation space. Plus, the black paint goes well with homeowner Becky England’s (@begood.vintage) mid-century (and mid-century-inspired) furniture. Becky picked Valspar’s “Dark Kettle Black” for the walls. “I wanted it to feel intimate, dramatic, and comfortable,” she says. Look up, and you’ll see two more improvements she and her husband made in the space: they scraped the popcorn texture from the ceilings, and they swapped the too-small light fixture for a cool elongated Sputnik one.  

This room in Cindi Yang’s home had many ’90s elements before: From the walls to the carpet to the trim, beige and brown reigned. But Cindi didn’t totally hate it. Instead, she wanted to come up with a color palette and shapes that felt more modern. “For some reason, a part of me kind of liked it, and it made me sad to completely paint over it!” Cindi says of the room’s initial wall color. “It just needed something to spice it up to make the room shine.” The solution was a freehand mural — a DIY first for Cindi, who says she wanted the painting process to be “fun and organic.” Looking at the final result, these are spot-on descriptors for the fun blue blobs that now dance around the room, too. The freehand pattern plus the Miami-inspired furniture take this room from dated to daring and cool.