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Count the contemporary range and you get 26 products. Count the actual designs and you get 13, because every single one is offered in exactly two finishes and nothing else. No piece exists in only one colour, and no piece exists in three. That sounds like a small detail and it changes how you shop. In most catalogues the finish is a per item decision, which is why so many living rooms end up with three timber tones. Here the decision happens once, and then the whole open plan level follows it. Key Takeaways Twenty six products, thirteen designs, each offered in natural and black. Everything that goes against a wall comes in two sizes: 180 or 130, 180 or 140, 190 or 240. Sideboards and TV units are both 46cm deep, so they line up on the same wall. The range covers dining and living completely and does not touch the bedroom. The TV unit is 56cm high and the sideboard 76cm, a deliberate 20cm gap. Twenty Six Products, Thirteen Designs The list is short enough to hold in your head: two dining tables, three dining sets, one chair, two sideboards, two TV units, one console, one coffee table and one end table. Thirteen things. Multiply by natural and black and you have the whole range. Every piece is built the same way, a solid pine frame with an oak veneer, with softly rounded corners and either a recessed finger pull or a slim brass finished bar. That consistency is the reason the range works as a set rather than a shelf of options, and it is also why two pieces bought a year apart still look related. What it means practically is that the hard decision is the finish, not the pieces. Pick natural or black first, and every subsequent purchase is just a question of what the room still needs. Most people do it the other way around, choosing pieces one at a time, and that is how a living room ends up with a black TV unit and a natural coffee table looking like an accident. Two Sizes of Everything That Goes Against a Wall Three categories in the range come in a long version and a short version, and in each case the difference is width alone. The Liverpool Pine 2 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard - Natural is 180cm and the Liverpool Pine 2 Door 2 Drawer Sideboard - Black is 130cm, both 46cm deep and 76cm high. The TV units work the same way. The Liverpool Pine 2 Door 1 Drawer TV Unit 180cm - Natural runs 180cm with a drawer between two cupboards, and the Liverpool Pine 2 Door TV Unit 140cm - Black drops to 140cm and loses the drawer. Same 46cm depth, same 56cm height, 40cm less wall. Dining follows the pattern with the Liverpool Pine Dining Table 190cm - Natural and the 240cm version, the latter running 110cm across the top, which is wider than any other table in the catalogue. In a room where the table is the only thing between the kitchen and the couch, that extra width is what stops the middle of the table becoming unreachable storage. Liverpool Pine 2 Door 1 Drawer TV Unit 180cm - Natural [products-of-collection collection="contemporary-furniture" heading="Shop the Contemporary Range" limit="12" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-contemporary-1"] Forty Six Centimetres Is the Number That Lines It Up Both the sideboards and the TV units are 46cm deep. In an open plan room where one runs along the dining end and the other along the living end, often on the same continuous wall, that shared number is what makes the two read as one built in run rather than two separate purchases pushed together. The height difference between them is deliberate too. A sideboard at 76cm is a serving surface, level with the dining table. A TV unit at 56cm is 20cm lower, because a television sitting on top of a 76cm cabinet ends up above comfortable eye level for anyone on a sofa. Both numbers are doing a job. Plan the walkway from 46cm, not from the width. Here is the test your room will actually be put through: it is a Saturday, six people are over, someone is carrying two plates from the kitchen and someone else is reversing out of a dining chair at the same moment. Forty six centimetres off the wall plus a pulled out chair is most of two metres, and if the room cannot give you that, the two of you do the shuffle every single time. That is the measurement that decides whether an open plan level feels generous or permanently crowded, and it is the one nobody checks before ordering. Width you can see in a photo. Depth you only discover the first time you host. Liverpool Pine 2 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard - Black The Living Half: Coffee, Console and End Table Three pieces cover the soft end of the room. The Liverpool Pine Coffee Table - Natural is 130 x 70 x 45cm, which is a large coffee table by Australian standards and sized for a three seater rather than a two. At 45cm high it sits level with most sofa seats, so nobody has to reach down for a cup. The Liverpool Pine Console Table - Natural is 150 x 38 x 76cm, tall enough to use standing and narrow enough for a hallway. It is the one piece in the range that regularly leaves the open plan area entirely and ends up by the front door, and it is the same 76cm height as the sideboard and the dining table. The Liverpool Pine End Table - Black is 55 x 55 x 58cm and does the job the coffee table cannot: it sits at the arm of a chair for the person who is not near the middle of the room. In a long living space with a sofa at one end and an armchair at the other, one coffee table is never enough. Liverpool Pine Coffee Table - Natural What the Range Deliberately Does Not Do There is no bedroom in this collection. No bed frame, no bedside table, no chest, no tallboy, no mirror. That is not an oversight: those pieces exist, they are simply catalogued under a different style, so a house furnished entirely from this range would have a beautifully coordinated living level and nothing to sleep on. There is also no dining bench, which matters if you have a narrow dining area. Benches exist in the catalogue but only in one other range, so