Console Table Sizes: Picking the Right Width and Depth for Your Hallway

A console table is the piece most people buy on looks and then discover has a size problem. It is a hallway table by design, and hallways are narrow, so the numbers matter more than they do for almost any other piece of furniture. Here is how to size one, and then how to choose between the styles we stock.

Width: measure the wall, then subtract

Measure the wall where it will go. Take off room at each end so the table does not run into a door frame or a radiator, and so it looks placed rather than wedged. What is left is your maximum width.

Then check the hall itself. Stand where the table will be and imagine walking past with a bag of shopping. A hall of about a metre or more takes a console comfortably. Narrower than that, keep it shallow and keep it under 100cm wide, or it will be the thing everyone brushes past.

Our range runs the full spread, so there is a size for most walls:

Width	Ours
80cm	Adrienne, clear glass, for the narrowest halls
100cm	Ancuta, marble-effect
110cm	Mayfair, fluted pedestal, in three finishes
118cm to 120cm	Lilesville and Upney, marble-effect
140cm	Bankside, wood-effect
160cm to 180cm	Cotswold and Hoxton, for a long wall or behind a sofa

Depth and height

Depth is what makes a console a console. Most sit between 30cm and 40cm deep, which is enough for a lamp, a bowl and a plant without pushing into the walking space. If your hall is tight, the sculptural designs with a central pedestal are the slimmest in practice, because there are no legs at the corners to catch a foot.

Height is around 75cm to 80cm across the range, so the top is at hand height as you pass. If the table is going behind a sofa rather than in a hall, check it sits level with or just below the sofa back, because a console that peers over the sofa looks like a mistake.

Storage, or a sculpture

This is the real choice, and it depends on what the hall has to do.

If things need to disappear, choose storage. The Beaumont has two drawers and a shelf, which swallows post, keys and the chargers that live nowhere. The Fitzroy has sliding tambour doors, so the clutter is behind a fluted front rather than in a drawer you have to open.

If the hall is the first thing a guest sees, choose the sculpture. The Belgravia, with its sunburst fluted disc on a plinth, and the Mayfair, with its oval fluted pedestal, are pieces that do the job of a picture as well as a table. Neither has storage, and neither is trying to.

Fluting, the vertical ridging on both of those, is worth a word. It catches light differently through the day, it hides fingerprints that a flat gloss surface shows, and it is the detail that makes a plain shape look considered.

The materials, honestly

Marble-effect is a printed stone look on a solid top. It gives you the look without the weight or the cost, and without the staining real marble picks up from a wet glass. It is not stone, and we say so. Wipe it with a damp cloth and it stays as it was.

Wood and wood-effect are the warmest option and the most forgiving of a knock. The Bankside and Hoxton are the industrial end of that, with black metal frames; the Kew, one of the Mayfair finishes, is the quieter oak-effect version.

Glass makes a small hall feel bigger because you can see through it, which is why the Adrienne is the one to choose when the hall is narrow. It shows dust and needs a wipe more often than the others, and that is the whole trade.

Find yours

Free UK delivery and 30-day returns on every table. Measure the wall, check the hall, then choose the style.

Browse the tables. A console usually wants a lamp on it, and our table lamp guide covers what size and what kind.