How To Renovate

EP71 Designing For Entertaining

• Tash South

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If you're someone who loves having people over—whether it’s lively dinner parties, relaxed drinks with friends, or chaotic but joyful kids' parties, this episode is made for you. 
Today, I’m walking you through how to design or renovate your home with entertaining in mind.

Because let’s be honest, hosting is so much more enjoyable when your space is planned for it and it flows beautifully.
Whether you’re planning from scratch or looking to tweak your current setup, I’ll share ideas that will help you create a welcoming, functional home that’s ready for guests, at the drop of a hat!

From clever layout tips and breakout zones to lighting layers and storage for all those extra glasses, we’re covering it all.

We’ll chat about how to make your home ready for entertaining from the front hallway all the way through to the garden.

I’ll go through zoning tips, planning your circulation, flow and flexible layouts to lighting and breakout areas for conversation and connection. 

Let’s get ready to welcome guests with ease - I’ll see you inside!

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Hi I'm your host, Tash South I'm an Interior Designer and Renovation Consultant, and I'm here to help you design, renovate and style your home better. Let's create your dream home together.


Each episode of How To Renovate is short, but brimming with practical advice to help you manage your renovation project with confidence and success.

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Tash South:

Hey there my lovely renovators, how are you doing this week? I cannot wait to get into this episode with you. It's a little bit different this week. I'm talking about designing for entertaining. Now I don't know about you, but I love having people over in my home. We've put so much effort into it, we love it, and so we love to invite others that we want to spend time with into our home. And I just love having people over. I do love cooking, I love just having a drink, having a chat with people. So as a family, that really is one of our big pleasures in life. We feel really fortunate to have the home we have and live where we do, and so we love to invite others in, whether it's the kids with their friends, having play dates or having birthday parties, or whether it's my husband and I hosting dinner parties or regular parties. We just love having people around, having people over and cooking for them, and just getting together and having a good time. And so, if you are the same way inclined, I hope you enjoy this episode. I'm going to be talking about how to think through at design stage, planning your home for when you're entertaining. So, obviously, like everything I talk about all the time, this is best done right at the start. If you have the opportunity to be designing your home from scratch or redoing your layout, you want to think about all of this at that stage so that you can prepare for it. You can think about how you want to have people in your home, how you want to host, how you want everyone to enjoy themselves and enjoy the space. Let's get into the episode and talk about all the things you can do when you're thinking ahead about designing for entertaining guests in your home. So, designing for entertaining is so much more than just having a few extra chairs that you pull out and an extendable table. You really need to think through the use of the space, how you want people to connect, interact, and you want to encourage that connection. So it's all about shaping those spaces for that intimacy and flow, and not only in the obvious areas like the dining room, but also some other areas of the home, which we'll go through in this episode. So let's get started. Okay, number one, first impressions matter. So let's start right at the front door. So again, if you're having the opportunity to relay out your home and you're doing a big renovation from scratch, think about how people enter into your home. So that generally means the hallway. And if you have the luxury of being able to make your hallway a decent sized space that includes storage, that includes a space where you could put things down like shoes and bags and coats and jackets and keys and all the things that you come into your home with, or that guests will come into your home with, and just think that through by having enough space, enough circulation space, enough space if you're welcoming people in, that there's enough space for everybody to stand, put their coats somewhere, put their shoes away if that's what you want in your home, if you want people to take your shoes off, somewhere to put their shoes, somewhere to put their handbags, and so just think about that ahead because it makes such a lovely welcoming impression. If people can come into your home straight away, put their things down, feel comfortable, feel at home, and not feel like, oh, I don't quite know where to put my things, I don't know if I should walk in with my shoes on. I don't so it just makes everyone feel really welcome right at the door when you greet them. It's just to be able to have that space, that well thought out space with storage and places to put things. I think it makes people feel at ease just straight away, and then they're ready to come in and relax and enjoy being with you. And even little things down to what the hallway feels like, the atmosphere of it. So get the lighting right, maybe you have some sort of scent in your hallway that kind of gets rid of all the smell of all those shoes, whatever you might have there. It's nice for you, yourself, and your guests to walk into somewhere that feels calm, is well lit, and also smells really good. So think about all of those things as you're walking into your home. And I think this