Ina Garten’s Best Advice for Setting the Table at Your Next Dinner Party

If you want cooking advice that focuses on making things simple and realistic, you turn to Ina Garten. The same goes for advice about dinner parties and entertaining. Garten has repeatedly centered simplicity and ease whenever she’s shown how to set a table, with “How easy is that?” becoming one of her best-known catchphrases. This is a person who advocates for store-bought over homemade if the store-bought version is perfectly tasty and the homemade version is arduous and exhausting. There’s no reason why place settings, centerpieces, and the theme of your dinner party have to be complicated in her view.

When you set a table, you don’t want the visuals to steal the entire spotlight from the conversation. The point of a dinner party is to have good food with people you want to be with and talk to, and a nicely set table is just one aspect of the whole party. Garten delivers — her tips for setting the table at your next dinner party are surprisingly easy and practical. If you want to hold a gathering, but you’re worried about not being able to put together a fancy dining environment, take a look at Garten’s tips so you can breathe easily.

The quirky look of mismatched plates and other items can be charming when done well, but if not done well, it can look like you threw things on the table without thinking. Ina Garten says that mixing and matching can be interesting in a very positive way, but you have to have some common themes that connect everything. A specific color scheme is one of the best ways to do that — just choose a color that’s easy to find and match.

For example, cloth napkins don’t have to have the same pattern, but if they use the same group of colors, that’s good enough. She’s used different chairs around a table, made just orange and white the dominant colors for a Thanksgiving party, and mixed fine china and plain plates at one party. She’s all about keeping everything as simple as possible and has noted that setting up for a party can quickly become too complicated and too much to handle.

Sometimes, a dinner party has to be large when it’s for an event, such as a family gathering back home or a holiday, but if you’re throwing one for fun, keep it small. Ina Garten’s preferred number of people is six, and she’s admitted that even a number like 12 people can be too much. She speaks from experience; the first dinner party that she ever threw had 20 guests. She admitted that it did not go well, and it almost turned her away from holding dinner parties altogether. She’s so supportive of smaller parties that she’s even created dinner party menus with recipes for six people.

Garten also prefers round tables for those smaller parties. While a bigger family gathering may require long tables just so everyone has a place to sit, Garten says larger tables can be isolating for smaller groups. A round table that brings people physically closer makes conversation easier, but even round tables can be inappropriate if they’re too big. Garten advises finding one that’s 48 inches in diameter when hosting a party for six or seven people. If you do need to use a rectangular table, look for one that’s 2 1/2 to 3 feet wide at most.

If you can only have one dish set, get one that’s white. Ina Garten prefers white dishes because they show off the food better than other colors do, and she’s got a point. If you’re having something that uses a lot of barbecue sauce, for example, a darker plate isn’t going to make the food stand out as much as a white plate would. Garten follows her own advice and has shown her own collection of white plates, bowls, and serving dishes. Her sample table settings have almost always used white or almost all-white plates.

This doesn’t mean you can never use a plate with a pattern or a colored border, or even a plate that’s a solid color other than white. Garten herself has used patterned or colored dishes in some of her table settings, just for a change — but as always, keep it simple, and don’t deviate from the color scheme you’ve chosen for the table.

One of the basic rules of setting a table is to place utensils so that you work from the outside in. Following this rule, the first fork you plan to use goes on the far left, while the next fork sits between that and the plate. In Ina Garten’s settings, you can find the salad fork on the left because you’re having salad first, then the dinner fork, and then the plate. Don’t worry if you had planned for just one fork per plate for the meal — you don’t have to have complicated arrays of multiple forks and knives.

Even traditional table-setting etiquette prefers simplicity. Very formal, multi-course meals demand an arsenal of tools to cut, spear, and scoop specific foods, and the requirements for where all those utensils go can be dizzying. Even then, one of the basic rules is that, if you don’t need it, don’t have it on the table. Is it nice to have separate salad and dinner forks if you’re having separate courses? Yes, but if you’re not holding a multi-course meal where people have to switch plates, a simpler layout is better.

