Vintage dining tables

The table is the piece the whole room arranges itself around, and the most common mistake is not one of style but of arithmetic: people choose the largest table that fits, rather than the largest table you can walk around. Below are the numbers that decide it.

Round, oval or rectangular

A round table is the most sociable: nobody sits at the head, everyone can see everyone, and because it has no corners it is easier to move around in a small room. Beyond six people, though, it becomes too wide to talk across. An oval table keeps the advantages of the round one — no corners, no rigid head — while adding length and therefore places; it is the best compromise for an ordinary dining room. Rectangular remains the right answer when you regularly seat eight or more, or when the room itself is long and the table has to follow its shape.

What size you actually need

Start from 60 cm of width per person and work backwards. A round table 110 cm across comfortably seats four; 130 cm handles six; beyond 150 cm it becomes hard to reach the middle. For rectangular tables, 160×90 cm means six places and 200×100 cm means eight. The 90 cm depth is not a whim: below 80 cm you can no longer fit two facing place settings plus something in the middle, and the table becomes awkward at exactly the festive meals you bought it for.

Extendable: ask where the extra leaf lives

On extendable tables the figure that matters is not the maximum but the everyday one — that is the size the table sits at for 350 days a year. The second question, the one everybody forgets, is where the extra leaf is kept. Well-conceived old tables hide it under the main top, folded in half, and open in thirty seconds. Others come with a separate board that has to live somewhere — usually propped against a wall for years. Check the mechanism too: on vintage pieces the wooden runners seize up if the table has stood unused, but that is fixed with wax, exactly as with drawers.

The space around it is not optional

Leave at least 90-100 cm between the edge of the table and the wall or the furniture behind it. Below 75 cm, a seated person cannot push their chair back to stand without hitting the wall. If one side is also a route — to the kitchen, to the balcony — raise it to 120 cm on that side. The top sits at 74-76 cm on nearly every table; if the piece is taller, check the chairs first, because then it is the chairs that must be chosen to suit the table rather than the other way round.

Dining Room

Living Room