Oak Coffee Tables

Solid oak and oak veneer

A coffee table top is a wide flat panel, which is the hardest shape to make from solid boards without it moving. Oak veneer over a stable core stays flat and lets the grain be matched across the width; solid oak is used where the piece is handled and knocked, such as edges and legs. Most of this range uses both, and the specification on each product page says which is where. Neither is the cheap option, they answer different problems.

Natural and dark oak

Natural oak keeps the pale golden tone and shows the grain most clearly, which warms a room with a lot of white or grey in it. Dark oak takes the same timber towards brown and quietens the grain, so the piece reads as a shape rather than as a pattern. On a coffee table the choice matters more than on a sideboard, because you look down at the top from above for hours at a time rather than glancing at it from across the room.

Rattan and slatted shelves

Nearly half of these carry a rattan or slatted shelf below the top, and it is a more useful feature than it looks. An open weave keeps the table visually light while giving you somewhere for books and remote controls, so the top stays clear. Rattan is a natural material and will lighten slightly in strong sun, and it wants a brush or a vacuum nozzle rather than a wet cloth, because water sits in the weave.

What a coffee table has to survive

This is the hardest-worked surface in most sitting rooms and the one chosen most often on looks alone. It takes feet, laptops, hot cups, cold glasses and the corner of a games console, usually without a mat in sight. Oak copes with that better than stone or glass because the damage it takes is the kind that can be sanded out rather than the kind that stains or chips, and because a mark on timber tends to read as use rather than as harm. The edge does most of the suffering, which is why solid oak is normally used there even on a veneered top.

Sizing it against the sofa

Aim for a top roughly level with the seat cushions and about a hand-span and a half from the sofa front, which is close enough to set a cup down without getting up. A three-seater usually wants something in the middle of the range; the larger pieces suit an L-shaped arrangement or seating that faces itself. A table that is too small reads as an afterthought however good the timber is.

Living with an oak top

Oak objects to heat and to standing water and forgives nearly everything else, which is why it outlasts the fashion that sold it. A mat under anything hot and a wipe rather than a soak is most of the maintenance. Oil-finished tops can be refreshed at home when they start to look dry, and a light sand and re-oil will take out a ring that a lacquered top would keep. Natural oak lightens a little in direct sun over several years.