A centerpiece helps fill space and make the table look lovely, but you do not need to find or create elaborate centerpieces. In fact, some of the most elaborate-looking centerpieces are actually simple to put together. Again, Ina Garten aims for easy work here to make setting up the table a breeze. One of her favorite ways to create centerpieces is to get a lot of flowers of the same type and color and fill vases with those. That takes away the worry about matching colors exactly and finding the perfect combination of flowers. Garten also advises using odd numbers of vases.

You can make centerpieces with other items if you don’t want flowers. Among Garten’s favorites are food, such as fresh fruit and bowls of candy that guests can have along with coffee. One of her sample centerpieces was a leafy, store-bought garland placed along the length of a table with bunches of fresh red and green grapes, clementines, and pears placed along each side. This is not a complicated set-up, but it looks like something a fancy restaurant would have.

If you use candles as a decoration on your table, use unscented votive candles. First, votives are small and unobtrusive but still make the table shine. Second, unscented votives don’t interfere with the food. Ina Garten says that she never uses scented votives because the scent of the candles will compete with the aroma of the food, and it will also affect how you experience the flavor of the food.

Science actually backs this up. Your sense of taste is really a combination of taste, smell, temperature, and texture. People who lose their sense of smell — even from a cold that temporarily blocks up their nose — often find flavor to be muted. In fact, advice for those who have no sense of smell is to increase temperature, texture, and spice in the food they’re eating to compensate for that blander taste. Using scented candles at your dinner table might not be as bad as losing your sense of smell, but the candles’ scents can still change how you perceive the taste of the food.

The pandemic lockdowns made it nearly impossible to see others for social occasions without keeping a lot of space in between everyone. Ina Garten found a way to hold small dinner parties once households were allowed to get together by having one household over at a time and creating a welcoming outdoor space that compensated for the distance that people had to keep between each other. One of her strategies was to ensure the table didn’t have huge empty spaces. If you have people separated across a large table, one or two dishes of food isn’t going to fill up all that space. The resulting effect is one of isolation and distance. Instead, Garten filled up those spaces with more flowers and candles, making the table look full.

Again, this is part of Garten’s view on how to set up a table for a dinner party: make it intimate and cozy, even if you’re outside and can’t sit up close to someone. You can follow this rule for any outside dinner party you hold.

Let’s head back into the realm of table centerpieces for a moment. Let’s say you find a lot of lovely flowers that you think would make a great central arrangement for your dinner party table. If you’ve never tried to make a large flower arrangement before, stop right there. Ina Garten herself has said making flower arrangements is hard, so unless you already have experience creating them and love doing it, don’t stress yourself out. Instead, do what Garten prefers to do, which is place one or a few flowers (again, keep the color scheme consistent) in small bud vases. Then, she arranges the vases on the table instead of trying to arrange all the flowers in one vase.

The bud vases don’t have to match. In fact, Garten has shared pictures of flowers in bud vases that matched in color but not in pattern or even shape. If you do insist on having a large flower arrangement, pay attention to the shape and size of the vase you use. Garten says you want the flowers to stand up enough so that they look like they did in the garden, but you also want them to be able to spread out a little so the arrangement looks relaxed, rather than too straight.

Regardless of whether you’re having an informal get-together or a more formal dinner party, make everything on the tables convenient. One of Ina Garten’s simplest examples is, if you’re holding a dinner where guests can serve themselves from a buffet, have gravy on both the buffet table and the dinner table. Having gravy in both locations allows people to get some when they first get their food, and then to add more as they eat without having to get back up to go to the buffet.

Another example is after dinner when there may be leftovers that you want to send home with guests. Garten isn’t a fan of having anything left over, but she makes an exception for meals like Thanksgiving dinner so that people can have turkey the next day. One of her suggestions is to set up to-go containers and bags that guests can fill themselves. That’s more convenient than you trying to package leftovers for your guests and making them wait while you guess how much to give everyone.