is quite an easy thing to do to picture as you walk into your own home. Just take a moment at the front door, look around, think about the things that aren't quite working, think about what it might feel like to walk into perhaps a more spacious place, a space that's maybe more organized, or a space that's just generally more pleasant to walk into in terms of whether it's clean, whether it smells good, whether the lighting's good. So think about all those things right at the front door, and that will make a great start for your entertaining. Let's move on to the next point. So the next one is social versus private spaces. So these are just fancy terms we use in the interior design world, but it generally means the spaces that you invite guests into, so the more social spaces like your living room, dining room, kitchen, all of those spaces that are kind of more open to guests, and then you also have, of course, you have your private zones like your bedrooms and so on, that guests generally don't go into when you're entertaining for the day or entertaining for the evening. So, of course, it's always nice to keep those private zones private. So in your layout, think about that when you are relaying out your home, planning for your renovation. It's always lovely, if it's possible, to keep the private zones grouped together away from the more public zones so that you still have that privacy and you don't have to have your whole home on show every time someone comes around. You are able to shut those doors, perhaps it has a hallway or somewhere that's accessed a little bit more privately, so that feels like yours, and then you have the more social spaces in your home as well, which of course, then you need to think about how people flow through that, how those spaces connect to one another, for example, how the kitchen connects to the dining room, connects to the living room, and how those are going to work when you have a lot of people in your home. So it's really important to be able to design those social spaces to be able to flow properly. You want it to feel natural that they flow together, and then have those private spaces a little bit more tucked away. So layout planning really comes into play here. Think really carefully about how you want to use the space, what needs to be done in those spaces, the functions they need to have, and then also when you have extra people into your home, how that will change those functions and see if you can lay out to accommodate all of those. And then, of course, you can use things like sliding doors, double doors, bifold doors, partitions. You can use different ways to be able to have that flexibility to open and close spaces when you do and when you don't have guests as well. So, next let's talk about room size. So, if you have smaller rooms, you can obviously work with that in terms of perhaps opening up rooms, creating links between different rooms that they are adjacent to, and in that way you might be able to make it feel more spacious, more light, you'll have some flow between the rooms. But if you're lucky enough to have large room sizes, then you have a different problem. You could have the problem where it just feels too big, a bit echoey, not very connected. So, a clever way to break up a bigger room is to use zoning. So you can use rugs, you can use groups of furniture, you can use colour on the wall. Even large plants or screens that are freestanding can be quite clever to divide off little spaces. You want it to feel like a little series of comfortable spaces rather than this large empty room. Because large open spaces that aren't thought through properly can actually feel quite awkward and quite overwhelming. So think about how you want to feel when you come into that room and how you can make it feel a little bit more cozy and a little bit more conducive to entertaining and also to that connection and the conversation that we talked about at the start. But zoning larger rooms would definitely make them feel more inviting, more intimate, while still keeping that overall flow. Which brings us really nicely onto the next point, which is circulation and flow, which is really important when you're thinking ahead about entertaining in your home. Because how people move through the home is quite crucial, really. You want to try and avoid any sorts of bottlenecks or little awkward spaces where people might naturally gather. I usually find this is in the kitchen. If there's a little spot in the kitchen, people will always gather there. If there's even the tiniest amount of space, thinking all of that through at the layout stage, it's really going to help you kind of alleviate those areas and maybe try and plan for it a little bit better so people will flow better through the space. Gather in spaces that are intentional, that where you thought you could, with the layout and the planning, plan for them to go to together so that the flow in the rest of the house or the rest of the rooms, let's say you're in the kitchen preparing food, and it's frustrating as lovely as it is to have guests around, if everyone's standing in the places you need to be. So you want to think that through about where people might gather in the home, and that really comes down to how you plan the flow and the circulation at that floor plan stage. Doorways or hallways, like we talked about before, where people are kind of gathering to arrive, gathering to leave. If you have an opportunity to have a wider doorway rather than a narrower doorway where your dining room perhaps links up with your living room, so think all of those things through, and then of course, you always have the option of that flexibility of adding doors that can be tucked away, that can be slid away, sliders, partitions, and so on. So think really carefully about how the space will be used and also how