Burning Question: Table Talk?
This week’s big q is all about personal preference. What kind of coffee table does it for you? Are you all about a wood table for the richness that it adds? Would you rather have a plush storage ottoman for the hidden stash space and the put-your-feet-up effect?
Do you prefer glass to keep things open and airy?
We’re itching to hear what kind of coffee table floats your boat. In fact, we whipped up this handy little poll to keep everything tabulated:
[poll id="7"]
And what are your thoughts when it comes to shape: round vs. rectangular… or even square? We’d love to hear more about why you voted the way you did, so feel free to comment away with more details.
Both images (which just happen to picture women relaxing) courtesy of MyHomeIdeas.
Leave a comment
If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
A wood coffee table is attractive & multipurpose: I can hide remote controls in the drawer, use the sturdy, wipeable surface for drinks & food, and put my feet up (not good with a glass table)!
We have a parsons coffee table that we got cheap from Target. For Christmas my mom gave us leather storage ottomans. I slipped them underneath the parsons table to give us some extra storage for random things. It works well for us that way because we also have extra seating in the living room! You can pull out the ottomans and hang out around the coffee table with a board game.
I love round tables b/c I hate bumping the sharp corner of square/rectangular coffee tables (my dog seconds this). But square/rectangle ones are better for sitting on the couch w/ the hubby and having dinner & a movie at home!
It really does depend on the space, but generally I like wood coffee tables. The one I have now is all maple that my hubby and his dad made for us. It’s gorgeous! Plus is has 2 drawers and a bottom shelf for storage (have to have the storage!). It’s rectangular and that works for our space and furniture set up. I do love love love storage ottomans though. :)
In my own space, where we have reclining sofas, I actually prefer no coffee table, just a side table.
Forgot to add…In my sister’s space, I love her coffee table! The top lifts up to eating level or card-playing level. Love it!
Well.. Since I just bought a lovely rectangular pine coffee table off of kijiji for $5.00.. I’m going with that. Rectangular.
Painting the bottom white and staining the top dark walnut.. in case you were wondering! :)
I don’t see my option on the list….I love wide open spaces in my house, so we don’t have a coffee table! We own one, but I don’t use it as a coffee table.
We needed a new coffee table since ours had a broken leg that couldnt be mended. Since we are expecting a baby we really thought hard about what we should get considering we didnt want to worry about blocking the corners on a rectangle table or worrying about scratches on wood and glass from all those baby toys. So we decided on a square plush leather ottoman that has amazing storage to store all those toys and the top flip over to reveal a tray so we can still entertain when the adults are in the room and need a place to put their drinks.
I have a dark wood coffee table that is padded with leather on the top. It’s great for our toddler daughter (she doesn’t dig her teeth into it nor does she bump it. Underneath there are two large wooden trays for entertaining and we keep two container store mesh boxes in there for out of sight storage.
My mother recently gave me an old wooden and steel trunk that she found at a thrift store for $20. It works great as a coffee table and we can store blankets and extra pillows inside of it. It looks great too!
This is the big Q in my house right now. I tried refinishing our old coffee table to match your nursery dresser. Yea… that didn’t work out as planned. Im trying to convince my husband to help me make this… http://sprwmn.blogspot.com/2010/04/reclaimed-wood-coffee-table.html … which I saw on Knock Off Wood. I’d love to have storage ottomans underneath it to use for extra seating and to hide random things. I love this… http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Avenue-Faux-Leather-Dark-Brown-Storage-Ottoman/3725836/product.html .. but we just don’t have the extra cash flow for it right now.
Glass is too risky with kids and pets….possibility of breaking and gets smudgy….I like wood (either stained or painted)…the shape would depend on the space available…we have a rectangle shape…
I don’t like how hard glass can be to keep clean (with cats walking around on the table), but I like the airiness of the metal base in your picture. I’m planning to have a friend turn a pair of wooden shutters into a coffee table for me… he knows how to weld metal into the legs!
I have ottomans in both my living room and den. I love them!! The living room ones have storage and are smaller – they are my favorite.
We have an ottoman as a coffee table in our tv room, and a standard wood coffee table in our living room. We do not have glass tables anywhere–it would be murder to keep them clean with cat noses and paws all around and because my husband has some vision issues (only sees in 2D) he would run into anything glass all the time (it’s terrible when we shop for furniture because he just can’t see things). FWIW.
I love the plush ottomans, but didn’t feel that it was usable. We didn’t get one and now I regret it!