a bench and this table would be a mix rather than a match. Worth knowing before you commit to the table. What is here instead is depth of choice inside a narrow field. Two table sizes, three set configurations including the 240cm table with eight chairs, two sideboards, two TV units. For an apartment or a townhouse where the whole living level is one room, that is more useful than a range that covers every room shallowly. Liverpool Pine Console Table - Black Choosing the Finish Before the Pieces Because every design comes in both, this is the only decision that cannot be reversed one piece at a time. Natural is the safer answer in a small or dark room: pale timber against a pale wall reads as less furniture, and in an apartment where the whole level is visible from the front door, less furniture is the goal. Black works, but it works best as an anchor rather than a scheme. One black sideboard along a light wall gives a room a centre of gravity. A black sideboard, black TV unit, black coffee table and black table in the same open space is a lot of dark timber in a country with this much light coming through the windows. The mixed approach is legitimate and it is what most people land on: the large wall pieces in natural to keep the volume down, one black piece where you want the eye to stop. Both finishes are the same piece underneath, so nothing about the mix is a compromise on build. The full contemporary range shows both side by side, which is the fastest way to see which one your room wants. Frequently Asked Questions How many pieces are in the contemporary range? Twenty six products, which is thirteen designs offered in two finishes each. There is no piece in the range that exists in only one colour, so the finish decision applies to the whole room rather than piece by piece. Can one range furnish a whole open plan living and dining area? This one can. It covers the dining table, chairs, sideboard, TV unit, coffee table, console and end table, which is every surface an open plan level needs. What it does not cover is the bedroom, which comes from a different part of the catalogue. What size sideboard and TV unit come in the range? Two of each. The sideboards are 180cm and 130cm wide, both 46cm deep and 76cm high. The TV units are 180cm and 140cm wide, both 46cm deep and 56cm high. Choosing between them is a wall length decision, not a storage one. How deep is contemporary furniture against the wall? Forty six centimetres for the sideboards and TV units, which is the number to plan the walkway around. The console is much shallower at 38cm, and the coffee table is 70cm across because it sits in open floor rather than against anything. Is black or natural better for a small living room? Natural, on balance, because a pale timber piece against a pale wall reads as less bulk in a room where every piece is visible at once. Black works better as a single anchor: one black sideboard in an otherwise light room rather than a whole level of it. Related Posts Same Table, Two Finishes: What Black Actually Does to an Australian Room The 21cm That Decides Which Sideboard Works in Your Dining Room Why a Console Table Is 76cm and a Side Table Is 55cm Stay in the loop Get styling ideas and early access to new arrivals, straight to your inbox.

There are four dining benches in the entire Cedora catalogue, and they all belong to one range. That is not an oversight. A bench is a piece of furniture that only works when it is built to the table it sits at, and once you look at the numbers you can see exactly how tightly the two are tied together. The Richmond bench comes in 158cm and 208cm. The Richmond table comes in 190cm and 240cm. Line those up and the bench is 32cm shorter than its table, both times, which is the sort of coincidence that is never a coincidence. Key Takeaways Two lengths only: 158cm for the 190cm table, 208cm for the 240cm table. Every bench is 40cm deep and 46cm high, in natural or black. Forty centimetres deep against 62cm for a chair, so the bench vanishes when pushed in. A 76cm table over a 46cm seat leaves 30cm of knee room, which is the comfortable range. Seating is three on the short bench and four on the long one, at about 52cm each. Always 32cm Shorter Than the Table The Richmond Pine Dining Bench 158cm - Natural is built for the 190cm table and the Richmond Pine Dining Bench 208cm - Natural for the 240cm. In both cases the bench is 32cm shorter, which puts 16cm of clearance at each end. That clearance is the whole reason the pairing works. Both the table and the bench stand on open frame legs set in from the corners, so a bench sized to match slides between the table legs rather than colliding with them. Buy a bench from somewhere else at the same length as your table and it will stop 10cm short of pushed in, forever, and you will notice it every time you walk past. It also means the sizing decision is already made for you. If the table is 190cm, the bench is 158cm. There is no judgement call, no measuring the underside of the apron, and no chance of getting it wrong. Both lengths also come in black, which matches the black tables in the same range. Forty Centimetres Deep Is Why It Disappears Here is the number that actually changes a room. The bench is 40cm deep. A Richmond dining chair is 62cm deep. The 240cm table is 100cm across, so the top overhangs 50cm from the centre line on each side, which means a pushed in bench sits completely underneath it and a pushed in chair never can. In a dining room that has enough space, nobody cares. In the room most Australians actually eat in, which is the end of an open plan living area with a walkway on one side, it decides whether the space works. Put the bench on the traffic side and you get back 22cm of floor compared with chairs, every hour of the day that nobody is eating. There is a scenario every family recognises. Someone is carrying a full plate from the kitchen, someone else is coming the other way with the salad, and the gap between the table and the couch is the width of one chair