you want to entertain in your home, whether it's parties where everyone's standing around having a drink, or whether it's proper dinner parties where everyone is sitting down. Think about everything and you can always plan for it all. Another clever way you can actually trick these clear circulation routes is by sight lines. Because just think about it. If you walk into someone's home and there's a view of whether it be the kitchen or the outdoors beyond, and you can see that from the front door or the hallway, you're kind of naturally drawn to the more open spaces or that area or the outdoors. And so think about the sight lines when you are planning your home as well. Perhaps you want to have a sight line from your hallway through to your kitchen, and then from your kitchen through to your dining room, and so that naturally pulls people around in the correct way. If you have sight lines, if you have even a great piece of furniture or a great piece of artwork that draws people towards it, think about where you place them because that will determine how people move around the home as well. It's a really clever way of working with that flow and circulation in your home because you don't really want people to feel boxed in or stuck in certain areas of the home. You want them to feel like they can move around freely, and if they see a conversation happening over there that they want to join, they want to be able to get there quite easily, and so that all works together really well. And next is one of my favorite points in this episode: it's using breakout areas. So even if your space is large or small, you'll have the opportunity to create a breakout area or two. So even if your space is small, you can at least create just one. Not everyone wants to be in one large group chatting all the time. People love to kind of go and have a smaller conversation, a breakout conversation with one or two others, perhaps. And so it's always lovely if people can do that, and there's a little area or spot that you've thought through where they can do that. It can be really simple. A couple of chairs in a corner with a little lamp. It could be a quiet little snug. If you're lucky enough to have an extra little living space, create a little snug in there that people can break out to. It could be a window seat, it really could be a number of things. So I really encourage you to think about this when you're planning your general social spaces. It's a really, really great space to include in your home, and not only when you have guests. In my own home, we have an open plan kitchen, diner, living room, and it can be a bit overwhelming at times. We're finding as the kids are getting older, we do want to actually have a bit more division, but it is zoned and there are breakout areas. So when we are entertaining, there are numerous places people can sit. We have chairs at the island, we've got a little sofa by the bifold doors that look onto the back garden so people can break out there. We have the connected living room, which is quite small and it's painted completely black, so it's very snug. And often when we have people over, some people will just naturally gravitate towards that, go and sit on the sofa in there, have a chat. So just think about how you can just divide off these little breakout areas that just encourage that conversation, and also it's really nice for people who feel a bit overwhelmed by being in big groups to just be able to break out a bit and go and talk to one or two people here or there and feel like they're in a separate area. So just kind of keep that in mind as well because doing that really does make the home feel welcoming, it creates cozy spaces, it creates connection for you and your family, but also you and your guests, or between your guests. So these little mini areas, these mini retreats, really make your home feel quite welcoming and also layered. If you're adding different areas, and perhaps every little breakout area has a slightly different look or texture or lighting, it adds to the layering of your interior, which always makes for a more homely home. So now moving on to something that we have been seeing happening in interiors for really many many years now, and that is kitchen as theatre. So I think you know what I mean here is having a big open plan kitchen, big island where everyone can be, everyone can see, everyone can chat, and so that the person who is doing the cooking doesn't feel left out of the party and the socializing, which is really important, but of course that comes with its downsides because open plan kitchens are brilliant, but the guests don't always need a front seat to the dirty dishes, do they? So think really carefully. If you're having a kitchen that's leading onto your other social spaces in your home, you want to think carefully about the layout and the planning within the kitchen itself. And so, something I love to do if someone loves entertaining but they do want to have a big island in the kitchen, I generally try and keep the sink and the hob off of the island and towards the background so it's a little bit more hidden, and that's exactly what I've done in my own kitchen as well because we love entertaining. So when we have guests over, our open plan kitchen, our island is completely exposed, but at least we have the cooking and the washing up and whatever's happening on the back area behind the kitchen island, and so I did that really intentionally because I want to keep the kitchen island clear. Perhaps we have food laid out there, or a bar, or drinks, or snacks, or nibbles, whatever it might be. It's generally the place if we're having our one of our kids' birthday parties, we'll put the birthday cake there, that's where we'll, you know, light the candles, everyone will gather, the kids will blow them out. So that that is kind of the