Whether you’re using a smaller round table for an intimate party or a longer rectangular table for a holiday family gathering, try to keep centerpieces and dishes low. Yes, Ina Garten does sometimes have slightly taller items on her tables, but in general, she advises keeping everything low enough that people can see each other across the table. There’s nothing more awkward than having to duck around a centerpiece to talk to someone, holding yourself at an angle while repeatedly bobbing back into an upright position to eat some of your food.

Just as smell affects taste, sight affects hearing. Your ability to hear and understand someone is aided by cues in what you see, and those too-tall centerpieces remove many of those cues. While people may still be able to hear each other, they’re likely not going to simply sit there when someone asks them a question; they’ll likely try to find a way to look at the person speaking. Whatever you plan to have on the table, test it out; set it on the table and then sit down so it’s in front of you and you can see whether the item blocks your view of whoever might be sitting across the table. Remove anything that might obscure the person’s entire face.

A consistent item in any of Ina Garten’s table settings is a tablecloth or some sort of cloth runner under the dishes. Her advice is to keep this cloth basic. Use a solid color or a neutral color that doesn’t have fancy designs, and rely on the arrangement to make the tablecloth look more elegant. For example, if you have your 48-inch round table for six people, place a plain white tablecloth made for a round table on the dinner table, and then cover it with a square tablecloth in another solid color. This creates a layered look similar to what you might find in some nicer restaurants. If you have just a single tablecloth, you can use one with subtle patterns in a neutral tone that don’t stand out too much and overwhelm the rest of the items on the table.

If you’re using a rectangular table, another option is to use shorter runners or mats placed between two opposite seats. The whole table might not be covered, but you’ll have enough to cover the section of table between one person and the person sitting across from them. No matter the shape of the table, you’ll want something that can protect the surface from spills and stains. By the way, Garten also suggests using a waterproof runner under tablecloths.

Ina Garten may not like having lots of empty space on a table, but that doesn’t mean she wants every single inch taken up by something. One of the issues you may run into when hosting a dinner party is having lots of serving dishes and bowls with half-eaten food in them, and that can make the table look messy. Instead, what Garten likes to do is serve food at a buffet and let guests serve themselves. Not only does that allow guests to choose foods they prefer, but it also keeps the serving dishes off the main table. In true Ina Garten style, she says that if you prefer to have a family-style setup, do that instead.

Another advantage to having a buffet is that people can get second helpings when they want, rather than interrupting someone else’s conversation to ask them to pass a dish down. This also helps avoid making people pass heavy dishes along and reduces the risk of spills. As Garten has said, if she’s set up a nice table, she wants it to stay that way.

We’ve already mentioned that Ina Garten sometimes uses edible food as part of the centerpiece that she arranges, but she has other table-setting tips that involve things guests can nibble on. One suggestion is making a cheese platter for the center of the table. Garten says this is something that looks elegant yet is comforting and lets people serve themselves as if they were at a family gathering. She also notes it’s an entire course that doesn’t require cooking, so this may be a dinner-party tip you want to start using immediately.

Another suggestion is using something like large cookies that function as name cards. These can be fun to decorate as a host and fun to find as a guest. This sounds like a great idea because if someone doesn’t want theirs, chances are another guest will, and you won’t have to worry about having to recycle paper name cards. One more thing Garten likes to do is place small gift bags with treats on the table.

This last one isn’t a specific table setting, but it involves the table overall: arrange the seating and assign where people will sit. Ina Garten aims to have people talk to each other across the table, rather than next to each other. In other words, if you have some people who you know will talk the entire night, don’t seat them next to each other because their conversation will essentially isolate them from the rest of the guests, excluding other attendees. Couples should be seated near each other, but not necessarily next to each other. Again, it’s a matter of making conversation flow freely among the entire group instead of having little groups inadvertently shut out everyone else around them.

As for kid tables, Garten says it really depends on the kids in question. Some kids like being at their own table, and if you can trust them to behave, then that’s fine. However, Garten does think it’s good to allow kids to be a part of the main conversation at the table with the adults. If you do place kids at the main table, take eating speed into consideration. This will allow the kids to leave when they’re done without unintentionally isolating some of the adult guests from the rest of the group.