back. Replace that row of chairs with a bench, push it in, and the pinch point stops existing. [products-of-collection collection="richmond" heading="Shop the Richmond Collection" limit="12" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-bench-1"] Thirty Centimetres of Knee Room Every Cedora dining table is 76cm high and the bench seat is 46cm, which leaves exactly 30cm between the two. That is the top of the comfortable range: below about 25cm your thighs press against the underside of the table, and above about 32cm you are sitting low enough that eating feels like a stretch. What the bench does not have is a back, and that is worth being honest about. For a weeknight dinner that lasts twenty minutes, nobody misses it. For a long lunch that runs into the afternoon, the people on the bench start leaning on the table and the people in the chairs do not, and you will hear about it. Which is why the sets that include one pair the two. The 190cm table with four chairs and a bench and the 240cm version with the longer bench both keep chairs on one side and a bench on the other. Guests get the backrest, the household gets the bench, and everybody is quietly happy with the arrangement. The Seat Count Is Optimistic, and That Is Fine The 158cm bench is listed as seating up to three and the 208cm up to four. Divide it out and that is about 52cm per person, which is the width the industry uses and which is genuinely fine for most people most of the time. It is also the reason a bench is the best seat in the house for children. Three kids on a bench take up less space than three kids on chairs, they cannot tip backwards on two legs, and there is no argument about whose chair is whose. The same 52cm that feels tight for four adults at a long dinner is generous for a nine year old and a seven year old with room to spare. The real cost of a bench is not width, it is access. Whoever sits in the middle has to wait for the person on the end to stand up, and if the bench is against a wall everybody shuffles. Put the bench on the open side of the table, keep the Richmond Pine Dining Chair Set of 2 - Natural for the people who get up during dinner, and that problem disappears. The Bench Adds a Seat the Chairs Cannot The Richmond Pine Dining Table 190cm - Natural is rated for six people when it is surrounded by chairs. Swap one side for the 158cm bench and the same table is rated for seven, because a bench does not have to divide its length into whole chairs. Wherever there is 50cm of clear seat, one more person fits. That is the trick a bench pulls at Christmas. Nobody carries a spare dining chair in from the study when the table is full, because there is nowhere to put it, but a bench absorbs the extra cousin without anyone rearranging the room. On the 240cm table the same logic applies at a larger scale, and the long bench takes four adults or five children depending on who turns up. Price per seat runs the same direction. Bought on its own, a bench works out at a little over half the cost of the equivalent number of dining chairs, so a table with a bench on one side is consistently the cheaper way to seat the same number of people. The 208cm bench in black sits under the black tables on exactly the same maths. Where the Bench Goes When It Is Not at the Table A dining chair in a bedroom looks like a dining chair that got lost. A bench does not, and this is the quiet argument for buying one. At 40cm deep and 46cm high it is the same proportion as a purpose built end of bed bench, so it can sit at the foot of a queen and hold folded towels without looking like it wandered in from another room. The black one earns its keep in an entry. A bench by the front door is where shoes come off, where the bag lands, and where a visitor sits to unlace boots, and at 208cm it does that along a whole wall without cutting into the passage the way a hall chair does. In a house with kids and a school run, it is the most used piece of furniture you will buy. That flexibility is the honest reason to take the bench over the extra pair of chairs. Two more chairs are two more chairs. A bench is dining seating that can become bedroom furniture in ten years when the household changes, and it costs meaningfully less per seat than the chairs it replaces. The full Richmond range is built so it can move rooms without looking out of place. Frequently Asked Questions What size dining bench do I need? One about 30cm shorter than your table. Cedora makes a 158cm bench for the 190cm table and a 208cm bench for the 240cm table, a gap of exactly 32cm in both cases, which keeps the ends of the bench clear of the table legs so it can push all the way in. How high should a dining bench be? Around 45cm to 47cm for a standard 76cm table. These benches are 46cm, which leaves 30cm between the seat and the underside of the table top. Less than about 25cm and adults sit with their thighs against the table. How many people fit on a dining bench? Three on the 158cm and four on the 208cm, which works out to roughly 52cm of bench per person. That is comfortable for children and for a quick weeknight dinner, and tight for four adults settling in for three hours. Does a dining bench save space? Yes, and the number is 22cm. The bench is 40cm deep against 62cm for a dining chair, so pushed in it sits entirely under the table top while a chair still projects. In a narrow room that is the difference between squeezing past and walking past. Can a dining bench be used somewhere other than the dining room? Easily, and plenty are. At 40cm deep and 46cm high it works at the foot of a bed for folded linen, along an entry wall as a place to put shoes on, or under a window. It is one of the few dining pieces that still makes sense in another room. Related Posts Dining Bench vs Chairs: How to Choose the Best Seating Richmond Collection Room by Room: Dining Tables and Bench Seating The 21cm That Decides Which Sideboard Works in Your Dining Room Stay in the loop Get styling ideas and early access to new arrivals, straight to your inbox.