idea behind it all, the thinking behind it all, which is what I'm encouraging you to do here is think about how you want to entertain, how you want to have people in your home, how you generally celebrate, and how you can just make your homework really, really well for that without creating extra mess or clutter or stress, and just making it really pleasant for everyone who's there to enjoy themselves. Another thing you can do in the kitchen to hide that mess, and again, if you have the luxury of space, why not include something like a butler's pantry or a utility room or a larder so you can have this kind of extra space where you can hide things, you can prep the food, and you can have more area clear for your entertaining space. So I love that. And luckily, I didn't have enough space to do that in my own home. But what I did manage to do was we have a very, very small utility room, it's almost a utility cupboard, really. But that space is so grateful when we're entertaining. Everything that you don't want to have out, whether it's exercise equipment or kids' toys or laundry drying, whatever it is, gets shoved in the utility room, and in no time at all, the house seems really clear, really tidy, and ready to have guests over. So you really want to kind of balance that sociability with the function of your home as well. Never ever forget the function that always comes first, and you can always work with your layout and work with everything around that. And then moving on to the next point here, which is that flexibility is key. So when you're planning your layout at floor plan stage, really think about how it can be flexible. So this really comes down to the layout and also the kind of furniture you choose and where you put that furniture, how you group it, how it can be flexible for you in lots of different uses. So when it comes to the layout, you can think about some of the things we've already talked about, like having wider doorways, having doors that can shut off certain areas when you're entertaining, or open up certain areas when you're entertaining, whether it's fold away, whether it's slide away, whether it's double doors that kind of fold back on themselves to increase that flow so people can move around more easily. How they move from the hallway through the rest of your home all the way through to the back garden. Think about all of those things and think about how it can be the most flexible it can be when you're at layout stage. Then also in terms of furniture, there are so many options out there now for flexible furniture. Whether it's an extendable table so you can be flexible. If you're having a smaller dinner party, a larger dinner party, you want to just do everything with ease, right? So if you're having suddenly 10 people over, you want to be able to just extend that table. Perhaps you have some extra stacking chairs that you've you can store in a utility room or foldable chairs. Think about all of those things and how it can just be easy for you so that when you have people over and you have the pleasure of having others in your home, it's not extra frustration and extra stress for you, that it all just kind of happens quite naturally and quite easily because you've planned for it, you've thought about it before. So you really just need to think about how you use your own space for your own use and also those social situations and how you can just kind of flex between the two and move between the two quite easily. So all of that will help you to adapt your living space from how you usually live in it day to day to then adapting it for all different sorts of entertaining situations. So let's move on to the final point for this episode, everybody, which is setting the mood with design and layers. So, first up, one of my most favorite things to talk about when it comes to interior design is lighting. Lighting is so so important when it comes to preparing your home and getting it just right for entertaining. You want to have different layers of lighting and control of those different layers because obviously you have lots of different situations where you might be entertaining. If it's a dinner party, you want the lights usually quite dim, but still light enough so people can have conversation and see the food and all of those functional things, but you don't want it to be these bright lights that everyone sits under and has a meal. So think about the lighting layers, whether that's task lighting, it can come down to really simple practicality, as in where do you put your spots, where do you put your pendants, where do you put your LEDs, and how you have them on separate circuits so you can control all of those, whether they're separately or grouped together in some sort of way. So, really, really think about that. The lighting is so important. It can even help with the zoning, which I've talked about. So having lighting in different zones to differentiate those zones is a great tip when it comes to breaking up your space into those breakout zones, but also just that layering and that design where you can create different zones with groups of furniture and a lamp. Really simply, a couple of chairs, a big lamp, a little side table. Instantly, you have a great little zone that the eye recognizes and it makes people drawn to it for those breakout sessions, creates a great little zone. Next, let's talk about acoustics, so important, especially if you have larger rooms. And so, of course, you want the acoustics to be nice if you're entertaining and also just for your general day-to-day life. You don't want it to be echoey and feel empty. So, this is where you can start to layer in those softer textures, like your drapes, window dressings, softer furniture, perhaps um upholstered dining chairs, a little sofa here, some rugs. So, all of those things are going to help with