The last time I picked a coffee table, it took me about a year to decide. It’s such a simple piece of furniture but it needs to not only look good but also be functional, right? It’s where we put down a drink…er, I mean a coffee. That leads me to another question – do you call it a coffee table or a cocktail table? I’ve heard both but I go by coffee table.
But let’s face it, a coffee table does more than just serve as a place to put down a cup of coffee. It’s where we place our remotes, and feet (not that I’m endorsing this!), and Chinese takeout when you’re catching up with your three closest girlfriends and it might occasionally serve as a stool or a bench (hopefully, it’s not glass and we’re not endorsing this behaviour either!). And of course, it’s also great to put down your cocktail.
So how do you choose a coffee table?
Have you ever given much thought to how to choose the right coffee table? You know that you know when you have the wrong one, right? It just feels off. If you haven’t been able to figure out why it feels off when you have the wrong coffee table, here are some guidelines from us to help you get it right.
Rules for Choosing Coffee Table
Size
Let’s deal with the height first. Your coffee table should be the same height as the seat of your sofa. Most sofas are in the range of 15” to 20”. Let’s split the difference and say your sofa is 17”-18”, then your coffee table needs to be about that height. You could go a few inches lower or a few inches higher but I would keep it to no more than 2 inches either way.
So then, how about the width. How wide should the coffee table be? A general rule of thumb to follow would be to have a coffee table about ½ to ⅔ of the length of the sofa.
This rule can also be adapted to L-shaped sofas as well as sectionals.
And in case you’re wondering, you should have about 14”-18” space around the coffee table. That could be the space between your sofa and coffee table or coffee table and accent chairs.
Shape
Great! Now that you’ve tackled what size of a coffee table you need, you now need to consider what shape of a coffee table works in your space. Coffee tables come in a variety of shapes – rectangles are probably the most popular, but they also come in round, square, oval and in novelty shapes too!
Rectangles work best when you have narrower spaces but give access to everyone around the coffee table much easier than the other options.
We like round or oval coffee tables for when space is tight and also when there are little humans running around.
Square coffee tables are perfect for L-shaped sofa or a sectional but it can also work in spaces where you have seating in more than 1 or 2 sides around the coffee table. Square coffee tables are the most fun to style but also probably cost more to style because you have a lot of square footage to cover.
Ottomans
You can use an ottoman as a coffee table as well. Same rules apply in terms of shape and size as what we laid out above.
Extras
Coffee tables come with shelves, drawers, shadow boxes and more. Depending on what your needs are you can choose a coffee table that works for your space.
Don’t be afraid to combine more than one table too. One of our favourite ways to design is to combine two rectangular coffee tables in place of a square table or combining two round tables, or even combining four small square tables to create one cohesive vignette.
Now that you got your coffee table all figure out, next on to styling the said coffee table. Don’t get stressed, you can find help here.
