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Christmas guests on their way? Be ready with extra dining chairs around the table.

Whatever style of Christmas you’re planning, one thing is probably true. Without the people – your family and friends – it wouldn’t be a very jolly affair. So along with providing the food, the wine, the entertainment and the decorations, it’s your job to make your guests feel welcome by choosing the perfect dining chairs for your perfectly festive Christmas dining table.

Dining chairs for relaxed Christmas gatherings

Christmas dinner is the one meal of the year which is allowed to start late and go on for hours. There’s really no timetable – nobody’s rushing off to do homework, catch a bus or, hopefully, watch TV. Your job, as host, is to make sure that everybody can relax and enjoy themselves by providing good food, entertaining conversation and the comfiest Christmas dining chairs you can find.

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We recommend you opt for upholstered dining chairs with cushioned or sprung seats. Dining chairs which have padding in the back as well as the seat will be extra comfortable, and high-backed chairs tend to offer more lumbar support – a good idea for those long, lingering dinner parties. Not all dining chairs have sprung seats but you’ll notice the difference when you sit in one that does.

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Dining chairs for a traditional Christmas

Picture your perfect Christmas dining room. Aside from the dining table laden with goodies, perhaps your overriding impression is the welcoming dining chairs. And if you love a festive decoration, here’s where you can really go to town with red and green, and sparkle and baubles

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Slatted wooden dining chairs lend themselves perfectly to being dressed up with extravagant ribbons and bows. Simply tie a broad piece of ribbon or coloured taffeta around the middle of the back of the chair and fasten in a large bow that faces outward – a lovely surprise for guests as they enter your dining room. Secure the bow with a Christmas tree decoration or a piece of holly. And if that’s a decorative step too far, leather dining chairs always look traditionally festive without any extra embellishment.

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Dining chairs for small and cosy spaces

Small dining room? We prefer to call it compact and bijou. And cosy, which, especially at this time of year, is what everyone craves. But when you’re working with a smaller space, you have to be clever with furniture. An extending dining table is the perfect solution – it’s a large dining table when the occasion demands and a more manageable smaller dining table every other day.

To go with your extendable dining table, opt for simple modern dining chair styles that don’t take up too much room or, even better, substitute two dining chairs on either side of your dining table with a dining bench that’ll accommodate three. Dining benches are a versatile choice year round, and an essential element of small space dining. For occasion dining – like Christmas dining – we suggest you put comfortable seat pads on any wooden dining benches.

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Dining chairs for every style of dining table

Creating your perfect Christmas dining table and dining chair arrangement takes time. If you don’t want a ready-made dining set, then think about which dining chairs go best with your dining table. There’s some logic to the rule of putting wooden dining chairs with a wooden dining table, or contemporary dining chairs with a modern high-gloss dining table. But this is definitely one of those design rules that is made to be broken.

Experiment with very modern chairs around an antique or older-style dining table. Mix vintage or retro-style dining chairs with a contemporary dining table. Arrange upholstered chairs in pairs of different colours, or even opt for an eclectic mix of entirely different styles of chairs around a dining table. Choosing your dining chairs simply because you like them, not because they conform to any design style, fashion trend or colour theme means that you’ll create a dining room you’ll love to entertain in.

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Dining chairs for that festive feeling

Nobody chooses fabric dining chairs because they're right for one and only one occasion, like Christmas. That wouldn’t be practical or very budget friendly. But what if the dining chairs that you choose, while fabulous all year round, happen to be especially perfect at Christmas time?

Stylish and sophisticated the other 364 days of the year, there’s nothing more festive than red dining chairs around a Christmas dining table – one adorned with a white tablecloth, silver candles and holly-themed table decorations? Well, nothing more festive than perhaps green dining chairs around the very same table, perhaps.

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