the acoustics, but also the atmosphere. Because when you're having large groups of people, you want the acoustics to be good. You don't want it to feel too echoey and too loud, and all of those things will help. And then, of course, you might be having some music in the background as well, which of course you also want to plan for at design stage. Think about where you want to have your speakers, how you are going to stream your music into the space, how loud or not you want it to be. So, all of these things can be thought through and planned well to create an amazing home for entertainment. And you know, everything I'm talking about here can also be taken outdoors. So, in the summer, if you're entertaining outdoors, you can use loads of what we've talked about here in terms of zoning, in terms of not forgetting to add electrics out into your garden if you want to have music out there, in terms of having flexible furniture and seating and being able to bring some extra chairs out. So, all of these elements can be included into your garden area as well. And of course, in the summertime, if your garden space is well set up for entertaining, you can create that amazing indoor-outdoor feel, which just makes your home feel so much larger, lighter, brighter, more spacious, and even better for entertaining. And then, of course, I cannot get through this episode without talking about storage. Storage is so important when it comes to being ready to entertain because if you are an entertainer and you love having guests, you there's stuff, there's a lot of stuff that comes with it: extra dinner wear, extra cutlery, extra glasses, wine glasses, um, cocktail glasses, cocktail making things, whatever it might be, however you enjoy entertaining, it comes with extra things. And so, really think about the storage and where that will go, whether it's having a dedicated area in your kitchen for your entertaining items, or whether it's having extra storage like a sideboard or a built-in in your dining room or your dining area that will house all the overflow crockery and cutlery that you need when you have extra guests over. So, think about that really again at planning stage because it'll be really frustrating if you do have a lot of extra things to be able to kind of have that day-to-day in your regular kitchen storage and have to always have it in the way when you don't need it every day. So, think about that as well. Storage is so important when it comes to entertaining with ease and you want to have kind of clear spaces and just not for it to be a huge frustration every time you entertain. Because I find since since we've moved into our house, and since I always thought I I love entertaining, and this is how I want to do it, now at you know, a moment's notice, I'm actually quite known in my friendship group to be very last minute when it comes to entertaining. Sometimes we might just have a free Saturday night, and I'll realize on Friday evening, and I'll just message some of my friends and say, We're free tomorrow night, why don't you come over for dinner? Why don't you come over for some drinks? And then with very little effort, you know, the house is ready, we're ready to have them over and have a good time because we've thought about it before, it's all done kind of with ease, and because we do it regularly, it really isn't a big deal. I know that so many of my clients and so many people I talk to, they actually would love to entertain more, and sometimes that is even the goal when when I go in to help them design their homes. They just say one of the most important things to us is that we want to spend more time with our wider family and our wider friendship group, and we just feel like we like it's always a hassle, we can't do it easily, we don't have the space, the house is not set up for it, and so you know you might think, Oh, it's it's a bit trivial, but that really is why people make a home a lot of the time. It's a really important part of our lives, of how we connect, of our community, is is by having our friends and family around us, so it really is quite an important thing that I absolutely love doing, and I know that when I design homes for clients, that is really important to them as well. But that brings us to the end of this episode, everybody. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that if you love entertaining as much as I do, that you can plan for it, just plan for a few things in your home. Hopefully, this episode was useful to help you do that, and you can do it with ease, and you can have that connection with your friends and family that you want, and it doesn't have to be a big deal, it can happen easily if you just plan for it. If you enjoyed the episode, please do give us a like, a follow, a subscribe wherever you might be watching, whether it's on YouTube or whether you're listening on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts, wherever you are, a rating really helps us, a comment is great, it just helps other renovators find us as well, and it helps other people make their homes amazing too. So I'd really appreciate it if you could do that for me. But I will see you next week. Bye for now. For more information on my five-pillar process for successful renovation, you can go directly to southplacestudio.com forward slash pillars, where you'll find an introduction to the process which covers each of the pillars and what they cover. We also have a number of other free renovation resources. Go now to southplacestudio.com forward slash freebies. I have created some amazing freebies for you there. There is one on the process, like we just said, there is one on um planning permission, there is one on kitchen design, there is another one on lighting planning. Go and check those out. There's so much free information there to help you with your innovations.