lighting – Jellybeans in the City

Among the spaces in our house, the dining room is the one that’s most often used for gatherings. Whether for intimate family meals or a social occasion with more attendees, the dining room provides the venue and backdrop for shared experiences of eating and conversing with other people.

We all want this room to be comfortable and conducive to memorable times spent eating and talking with family and friends.

Whether you’re designing your dining room from scratch, or re-designing it to fulfill your evolving needs, here are some tips to keep in mind:

Define your purpose for the dining room.

Are you using it mainly for private family meals and occasions? Or will you be hosting large parties? How often will it be used? Will it perform additional functions such as doubling as a workspace for household working from home or students doing online lessons?

These considerations will influence the type of furnishings that will go into a room such as getting more ornate and high maintenance pieces for more formal setups and more functional, easy to clean and hardy pieces for rooms that will se everyday use, especially by children.

Light up the space.

As an area for socializing, you want this room to appear bright and ambient. It is often advisable to layer various light sources such as using a chandelier or pendant lights above the dining table supplemented by lamps, sconces and the occasional candles to illumine the space at eye level.

If you are also using the dining room as work/study space, make sure that adequate task lighting is also available.

Get your flooring right.

The dining room gets a lot of foot traffic and is also the site of many spills and splashes. The floor should not only look good, but it should also be easy to clean and able to stand up to wear-and-tear.

Hard flooring may be best for dining rooms that see a lot of use, particularly for entertaining. Softening touches may be applied to amp up the comfort and coziness through area rugs that add texture and color.

If you’re shopping for your dining room furniture, fixtures and accessories, check out and get inspired by the awesome selections at Crate & Barrel.

This US-based retail chain specializing in upmarket and artisanal housewares, indoor and outdoor furniture and home accessories has presence in forty-two countries across the globe.

In the Philippines, its stores are located at:

Level 3, SM Aura Premier, 26th Street corner McKinley Parkway, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Landline: +63 2 88934255| Mobile: +63 917 8895667
Ground Level, Annex Building, SM Makati, Courtyard Drive, San Lorenzo Village, Makati City. Landline: +63 2 88342780 | Mobile: +63 917 5833573
4th Level, SM Megamall Fashion Hall Building D, Wack-Wack Greenhills, Mandaluyong City. Landline: +63 2 89420761 | Mobile: +63 917 8704796

Shop online for Crate & Barrel products through its website and stay updated on its products and offers by following it on Facebook and Instagram.

Photos taken during a store visit at Crate & Barrel’s SM Megamall branch.

One of the few bright spots in the midst of the global pandemic is the realization that we can work -productively and efficiently – at home.

The concept of Work-from-Home (or WFH) has been around for quite some time but it took the necessity for isolation and limited physical or social contact to make it as widely accepted as it is now.

Aside from ensuring your safety from infection by COVID-19, working from home has allowed you greater freedom and flexibility with your time, saved your the costs of travel, office wardrobe and lunches, as well as provided you with improved work-life balance, hasn’t it?

Hopefully, for many of us, WFH is here to stay.

However, this setup is not without some disadvantages, with discomforts and distractions being among the chief complaints among WFH setups.

The good news is that, with a little bit of forethought, these disadvantages can be minimized or eliminated.

Here are some rules of thumb in setting up your home office:

Define the space.

If, after two years of working from home, you haven’t set aside a defined and dedicated space for your home office, I laud your discipline (or pity you for the suffering you put yourself through).

A dedicated (ideally enclosed) area separate from the rest of the household to house your work equipment and provide you with a quiet space for concentration and work meetings will help you work a lot more effectively at home.

Illuminate.

Good lighting is something most people take for granted, but do remember that you need to be able to be able to read from your monitor or notebooks for hours on end. Dealing with glares or shadows while working not only makes it harder to focus on the tasks at hand, it may also cause eye fatigue and headaches, as accidents from momentary blindness as your eyes adjust to sudden changes in lighting conditions.

In these days of Zoom meetings, having enough light to illuminate your face (as opposed to being in shadow in a seemingly dark dungeon) goes a long towards coming across as professional to your colleagues.

If you can’t find a space with good indirect natural light, equip your space with overhead, task and ambient light sources to help your eyes as you do your various activities.

Take a (good) seat.

Your future self will thank you for investing in a good ergonomic chair today as it is designed to support your body as you work while considering your posture, comfort and health.

Sitting in the wrong kind of chair may cause pain in the neck, back and hip areas, as well as distractions due to discomforts caused by poor circulation and posture.

Get organized.

All you need to be able to work should be within easy reach but you also need to keep workspace spic-and-span to reduce distractions and improve your productivity.

This is why using smart storage solutions is a must. If floor space is limited, consider storing vertically through the use of stacking drawers, floating shelves, rolling carts or even pegboards.

So get to work on setting up your workspace. And you can get all you need for your home office at your nearest All Home branch.

AllHome is the Pinoy’s one-stop shop for all home needs. It offers an extensive range of top-quality home-improvement products such as construction supplies, hardware, appliances, indoor and outdoor furniture, homeware, décor, and even electronic gadgets all under one roof.

Its Metro Manila branches include:

Vista Place (Wil Tower), Eugenio Lopez Drive, Brgy. South Triangle, Quezon City
E. Rodriguez Jr. Brgy. Bagumbayan, Quezon City
Starmall EDSA-Shaw, Ground, Epifanio de los Santos Ave, Mandaluyong
Worldwide Corporate Center, Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong
Vista Mall Taguig, Levi Mariano Ave., Taguig City
Vista Mall C5 Extension Road, Quirino Ave. Pulang Lupa Uno, Las Piñas City
Vista Mall Las Pinas, CV Starr Ave., Philam Village, Pamplona, Las Pinas

You may also shop conveniently online at allhome.com.ph to take advantage of AllHome’s wide array of original and top-quality items, easy payment methods and fast delivery timelines.

In-store photos taken at AllHome WCC and Libis. Used with permission.