Just because you live in a small space doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice key pieces of dining room furniture. Say goodbye to dinners on your coffee table—we’ve got lots of space-saving tips to show you the way to incorporate dining room furniture into your space-conscious home.

Before we talk dinette sets, let’s revisit a few cardinal rules of decorating a small home:

• Use light colors. This doesn’t mean all your walls have to be white. Light-colored walls are more reflective than dark walls, making rooms appear larger. Save darker colors for furniture, artwork and other accents.
• Buy a mirror. Or two or three. Like light walls, mirrors reflect light around the room and make it appear wider. If there’s no place for a mirror on the wall, consider placing decorative mirrored tiles around your fireplace.
• Place furniture at angles. An extra bonus: the storage space left behind the angled furniture piece.
• Create “rooms.” Use backless bookshelves to separate areas of a room without blocking light. Alternatively, use a low wall or sideboard to create “rooms.” For even more ideas, check out our previous blog about the great multifunctional uses of sideboards in dining room furniture.
• Find multifunctional furniture. The premiere example: futons.

Building upon these ideas, let’s find the perfect dining room furniture for your apartment or loft. A great starting point is determining how many people you’ll want to sit.

If you’d like to have the option of large dinner parties, consider two of the greatest dining room furniture space-savers out there: drop-leaf tables and dining tables with removable center leafs. These provide ample space for your family of four to sit down, with the option to expand to seat 8-10 people. Removable leafs are then stored handily in a nearby closet or under a bed. Drop-leaf dining tables in particular take up minimal space and can even function as a side accent table along a wall or behind a sofa.

If you expect to be a table for two most every night, consider a bistro table. These two-seater pub sets are stylish, cozy, and take up minimal space.