The side table is one of those pieces people underestimate until they don’t have a good one. Then it becomes obvious. Somewhere to put a drink, a book, a lamp, a phone charging overnight. It sounds unglamorous but the right piece pulls a room together in a way that is hard to attribute to anything specific. You just notice the room feels more settled.

What we’ve learnt is that scale matters more than most people expect. Too small and it looks like an afterthought. Too large and it starts competing with the sofa or bed it’s meant to support. We’ve also stopped underestimating surface height. A table that sits awkwardly low is annoying every single evening.

The pieces we’ve gathered here cover a range of materials and styles because rooms are different and so are the people in them. Marble tops, warm woods, painted finishes, architectural metal. What they share is that someone clearly thought about proportion. These are the ones worth making room for.