I’ve lived in six different apartments over the course of a decade in New York — and though my current spot has a bit more room to entertain than any of the previous ones, I’ve always figured out how to accommodate quite a few people in small square footage. I love to cook, and I love to host, so no kitchen and dining room setup (or complete lack of the latter) has ever stopped me. I’ve made sit-down birthday meals, held Thanksgiving and New Years Eve, and had friends crowd around my living room to eat.
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of what it takes to do this confidently and comfortably. I’m sharing all that here, along with the advice of several other small-space experts who specialize in making the most of shoe-box spaces.
If you have space for a dining-room table, your best bets are an extendable or pedestal model.
What I fondly call my “dining area” holds a 61.5-inch rectangular table that seats up to five, or six if I pull it out from the wall enough to add another chair at the end. It’s also extendable; I store the leaf in a nook under our stairs (though it’s slim enough to lean against any wall in any room or slip under the bed). It wouldn’t work to have the larger version out at all times, coming up uncomfortably close to the radiator and my kitchen island. But when I need to, I rearrange it so that the table dominates the space — for one night, no one cares that things look wonky — and I can then squeeze up to eight. I think an extendable table is worth it if you can find a way to configure it in your space when the occasion calls for it.
Another good option is a pedestal table, which Christene Barberich, author of the newsletter A Tiny Apt., recommends. After trying out four different ones over the years, she had a custom version built because of particular width and length requirements — but the pedestal trick stands no matter your situation. “Pedestal tables for small spaces are really incredible because I don’t think a lot of people realize that when you have legs, it limits where people can sit and how many people can sit there,” she says. They come in round (Barberich called out the Knoll Saarinen Dining Table, though I’ve included a cheaper lookalike below) and rectangular shapes.
If you really don’t have permanent space for any sort of table, a folding table can transform another room.
“Get a six-foot table, put a beautiful tablecloth on top of it, set it out in front of your sofa, and put seats on the other side,” says interior designer Shamika Lynch from Maximizing Tiny. “It’s tight, it’s cozy, but now you have a big table where you can sit down and have a nice dinner. You can do some nice tablescaping and set a mood in that area.”
Strategist senior editor Winnie Yang has this cool alternative to a folding table. It’s a console she keeps in her living room — but flaps along both edges come out to turn into a proper dining table that can seat up to eight (and with one flap up, it works as a desk too).
A tablecloth can hide even weirder setups.
When Strategist senior editor Hilary Reid lived in a small studio, she would pull her extendable oval kitchen table out into the middle of her space, place her desk so that it connected with the end, and cover the whole set up with a big tablecloth. “Once you cover the random pieces of furniture, no one knows what’s under them,” she says. “You can set it with your nicest plates (or whatever you want to use), and it will feel as special as if you had an actual dining table.”
Dining chairs matter, too.
To put it bluntly: “There’s no room for arms in small spaces,” says writer and small-space consultant Alison Mazurek. This still gives you many options: Mazurek specifically called out the Hay Rey Chair, and Strategist writer Erin Schwartz has a bunch more in her guide to the best dining chairs. From personal experience, I’ll note that the legs make a difference, too: It gets less squished if they fall in a straight line with the corners of the seat instead of splaying outward.
Mazurek says that a bench can do wonders, often fitting more bodies than chairs (especially true for kids).
Finally, it’s okay to utilize random chairs from around the house. “I can have a stool in the kid’s room and then bring it [to the table]. Or your desk chair can also be a dining room chair, which not everyone wants to do, but I think it’s a good option,” Mazurek says.
Flexible seating can help a lot.
“Thankfully folding chairs have come a long way and more companies are making prettier ones that are not offensive to have in your space,” Lynch says. She even points out that some are nice-enough looking to mount on the wall when not in use. Mazurek has two extremely slim folding chairs from Resource Furniture that tuck in beside her washing machine. “They weren’t cheap, but they fold down to less than an inch, and we’ve had them for ten years,” she says. These were also recommended in Schwartz’s guide by Laura Fenton, author of The Little Book of Living Small.
