Bespoke Dining Tables
Made for memories
Just like family and friends, bespoke dining tables come in all shapes and sizes. We can design and make the perfect table to suit your décor, room and lifestyle. Whether you want oval or square, traditional or modern, small, large or extending, we can work with your brief to serve up a custom table to host your favourite meals, memorable conversations and nearest and dearest.
Made to measure
The two most important factors when deciding the size of a table are the number of people you are going to typically seat and the room dimensions. Along with making sure the table fits in your room, you’ll want to make sure there is enough space for people to move around and adjust their dining chairs comfortably.
A table which needs to accommodate both small and large groups must strike a certain balance. It needs to be small enough for an intimate atmosphere when dining with a couple of friends and large enough to avoid elbow fights during larger roast dinners with the whole family. We can help you elevate your whole dining experience.
If you anticipate hosting groups of drastically different sizes, we encourage you to consider commissioning a bespoke extending dining table, which can easily be adapted to suit any occasion. Due to their more complex construction, extending dining tables incur additional costs. Even without built-in adjustability, we know a bespoke fixed-size table can be a great solution.
Made to shape
Different shaped dining tables offer different advantages. While square or rectangular tables maximise surface area and space for people to sit comfortably, they can create pinch points in a room. Round tables can better accommodate additional people, affecting other place settings equally, avoiding making one section of table particularly congested.
Along with these benefits, we consider the space itself – what will look aesthetically pleasing and what shape will allow people to move comfortably around the furniture. Whatever your requirements for space, capacity, size or shape, we can design and make a wooden dining table that gets it right. You might want to commission a whole dining set too complete with accompanying chairs.
“Ed designed and manufactured a lovely large, rippled sycamore table-top to fit on a base I’d already purchased. His service was outstanding, taking the time to source exactly the size of sycamore sheets I wanted, and liaising with the table base manufacturer to ensure a good fit. The top is often admired. I would highly recommend him.”
– FS, London
Made to last
Dining tables are made to be used. Like an old, cherished casserole dish with chipped edges, over time, a dining table will develop a patina and character, evoking memories of the wonderful occasions and stories you’ve shared around it.
When the design allows, we make our dining tables from natural solid wood. While it’s the most robust material to use, it’s sometimes not a viable option due to its shrinkage and expansion properties.
The alternative is veneer. We usually suggest using thick construction-grade veneer to accommodate future repair and maintenance. To achieve colour consistency with the legs and underframe, we often cut our own veneers in house. Working with the beauty of the veneer we can use it in myriad ways to create spectacular designs.
When selecting materials for your bespoke dining table, we’ll ask about your lifestyle to ascertain what option is right for you. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution and what’s right for one client might not be right for you.
Extending dining tables: Catering for all occasions
It is not uncommon to want a table that can cater for everyday use, intimate dinners and large gatherings without compromise; it is less common to find a table that can do so. Extendable dining tables offer a practical and flexible solution, giving you options suitable for all occasions. Once you decide on an extendable dining table, the only other decisions you’ll have to think about are where to store the additional chairs when the table is un-extended and what food to serve! Whatever your unique requirements – small or large, round or rectangular– we have the experience to design and handcraft a dining table to suit your every need.
Scalable seating
The starting point for designing your extendable dining table is to establish what the typical day-to-day minimum seating requirements are and then work upwards from there. To work out the upper seating needs, we then need to consider the frequency and scale of your sociable occasions and strike a balance between them. We advise against ‘over-extending’ by specifying a table which expands from, for example, 4 to 16 seats, as the required structural engineering is significant and costly. Extending a 6-seater table to a 12-seater or an 8-seater to a 14-seater, however, is a comfortable feat.
Form and formality
When thinking about how many people you would like to be able to host at your extendable dining table, make sure you consider how much space you would like to provide your guests. Formal dinners typically require more space per person compared with the cosiness of a large family Christmas dinner. Of course, there’s an argument to say that if the room can accommodate a larger table, then why not make use of it?
Shape up your extending table
While we can design and make a wide range of handmade extendable dining tables in may shapes and sizes, we can help you choose based on your dining space or room. We will take into consideration how the table accommodates (or inhibits) movement. Each shape offers certain benefits. While square or rectangular tables maximise surface area, if you anticipate last minute additional guests, round tables can more comfortably accommodate an extra place setting or two. Whatever your space and capacity requirements are, we’ll work with you to choose the best solution for your dining area.
Storing leaf inserts
How you choose to store the extension leaves depend primarily on two factors: storage space and budget. If you have less space available for storing your leaves separately, you can store them within the table frame. This often involves having a hinged joint on the leaf to collapse it down to a suitable size. We have made several bespoke mechanisms over the years that allow this process to be done singlehandedly for maximum ease. Whilst this is practically the most effective means of storing the leaves it is more expensive than simply having static removable leaves due to the additional work involved with the mechanism.
Removing and storing the leaves separately away from the table is the standard choice for many commissions. It is simple and straightforward, providing you have the space to do so. Where this is the case, we can get covers made for the leaves to help protect them whilst being handled and stored. You could even commission a bespoke piece of furniture, such as a chest, that allows you to store the leaves safely and securely.
Aging gracefully
It’s important to think ahead to how the colour and patina of the leaves and tabletop will change over time. Most timbers will change colour. Some like oak or cherry will go darker, while others like walnut will go lighter. Leaves that are stored away and only used occasionally will, over time, begin to look different from the top that is in constant use and exposed to more sunlight. We encourage our clients to rotate the leaves out of storage into the table regularly so they can age at a similar rate to the top.
Our custom-made dining table collection
If you are looking for inspiration for your bespoke project, take a look at our range of pre-designed customisable dining tables. These designs started as bespoke projects and have now become part of our limited-edition furniture portfolio.
We can design and make any piece of bespoke furniture. Here’s a selection of what we can offer…
Designing furniture for inspiring homes