I’m loving the color combo on that first room!!
I actually don’t like having a coffee table, period. Yes, I do just have to be different. :)
I like to have a more open floor plan with less furniture- I’ve had coffee tables in the past and they just felt like clutter. Plus now we are total Wii people and need the additional floor space.
We have a solid wood chest as our coffee table, and love it – it’s simple and clean, with great lines, and has fantastic hidden storage in it (blankets, etc).
Who says we need to have a coffee table? We don’t have one right now, and I don’t miss it. It was just a place to collect clutter and bang my shins into.
But I have seen some lovely ottomans doubling as coffee tables that I would think about if we had a larger living room.
Lucite!!!
I have wood tables with glass on top so I like the combo. When I was a kid I rocked to hard in a rocking chair and flew into the glass table so I would not recommend glass for kid friendly houses.
I voted for “open and airy” only because I have a really small space and a glass table helps me save on the space illusion. Otherwise, if I had a 3000 sq foot home I’d love an ottomon table!
My mom’s got an ottomon, and what’s she’s done is gotten this fancy serving tray to lay flat on it which is where they put their drinks/popcorn when they want to have a space to do that in their living room. It looks very cozy and casual.
I chose wood, but only b/c I always like to have a drink nearby, and would be scared I’d spill on a more cushiony table/ottoman. But I LOVE Katie’s idea (2nd reply) about putting ottomans underneath a table. That would solve my drinking problem (haha!) and also provide hidden storage. I hate having remotes out, I like to tuck them away. I also like to hide magazines, a snuggling blanket, and a book or two….
I love my wood coffee table. But, that’s not to say, that I wouldn’t love a glass table. However, I find glass hard to keep clean. So, I searched high and low to find a coffee table that looked like the Bailey coffee table in the Pottery Barn catalog. I worked with a small local furniture store and they suggested Leisters Furniture. It’s made in the USA of solid wood (maple). What’s more, I was able to custom order my coffee table, sofa table and end table. The three pieces were less than two pieces in the Pottery Barn catalog and are much better quality (no veneers, no plywood). To sweeten the deal even more, I got to choose the color and style (distressed) of the finish. I couldn’t be happier with my choice.
I think it’s all about your needs. I don’t have a coffee table, for a couple of reasons (the main reason is that I don’t have space for it, so we use the side tables). But if I’d look for one, it would be rounded, because I think the corners of squared tables are dangerous for kids and pets (and for your legs too). Plush storage ottomans are great too – no corners, space for storage…
Great burning question! I’ve actually been looking for just the right coffee table for a few months now. I keep thinking I’ll know it when I see it. I love your glass/wrought iron rectangular table, as well as the little oval one that was in your recent house crash post in WA DC. I’ll keep looking until the coffee table finds me, I suppose.
That one that Liz posted is the exact one we purchased from Bob’s discount furniture!! It hasnt come yet but I can’t wait to get it. I love that its square and the four pieces flip over to reveal trays.
I love my leather storage ottoman. It has the warm look of wood, but it’s soft enough to put up my feet! (Except sometimes I need to “remind” the hubs that leather and military boots do NOT make a happy mix.) The only downside is sometimes not having enough space for drinks or whatever on the wooden tray I have sitting on top of it.
Right now we have an old Ikea Lack coffee table. I’m not a huge fan of it (I got it for my first apartment because it was cheap and Ikea had just opened up near us the month before, but I’m really dying to be rid of the fake wood), but I do like that it has a shelf under it that I put a couple of Target baskets on (to control clutter). I have an old, beat up wood cofee table that I’m hoping to mix with some of Knock Off Wood’s plans to create a new table that will work better. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance soon!
We tried an ottoman as a coffee table for a while (the same bench type one that YHL has a few of!) but it was just a little too small, and it looked really heavy because it went almost to the floor. It works much better now as a bench near the door.
My favorite coffee table was made with a piece of driftwood that my mother and grandfather pulled out of the Tchefuncte River north of New Orleans in the 1970s. The tree — a huge cypress — was left to dry out for two years before my grandfather and mom cut in half lengthwise, planed it down, cut it into additional pieces (I think three tables, one long and two short, were created from this one tree), sealed them, added legs and called it a table. My parents have the long table and my grandmother and I have the short ones. It’s amazing, one of a kind piece of furniture, but most of all, I love the story and craftsmanship put in to it (plus, the mental image of my mom riding the log down the river, pulled slowly by my grandfather in the boat, to get it back home is hilarious!).
