How We Designed Our Dining Room with Crate & Barrel’s Free Design Desk Service (+ New Mover Discount!)
Turning our house into a home has been a labor of love—and one of the most helpful tools we used to pull our dining room together was Crate & Barrel’s free design service. In this post, I’m walking you through how we planned our dining room layout with their expert help, the exact pieces we chose, and how we maximized storage in a space that needed it.
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We’ve spent the last month making our new house feel like home, and that meant getting creative with how we used each space. In our previous home, the dining room had built-ins that gave us room for glassware, vases, serving trays, and more. While our new home has more square footage overall, it noticeably lacks built-in storage, so we knew we had to get intentional with our layout from the start.
Our first project? The dining room. It was the easiest room to complete quickly, and also one of the most urgent since we needed extra storage before we could really move forward in other spaces.
Crate & Barrel has been a go-to for us for years—many of our registry items came from there, and we’ve continued to invest in some of their larger pieces. So I reached out to our local store to explore a potential partnership and was thrilled when they encouraged us to try out their free Design Desk services (yes—completely free and available to everyone!).
The process was easy and fun. We started by measuring the room and sharing those dimensions with our assigned designer, who then created a virtual layout of the space. You can opt for a virtual appointment, an in-home visit, or an in-store experience. We chose to go in-store, which allowed us to see the pieces in person and compare them directly to what we already owned (like our well loved Tate Dining Table).
The design experience starts with a flat, 2D layout of your room (shown above) and quickly evolves into a 3D rendering (shown below), allowing the designer to plug in anything from the Crate & Barrel catalog. We spent about an hour with our designer, talking through our needs and preferences, and playing around with different layout options. While I worked with our designer, Drew wandered the store and spotted a few items, like the Raffael Bar Cabinet, that we ended up including in the rendering.
Once our layout was finalized, we were able to order what made the most sense for us at the time. I loved that it was very low pressure, with an understanding that maybe we didn’t want to do everything all at once. We ended up purchasing three Arno Black Wood Side Chairs, the Pali Black Wood Dining Bench, the Raffael Bar Cabinet, and the Tate Credenza. We kept our existing rug since we figured we’d wait until our toddler is a little less messy, ha. It is just a washable ruggable rug in 8 x 10.
The hardest part was waiting for everything to get delivered, but luckily for us everything we wanted was in stock so we were able to schedule our delivery when we checked out.
The delivery process was seamless. We received a time window a few days before, along with a tracking link that was super accurate. Everything arrived on time and in great condition. Once it was all set up, we decided to swap out our chandelier (Weston Black Mid-Century Modern Chandelier Light) for the one in our design rendering, and it’s being installed this week!
We are so happy with how everything came together. The Raffael Bar Cabinet has tons of space, it holds all our liquor, wine, stemware, and more. The Tate Credenza stores our serving dishes, gold flatware, placemats, napkins, kitchen towels, and even those random essentials (like tape and scissors) that don’t fit in our kitchen, because we only have two drawers total in there (!!).
If you're moving or just rethinking a room layout, I can’t recommend Crate & Barrel’s design services enough. It made the process fun and stress-free, and helped us make smart decisions for both form and function. Plus, if you’re a new mover, be sure to ask about their New Mover Discount, it was a huge bonus for us as we ordered. You can learn more by visiting your local store or checking out their design services online!
All of our pieces:
Chandelier: Weston Black Mid-Century Modern Chandelier Light
Table: Tate 108"-144" Walnut Wood Extendable Dining Table
Chairs: Arno Black Wood Side Chair
Bench: Pali Black Wood Dining Bench
Bar: Raffael 39" Carved Wood Bar Cabinet with Storage
Sideboard: Tate 62" Walnut Midcentury Credenza
Plates / Bowls: Mercer Collection, in Grey
Silverware: Jasper Gold 20-Piece Flatware Set
Placemats: Chilewich ® Rectangular Charm Neutral Easy-Clean Vinyl Placemat, in Natural
