Breakfast Nook Furniture

The breakfast nook is a room either connected to or a part of the kitchen.  In this usually small room there is not much room for furniture.  Nevertheless, the furniture in this room is among the most important in the entire home.  The reason for its importance is that your family will spend a majority of the time it spends together in this room and around this furniture.  You want to make sure it is comfortable as well as functional.  In addition, guests will gather in your breakfast nook for meals and for visiting, so you want it to be pleasing to the eye as well.  Finally, the breakfast nook is an extension of the kitchen so the décor and furnishing must match your kitchen in style and pallet.  Whether you need small breakfast nook furniture or large, and no matter what kind of home or family you have, the breakfast nook is an important room and the furniture requires careful consideration.

The first piece of breakfast nook furniture and probably the most important piece of kitchen furniture to consider is the breakfast nook table. Your main concerns when choosing this piece of furniture is the size and shape. The shape of the table is important because you want to pick a shape that will allow you to use the breakfast nook space most efficiently. You need to use the space efficiently because you want the table to seat as many people as possible. Some breakfast nooks are just extensions of the rectangular shaped kitchen so a square or rectangular table would be appropriate. Other breakfast nooks are more creatively shaped. For example, you can have a breakfast nook that is adjacent to the kitchen but the outer walls form half of a octagon. For this shape room a round kitchen table would be perfect.

After you know the shape that you want, you turn to size.  As was said before, you want to be able to seat as many people as possible, so the larger the table, the better.  However, you need to have room to maneuver around the table and sit and stand comfortably.  Therefore, you want to measure the space you have available and leave approximately eighteen inches on each side as empty space between the walls and the edge of the tabletop.  That should be enough room for an average adult to pull out a chair and sit down as well as get up from a seated position comfortably.

After you know the shape and size of the table, then you can turn your attention to the materials of construction.  It is important that the breakfast nook furniture match the décor in the rest of the kitchen so you need to consider the material of the cabinets and counter tops when making these decisions.  For example, if you have a more modern kitchen with cabinets made out of particle board and painted a solid color, then you might choose leather breakfast nook furniture.  Leather is a fabric used in much modern decorating and generally comes in solid colors that you could choose to match your cabinets.  On the other hand, a traditional country kitchen with oak stained cabinets would be complimented nicely by an oak table.

Once you have the table picked out, you should start to think about the seating arrangements for your breakfast nook.  You basically have two different kinds of seating to choose between or to use together, chairs and benches.  There are pros and cons to both choices.  Chairs are an advantage if your family is smaller but you entertain guests often.  When people are not intimately familiar with one another as family members are, they often do not feel comfortable sitting on a bench.  Bench seating encourages a closeness that acquaintances do not feel comfortable with.  Also, chairs are more appropriate for older individuals because they are easier to get in and out of.  If someone has trouble getting around, sitting down, or standing up then it is too much to ask them to throw a leg over a bench or slide in and out.

Benches also have advantages.  First, they offer you breakfast nook furniture with storage.  The space under the seat can be used like a storage chest with the seat being the lid.  You can store anything from small kitchen appliances that you do not use daily, to extra table linens, to school or art supplies depending on the age of your children.  If your kids have access to crayons for coloring or pencils and calculators for homework, then you can keep an eye on them while you prepare dinner.  Rice cookers and pasta makers are great to have, but they take up a lot of counter space or cabinet space for something that you only use once and awhile.  Keeping these kinds of appliances in your breakfast nook storage benches is great because they are still close enough to be convenient, but out of your way in the kitchen.

Another reason to like bench seating is that you can fit more people on benches than in chairs.  Generally, you can fit one and a half people on a bench for every chair that you replace with a bench.  For example, if your table can fit two chairs down one side and you replace those two chairs with a bench, then you will be able to seat three people.  In addition to actually seating more people in the same floor space as chairs, benches offer you an opportunity to have a larger table.  Corner breakfast nook furniture eliminates the need for pulling chairs out to sit.  You do not need to leave an eighteen inch buffer, only enough room for someone to slide into a bench.

Although most breakfast nooks only have room for the kitchen furniture sets described above, some breakfast nook spaces are large enough to include other furniture.  A sideboard is a possibility.  This thin table that sits against a wall is like a console table, but it usually comes with several drawers and some cabinet storage.  Many homeowners use their sideboards to store table linens or china.  Another possible piece of breakfast nook furniture is a floor lamp or a plant stand.  These are small pieces that fit into a corner, so more breakfast nooks can include them.