Carson Kressley and Thom Filicia Have Genius Ideas When it Comes to Dining Spaces

Everyone loves open plan living, but one of its main challenges can be creating spaces that feel distinct from one another — like the dining room shouldn’t feel wedged into the family room and visa versa. On this week’s Get a Room with Carson and Thom (tune in on Fridays at 10/9c!), the team had just this challenge at hand: How to turn around two overwhelming multifunction spaces and carve out living and dining areas that feel separate enough to function as intended yet blend in nicely with the rest of the room? Being superstar design phenoms, Thom Filicia and Carson Kressley totally nailed it by introducing stunning dining tables (more on that below) and plush furnishings arranged in just the right way. 

In the first instance, the challenge was dealing with a massive loft belonging to city dwellers Jessica and Josh. The couple was swimming in space and lacked furniture to fill it up. There was also nothing in place to distinguish one area from another. Thom had the brilliant idea to divvy the space up into three distinct “bubbles.” “The way we’re going to handle this big open space is we’re going to break it up into separate spaces but make it totally cohesive,” said Thom. 

Over in Brooklyn, brownstone-owner Nicole had the same problem — how to make an open plan work in a large rectangular space? In both cases, Thom and Carson made a huge impact by carving out elegant dining areas that managed to feel distinct and intimate while also creating comfortable seating areas great for entertaining. “I’m praying to the design gods that we fixed the situation,” said Carson. You sure did!

Inspired by their choice of dining tables we decided to suss out a few for ourselves that would turn around any room.