We like a coffee table that you can put your legs under in case you want to eat in front of the TV or use it to work on a project. We have an old wooden table that is built like a tank and has a nice cherry finish. It has seen massive amounts of abuse from kids, pets, etc. We keep getting suggestions to replace it with something a bit more contemporary but we love it. It’s one of the most used pieces of furniture we have.
I have a rectangular black faux leather ottoman from Target. I have a vase with remotes in the corner on the bottom and just toss in 2 throws (shhhhh…..no one knows that they aren’t folded).
You forgot to include the “none” option. I have two separate living rooms and neither one features a coffee table. Mostly because they would just be in the way. I used to always stub my toe or bang my knee on my parents’ coffee table as a kid.
I love the idea of a plush storage ottoman. Speaking of which, do you know where THAT one came from in the top photo? Oh I love it so much!
We don’t have a coffee table, They take up too much space, we set our drinks on the end tables. I think a room looks much bigger, and has much more usable space without a coffee table in the middle of the room. :)
I like the look of the ottoman style coffee table, but it definitely makes it more difficulty for entertaining, particularly if you want to serve any type of appetizer..makes for a wobbly, potentially stain-inducing situation, haha.
However! I also love them because of the whole putting up your legs thing. Such a hard question! I think it totally depends on your personal style, the room shape itself, and what you plan on using it for.
We currently have a wood coffee table with glass inserts. I’m pretty much over it. I’ve had it since law school and ready for a change. Once we get around to re-doing the living room I’m hoping to bring in an nice square ottoman that can act as seating for get togethers but can act as a coffee table with a tray or something on top at all other times. something in this family http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=251340&CategoryID=40759 but not neessarily this one.
Anyone out there know of good places to find ottoman coffee tables similar to this one?
I prefer square for wooden tables and round for ottomans. For living rooms or more formal spaces, I tend to stick with wood, but for a den or informal sitting room, I prefer ottomans.
I love rich wood coffee tables and storage ottomans. I guess it depends on your space and needs too. I will probably go for individual storage ottomans to provide extra seating, but at my parents’ house, they have beautiful rich wood/glass coffee tables that we always use to play board games.
I am so glad that you brought this up. We are about to buy new sofas and tables and I am leaning towards the fluffy comfortable ottoman. I really don’t like to eat dinner in the living room, so having an ottoman will encourage us to eat at the dinner table (you can’t really set your plate on an ottoman like you can on a wood/glass table). I think wood tables are beautiful too!
we got a brown leather storage ottoman to use as a coffee table since it is more baby-friendly, once i feel better about the kids being so clumsy and bumping their heads (will be a while since our second baby is on the way in june) i would like to get a round or oval wood table, still sorta child-proof since there are no sharp corners.
I’m a fan of hard surface tables, because I’m not a fan of needing things like trays to be able to set drinks down on a coffee table. The shape and style all depend on the room though!
My how things change. I think I prefer wood tables, but we kicked ours out when our daugter got mobile and I really liked NOT having one for the open space (and for no face plants into the wood corners). Now we have a storage ottoman to keep toys in (and to get our feet up after chasing a toddler…).
I’m all about the wooden coffee tables, stained, painted, rustic, wicker, whatever. Our current plan is to use some of Anna’s wonderful designs to hack our own coffee table in a size that fits our space, with drawers that are useful sizes and for a price that sure as heck beats “Clay Jar Shed” (or whatever she has to call Pottery Barn now for legal reasons).
Wood for sure–it needs to cleanable but not need cleaning every day. I think upholstery and glass would both be out for that reason. I’m also totally going to steal the leather ottoman under the table idea! That is genius, Katie. We have a small living room but often need extra comfy seating when we entertain.
I like square/rectangle because it fits better into small spaces.
We currently have a homemade coffee table that we just love. My husband’s grandfather cut a kidney shaped peice of marble, and then just fastened three dark wooden legs to the bottom. It’s very mod and unique! We love it!
We have a leather storage ottoman from Target. We got it because there are ALWAYS kids at our house, and we wouldn’t have to worry about gashed heads or pinched fingers. Plus, it matched our couches.
Unfortunately, the cat has recently torn it to shreds. Oh well….better it than the couches!
I currently have the crate and barrel marble topped coffee table. Very urban sophisticate except it as heavy as an elephant.