25 Gray Dining Room Design Ideas

Whether you love rustic, modern, or mid-century, the dining room is one of your best opportunities for showcasing your sense of style in your home. But it's such a furniture-centered space that often it's easy to overlook the potential of other ways to distinguish it.

Even something as simple as a coat of paint can take your dining room in an entirely new direction—giving a sense of color and sophistication that usually isn't possible with furniture alone. And creating an impact doesn't require a bold or overpowering color. In fact, one of the best colors for a dining room is gray. From it's lightest tones to it's moodiest shades, gray is a color that never fails to add drama to everything else you do in a space. Here are some of our favorite dining rooms in this mysterious neutral shade.

Just about every color pops against a gray backdrop, which gives you an infinite number of options for the color story in your space. This room from Casa Vogue has varying gray tones on the wall and floor accentuate the greens of the chair and plants.

Lighter tones of gray are a natural and neutral backdrop for all of your show-stopping moments. Make an eye-catching chandelier the star of the room, complemented by slick and modern dining chairs. 

For rooms with classic architectural elements, gray is especially good for highlighting those details. Even without an abundance of furniture, the character of the room is defined by the color of the walls and floor and the built-in design of the room.

When using gray in a space, look for useful contrasts with brighter tones. The mix of colors in this room tempers the vibrancy of the yellow while energizing the relatively subdued tones of the rest of the space.

Gray is good for much more than a paint color in your dining room. The gray present in the furnishings and represented in the art give this dining room from Traditional Home an undeniable air of quiet dignity.

Whenever you are using one color as the main influence in your space, it's always good to find interesting ways to break up the blocks of color. In this stunning room from Elle Decor, a whimsical leaf-pattern wallpaper in gray maintains the color story while adding a fresh pop of pattern. If you can't match the colors as exactly as you'd like, use stencils and paint to get the look you're after.

For a modern take on color, pair a classic neutral like gray with one of the new neutrals, such as pink. It's a natural combination that will create a soothingly pretty environment. This dining room from Jenny Keenan Design achieves the combination perfectly. 

It's always good to have natural elements in your space, and against a strong, gray background, every pop of green is going to stand out, much like this small room from Jigsaw Designs.

A gray rug over hardwood floors is a clever way to create continuity with gray walls while keeping some of the warmer wood tones. The combination keeps this elegant room from Sebastian Erras Photography from feeling too cold while creating the perfect setting for the fireplace mirror to really shine.

Every shade of brown (especially the bookshelf) in this room from High Home Fashion just jumps off of the gray backdrop. If your dining room includes a lot of wood tones, then a darker gray is an excellent choice for taking what might look like an ordinary table or chair and turning it into the eye-catching center of attention. 

Here's a space from Domino where warm wood tones take center stage against a dark gray background. As before, the strength of the space is in the almost 50/50 division of colors between dark grays and warm wood tones.

Whenever you can mix gray with other colors in a single piece, such as art or a rug, it's a good thing. It can either bring the colors you have in the room together or set the stage for adding new colors to the mix. In this luxurious room by Boca Do Lobo, the gray rug ties in the blue chairs with the gray walls and even the silver overhead lighting.

The pop of color provided by these flowers in this sleek dining room photographed by Tarick Foteh is made even more appealing by the patterned backdrop provided by the patterned drapery. The white space in the drapes keeps the all-gray space from looking too color-blocked and enclosed.

Now, gray might not automatically strike you as the most exciting color, but that's only until you do something exciting with it. The large grayscale wall art in this dining room shared on The Wall Street Journal, really sets the space apart, taking a neutral wall and making it a focal point. 

When decorating with neutral colors, embrace subtle ways to add interest to the walls. The light texturing of the gray wallpaper in this luxury dining room from Elle Decor adds the little extra element that pulls together the aesthetic of the space.