If you love it you should keep it. Off white or similar plain fabric sounds great. I would use the chairs as accent pieces in separate rooms and pair the couch with modern/mid century chairs that have clean lines and legs to give a sense of space underneath them. These could be a different accent colour or work back with the same tones as the couch depending on other pieces. You could stain the legs of these to work with the wood tones on your couch. Good luck would love to see the finished room.

The last home we had was a very small workers cottage so I kept the walls a light off white, table and to unit tops were gloss white to bounce the light around. My dining chairs and bar stools were clear acrylic so that I could see through them, the ends of my island bench/brekky bar were mirrored and my curtains were textured white sheers so that they also didn't take up too much visual room. All of my furniture was on legs so that I could see under it and the lounge room rug was pulled away from the lounge just a teeny bit so that I could see a little bit of timber flooring all the way round it, that all made the floor size look just a bit bigger. Bedrooms had mirrored wardrobe doors and bathroom was almost completely white (except for dark floor) and had frameless shower screen and oversized vanity mirror to reflect as much light as possible. Friends and visitors would comment that the house was bigger than they had imagined from the outside.......it wasn't, it was just styled inside to make it look larger.

Wow, thank you so much everyone for all your brilliant suggestions. We own the place and found a way to remove the bars. Knocking down the wall between kitchen and dining is unfortunately not an option. Combining all your suggestions, will: 1. Go for white walls 2. Look into the built-in bench 3. Have a white or glass oval table with less chairs (no arm ones) 3. Change the wall lighting (and a pendant light?) 4. Mirror across dining area 5. Large artwork on the wall above the bench Will post the finished look here after

We chose Monument Tiles and Guttering with "Surfmist" Fascias and Eaves (varying strength of paint). The Pillars at front were rendered and also "Surfmist" (1/2 strength). The Garage door also Monument - focus is drawn to Pillars and Timber Beam (our home very similar to yours). If you visit the Builders showroom they can usually make these changes on computer so you can see visual of how home would look with colour choices! We have Surfmist aluminium window frames and at front of house White Plantation Shutters. Admittedly we have charcoal colored Bricks but house looks Crisp and Clean it "Pops" as they say. We installed 20 Solar Panels ( no Battery) and Electricity is going into Grid! Dearest bill was $14 and one bill we received $1.92 CREDIT). The panels are on the side of house and cannot be seen from street. Well worth the outlay! I have heated floors in bathrooms and ducted air conditioning and so far we haven't lost power when they were working in street and had cut power to houses!!