All the experts I spoke to stressed how useful small stools are. Barberich and Yang love the original stacking Artek ones designed by Alvar Aalto, but you can find many knockoffs out there. “They’re brilliant because they look beautiful stacked in a corner, and they’re also just incredibly sturdy and handy and comfortable, and they slide really far under the table,” Barberich says. They’re never in the way. They don’t look like clutter.” If a guest needs a back to their seat, she simply pulls an actual chair from another room.
Mazurek loves the Aalto stools, too, but has this non-stacking one in her own home. She says it’s extra sturdy, so kids don’t knock it over. And no matter the stool, they can be used not just around the dining table, but in the living room — as additional seating and as side tables, too.
It’s okay for kids and adults to eat in shifts.
“When we have multiple families over, we feed all the kids first. They pile on the bench, all the chairs. We fill the table with all the kid food and they eat in ten seconds flat usually,” says Mazurek. “And then we clear the table, and I light the candles and I set it again for the adults. The kids are running around like chaos. But at least they’re fed and we’re not worrying about them, and I’m not trying to fit 15 people in my tiny dining room.”
It’s also okay to eat in the living room.
When I have more than eight guests, people sit around my living room. Lynch once again points out that small stools are great for this because they can be used for extra seats or side tables, depending on your needs. I also find having a floor pillow or two is nice. It lets your guests know they can and should sit on the floor, and allows them to be more comfortable when they do so.
Mazurek and Lynch say that if you have ottomans, putting trays on top of those so people can set down a plate or drink without worry is great, too. There are even ottomans that come with tight-fitting removable trays on top, like this one from Softline that Mazurek recommends.
And finally, Lynch says a nesting coffee table can be a very useful piece to invest in if you host enough. They can be bunched together when no one is there, but spread out when needed.
Don’t be afraid to clear off unusual surfaces.
If you have a kitchen island or a large swath of kitchen counter space, those are often the go-tos for a buffet. But if you don’t, or you’re looking for separate drinks or snacks stations, Lynch and Barberich say don’t be afraid to clear off more unusual surfaces, like a console or desk. “You could clear a bookshelf and put cocktail napkins and a bowl of nuts there along with two stools,” Barberich says. “Wherever you put a chair, people will go and sit. It’s nice to set up these little stations and then people have options, especially in a small space where you feel like you don’t have them. That’s where the creativity comes in.”
Your dinnerware should stack, too.
When it comes to actual dinnerware, stacking is key. Plates do this naturally, but bowls and glassware can be trickier (even if they technically fit together, some condense tighter than others). Mazurek likes Fable’s products (a popular choice among the Strategist staff, too), Barberich recommends Heller, and I’ve included some of my own favorites below, including Material Kitchen’s glasses that I use for wine. They’re not stemmed, but they still have more intrigue than a basic juice glass.
Be thoughtful about serveware.
Serveware can prove tricker. If you have the space to store a few big bowls and platters, great. If not, I think it’s okay to serve the same dish off of two smaller vessels if need be. Mazurek loves big wood serving boards that she can pile food on — ones nice enough to lean up on the counter and keep within eyesight at all times. You can even use a cutting board so long as you treat it properly (and don’t use it to cut anything with too strong of a smell otherwise).
And — a trick I picked up from my friend and host extraordinaire, baker Gaby Scelzo — tiered platters can help create vertical space for more food (not to mention they just look cool, creating dimension on the table). Recipe developer and writer Mehreen Karim told me the same goes for cake stands on a buffet.
Your kitchen stuff doesn’t all have to live in the kitchen.
“If you think about it, you’re probably selecting things for dinner that already go well with your decor, so integrating those items into the rest of your home and pulling them off of the shelves when you want to use them, then putting them back when you’re done, works great,” says Lynch. I personally keep votives, candlesticks, vases, and water pitchers on various shelves around my house.
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