Most people shop for a sideboard by width. You measure the wall, subtract a bit for comfort, and start filtering. It is a reasonable way to shop and it is why so many dining rooms end up with a piece that fits the wall perfectly and still feels wrong every time you use it. The number that decides how a sideboard behaves is its height, and across the eight in the Cedora range that number moves 21cm, from 65cm to 86cm. Every Cedora dining table, in all four lines, is 76cm. What follows is what each height band does once there are plates on it. Key Takeaways Cedora sideboards span 65cm to 86cm in height, while every dining table is exactly 76cm. At 85cm to 86cm the Oxford and Byron work as standing serving surfaces. At 76cm the Liverpool sits level with the table, so dishes slide straight across. At 65cm the Richmond reads as a low console and suits a living room wall better. All of them are 45cm or 46cm deep, so plan a 75cm to 90cm walkway on top of that. Every Dining Table Is 76cm. The Sideboards Are Not. Dining tables are one of the few pieces of furniture with a genuinely fixed height. Across the Liverpool, Richmond, Byron and Oxford ranges, every table measures 76cm from floor to top, whether it is a 160cm four seater or a 240cm eight seater. Chairs are built to that number, so nobody varies it. Sideboards have no such rule, and manufacturers use the freedom differently depending on what they think the piece is for. A sideboard designed as a buffet gets built near kitchen bench height. One designed to sit under a window or a run of artwork gets built low. Both get sold under the same word, which is where the confusion starts. So before comparing finishes, work out which of the three jobs you actually need: a surface to serve food from while standing, a surface that extends the table, or a storage box that stays visually below everything else in the room. Each one has a height, and once you know the height the shortlist gets very short. At 85cm and 86cm, You Serve Standing Up The Oxford Acacia 4 Door 1 Drawer Sideboard is 180 x 45 x 85cm and the Byron Acacia 3 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard is 160 x 45 x 86cm. An Australian kitchen bench is usually 90cm, so both of these land within about 5cm of the surface you already prepare food on. Your back knows the difference between that and reaching down to 76cm with a hot dish in both hands. That is the case for either of them in a room where the dining table does the entertaining. Christmas lunch, a birthday with too many people, any meal where the table is full and the food has to be somewhere else: a sideboard at bench height turns into a second bench, and you can carve on it without anyone at the table getting an elbow in the ear. The two differ in how they divide the space inside. The Oxford runs four cupboard doors with a single drawer above them, and that drawer is 87.4cm wide but only 17.8cm high, which is a shape almost purpose built for cutlery trays, table linen and serving spoons laid flat. The Byron takes the opposite approach with three drawers over three cupboards, so it holds more small things and fewer long ones. Both are solid acacia with an MDF back panel, and both stand on visible legs rather than a plinth, which keeps a big piece from looking heavy. Oxford Acacia 4 Door 1 Drawer Sideboard At 76cm, the Sideboard and the Table Become One Surface The Liverpool Pine 2 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard - Natural is 180 x 46 x 76cm, and the black version is identical in every dimension. At 76cm it is exactly level with every Cedora dining table, and level does something the other heights cannot: you can slide a dish from one to the other without lifting it. In practice that matters most for the meals nobody photographs. Weeknight dinner where the rice cooker and the salad bowl live on the sideboard because the table is not big enough for both plus homework. Sunday breakfast where the toaster gets carried in. Anything where the two surfaces are working together rather than one serving the other. Inside, three drawers sit between two cupboards, each drawer measuring 53.8 x 36.9 x 21.6cm. That is deep enough for placemats stacked flat, tea towels, candles and the drawer of miscellaneous dining room objects every house has. The frame is solid pine with an oak veneer, the edges are softly rounded rather than square, and the recessed finger pulls mean there is no hardware to catch a hip on in a room where people squeeze past. Liverpool Pine 2 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard - Natural [products-of-collection collection="sideboards" heading="Shop Cedora Sideboards" limit="8" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-sideboard-1"] At 65cm, It Stops Being a Serving Piece The Richmond Pine 2 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard - Natural is 160 x 45 x 65cm. That is 11cm below