Dining Room Table Size Guide: The Best Table Size For 4, 6, 8, and 10 People

So you're in the market for a new dining room table, and you've finally found one that you love! Saweet! You go to add it to your cart and realize that you have to pick a size. How are you supposed to know which table size to select? Making sure the table's dimensions fit inside your dining room is a no-brainer. But you also need to think about how many people will sit at the table daily and for special occasions. And how often will those special occasions happen when you need to accommodate lots of extra people?

Let's say you do a lot of entertaining and hosting family holiday dinners. In that case, I highly recommend getting an extendable dining table. I'm a big fan because they're versatile and make it super easy to fit additional people in a pinch. The rule of thumb for chair spacing is 24" in between each dining chair, and an extendable table means no one will ever have to squeeze in.

The placement of the legs and the shape of the table also make a difference. When it comes to the leg situation, a pedestal base means table legs won't get in the way of human legs. This base is really only doable with tables on the smaller end. The bigger the tabletop, the more support you need on the bottom. In terms of shape, an oval table makes it a little easier to fit more people because there are no right-angle corners. The soft, rounded edges mean nobody has to eat with a corner jabbing into them. You'll only see rectangular tables in the layout examples below, but you get the point.

Let's check out some visuals I made to make it easy to figure out what size table you need.

Dining Room Table Size Guide For 4-6 People

Below, you can see a 60" wide dining room table with both 4 & 6 dining chairs. There's lots of comfy space for 4 people, precisely what you want for daily eating. If you need to stretch it to 6 seats from time to time, you can definitely make it work, but it'll be tight (rounded corners will make it more comfortable). If you've got young kids, you definitely don't want any chances of elbows touching each other. Cause that's basically the end of the freaking world, am I right? If you're planning to seat 6 people on the regular, I'd opt for a larger table or an extendable table.

SHOP DINING TABLES FOR 4-6

Dining Room Table Size Guide For 6-8 People

Let's go a little bigger, shall we? When you move up to 72", you can fit 6 people with plenty of personal space. Like the 60" table, there's room for 2 more seats, but it gets a bit snug. Again, a table with extendable leaves can fix this problem real quick.

SHOP DINING TABLES FOR 6-8

Dining Room Table Size Guide For 8-10 People

We're moving into the big leagues now. A 90" table can comfortably seat 8 -10 people. However, you're starting to get into the "will this even fit in my dining room?" territory. You need a room that's big enough to accommodate about 3 feet of clearance on every side of the table. A 90" table is not the upper limit though, you can get tables up to 120" long (or more if you go the custom route).

SHOP DINING TABLES FOR 8-10

A quick little disclaimer...the 60", 72", and 90" sizes I used above are just a sampling of what's available out there. You can find a table at pretty much any size you want. But hopefully, this dining room table size guide gave you some confidence to pick your table size so you can add it to the cart and get on with your day:)

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