What Size Dining Table Do You Need? (And What to Do When No Standard Size Fits)

A dining table is the one piece of furniture where a few centimetres decide whether the room works. Too long and nobody can get round the end. Too narrow and the serving dishes have nowhere to go. Here is how to work out the right size, and what to do when the right size isn't one anybody sells.

Start with the room, not the table

Measure the space, then take about 90cm off each side that needs a chair. That's the room someone needs to pull a chair out and for another person to walk behind them. What's left is the biggest table the room will comfortably take. Against a wall, or with a bench that slides underneath, you can get away with less.

Then count the people

Allow around 60cm of table edge per person. A 180cm table seats three down each side, and one at each end if the legs allow. This is where leg design matters: legs set in from the corners, or a central base, leave the ends free.

Width matters more than people expect

Around 90cm wide is comfortable for place settings on both sides with dishes down the middle. In a narrow room, 75 or 80cm still works for everyday meals. Wider than a metre feels generous but makes conversation across the table harder.

When the right size doesn't exist

Our standard tables come in set lengths, and they suit most rooms. But if your sums come out at 167cm, or you need a long table only 70cm wide for a galley kitchen, our dining table designer will make exactly that.

• Length from 100cm to 300cm and width from 60cm to 120cm, cut to the centimetre.

• A 45mm solid top in redwood pine, oak or American black walnut.

• Pine in a natural clear oil, Walnut or Smoked Oak finish, at the same price.

• A choice of leg styles, including hairpin, trapezium, steel X-frame and spider base.

• Steel legs powder coated in any RAL colour for £95.

• One or two matching benches, sized to slide under the table.

The table builds itself in 3D as you choose, and the price updates with every change. When it's right, you order it on the page.

How they're made

Tops are glued up from equal-width solid boards, sanded, given a soft chamfered edge and finished in hardwax oil, which can be refreshed years later rather than stripped. The legs bolt to a steel plate set into the underside, so the table comes apart to get through a doorway or move house.

Lead times and delivery

Pine tables take about four weeks, oak and walnut about six, and a custom leg colour adds roughly a week. UK mainland delivery is free. If you need something over three metres, we can make a single pine top up to about four metres: send us the details and we'll quote.