Light, candles and what goes on the table

Light is the cheapest luxury in private dining and the most consistently misused. Guests read a room in the first ten seconds, and warm, low, plentiful light makes a plain table look considered while a bright ceiling makes an expensive one look like a canteen. The rule is simple: turn the overheads off, put the light on the table and on the faces, and leave everything else in shadow.

Candles

Two candles per metre of table is the working minimum and four per metre makes a dinner glow. Use glass hurricanes outdoors and in any room with a draught, buy dinner candles that burn six to eight hours so nobody is replacing them during the main course, and light them twenty minutes before the guests arrive so the room already smells of wax rather than of matches.

Flowers

On a dining table, flowers are low and quiet: a run of small vessels rather than one arrangement, nothing above 25 centimetres, nothing with a strong scent. Seasonal and local reads as confident; imported and tropical reads as expensive, which is a different message. Save the dramatic arrangement for the hall or the sideboard, where its scent will not sit under a guest’s nose for four hours.

Outdoors

Light the table, the route from the door and the steps, and stop. A garden lit evenly looks like a car park; a garden with one lit tree and a bright table looks like a stage. Warm string lights above a long table work if they are high enough not to be looked at directly, and battery lamps under the table edge do more than most people expect.