the table it would sit next to, and 25cm below a kitchen bench. Anything you serve from it, you serve bent over, which is worth knowing before rather than after. Read it as a low console instead and it becomes the most useful piece in the range. At 65cm it sits below the sight line of anyone standing, so a wall of artwork above it reads as the feature and the furniture reads as the base. It also clears most window sills, which is the one place in an open plan room where a taller cabinet simply cannot go. The structure is a pine carcass on solid oak legs, with two cupboards and three drawers, and there is a black finish in the same dimensions. In an open plan living and dining space, the honest use for it is as the divider between the two zones: storage for both, a surface for neither, and low enough that the room still reads as one space. Richmond Pine 2 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard - Natural Depth Is 45cm, and That Is the Number Small Rooms Fail On Every sideboard here is 45cm or 46cm deep, and the difference between them is not worth thinking about. What is worth thinking about is what sits in front. A dining chair needs roughly 75cm behind the table edge to be pulled out and sat in, and a person walking behind a seated diner wants about 90cm. Put those together and a sideboard on the same wall as the pulled out chairs needs your room to be about 1.4 metres deeper than the table itself. Most Australian dining rooms are not, which is why the sideboard belongs on an end wall or the wall behind the chairs nobody uses, not opposite the kitchen where the traffic runs. When the wall genuinely is not long enough, the Liverpool Pine 2 Door 2 Drawer Sideboard - Natural is the answer at 130 x 46 x 76cm, with a black version to match. It keeps the height and the depth of its larger sibling and drops 50cm of width by giving up one drawer. In an apartment dining nook that is usually the whole difference between a sideboard and no sideboard. Liverpool Pine 2 Door 2 Drawer Sideboard - Black Matching It to a Table You Already Own If the table came from one of these ranges, the matching sideboard is the safe answer and the finishes are made to sit together. But the range is deliberately mixable, and a contrast piece often works harder: a black Liverpool against a natural timber table gives a dining room a visual anchor that a matched set never does. What should not vary is the relationship between the heights. Within about 10cm of the table, in either direction, the two pieces read as belonging together whatever the timber. Push past 15cm and they read as two separate purchases, which is fine if that is the intention and jarring if it is not. So measure the wall last. Decide first whether you are buying a serving surface, a table extension or a low storage base, take the height that matches, and then check it fits. Bought in that order, a sideboard stops being the piece of furniture you walk around and starts being the reason the dining room works at all. The full sideboard range covers all three heights. Frequently Asked Questions How tall should a sideboard be? Between 76cm and 90cm if you want to serve from it standing up, because that is the range your kitchen bench already sits in. Below about 70cm it becomes a low console: still good storage, but you will be bending to reach anything you put on top of it. Can a sideboard be taller than the dining table? Yes, and two of the Cedora sideboards are. The Oxford is 85cm and the Byron 86cm against a table top of 76cm, so they stand about 10cm proud. That reads as deliberate rather than mismatched, and it puts serving dishes above the heads of anyone seated. How deep is a sideboard and how much room does it need? Every Cedora sideboard is 45cm or 46cm deep. Allow that plus a walkway: 75cm of clear floor for people to pass behind seated diners, or 90cm if chairs on that side get pushed back regularly. In a narrow room, put the sideboard on the wall the chairs do not use. What size sideboard suits a small dining room? The 130cm Liverpool. It is the only one under 160cm, it keeps the same 76cm height and 46cm depth as the 180cm version, and it gives up one drawer rather than any usable capacity. In an apartment dining nook that 50cm saving is the difference between fitting and not. Does the sideboard have to match the dining table? It does not, but the height relationship matters more than the timber. A sideboard within 10cm of the table reads as part of the same set even in a different finish, while one that is 20cm lower reads as a separate piece of furniture that happens to be in the room. Related Posts Sideboard vs Buffet: Key Differences and How to Choose What to Store in a Sideboard: Smart Storage Ideas & Tips How to Style a Sideboard: 10 Expert Rules for a Perfect Look Stay in the loop Get styling ideas and early access to new arrivals, straight to your inbox.