Farmhouse is one of those words that gets attached to almost anything with a timber top. It is worth ignoring the word for a minute and looking at how the eleven pieces in this range are actually built, because they share two construction decisions and both of them change a room. The first is that every visible surface is acacia timber and every frame is painted white. The second is that nothing sits on the floor. Every single piece stands on legs, and that is why this is the tallest furniture in the catalogue. Key Takeaways Eleven pieces, all Oxford, covering dining and living and no bedroom at all. Acacia timber on every surface you touch, painted white on every frame you do not. Every piece stands on legs, so floor runs continuously under all of it. The TV unit is 60cm and the sideboard 85cm, both the tallest of their type here. The console is 36cm deep, the narrowest in the catalogue by 2cm. Two Materials, and Each One Has a Job Pick up any piece in the range and the split is obvious. The Oxford Acacia 4 Door 1 Drawer Sideboard has acacia doors, an acacia drawer front and an acacia top, sitting in a white painted carcass on white painted legs. The Oxford Acacia TV Unit does the same thing at 180 x 45 x 60cm. That division is not decorative. Timber goes where hands and plates and remote controls go, because timber takes wear and can be wiped without showing it. Paint goes on the structure, where nothing touches, and it is what keeps a room full of solid acacia from reading as heavy. Ten of the eleven pieces follow the rule. The exception is the Oxford Acacia Dining Chair Set of 2, which is a white timber frame with a grey upholstered seat and no visible acacia at all. In a room where the table top is a metre of pale timber, chairs that add more of it would be too much, so the chairs stay quiet. Everything Stands on Legs The case pieces sit on splayed white legs that angle out from the carcass. The dining tables and the coffee table use an A frame trestle base with a stretcher running between the feet. Different shapes, same principle: you can see the floor underneath every piece in the range. That does more for a small Australian living room than any colour choice. A floor that runs uninterrupted from one wall to the other reads as a bigger floor, and the eye stops registering the furniture as a solid block along the edge of the room. In a 3.5 metre wide living area, that is the difference between full and furnished. It also makes a real difference on a Saturday. A vacuum head goes under a piece on legs and does not go under a plinth. So does a robot vacuum, a lost sock and a tennis ball. Furniture on legs is furniture you clean around rather than furniture you move. [products-of-collection collection="farmhouse-furniture" heading="Shop the Farmhouse Range" limit="12" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-farmhouse-1"] Which Is Why It Is the Tallest in the Catalogue Lifting a carcass off the floor adds its height to the whole piece, and the numbers show it. The Oxford TV unit is 60cm high. Every other TV unit in the catalogue sits at 55cm or 56cm. The Oxford sideboard is 85cm, against 76cm for one range and 65cm for another. For the sideboard that is a straight win. At 85cm it is within 5cm of a kitchen bench, so you serve from it standing rather than stooping, and it is 9cm above the dining table it sits beside. Christmas lunch with the food on the sideboard and the table free is exactly what that height is for. For the TV unit it is a decision to make rather than a feature to enjoy. At 60cm plus the height of the television, the screen centre ends up higher than the ideal seated eye line for a low sofa. If your couch is deep and low, wall mounting above this unit is the better answer. If it is a firmer, higher seat, the extra height is fine. The Dining End Two tables. The Oxford Acacia Dining Table 190cm is 90cm across and the Oxford Acacia Dining Table 240cm is 100cm, both 76cm high like every other dining table here. The trestle base means the legs sit well in from the corners, so a person on the end of the table is not straddling a leg. The 100cm width on the larger table is the number worth noticing. Ten centimetres of extra depth across the middle is where the serving dishes go on a night when eight people are eating, and it is the difference between a centre of the table you can use and one that is permanently occupied by a fruit bowl nobody can reach past. Chairs come as a set of two at 46.8 x 55 x 88.7cm, with the upholstered seat that keeps the room from becoming all timber. The 240cm table with eight chairs is the complete version of the arrangement, and buying it that way is the only route to eight matching chairs at once. The Living End The Oxford Acacia Coffee Table is 130 x 70 x 45cm, which is the same footprint as the coffee tables in two other ranges and the standard this catalogue works to. What is not standard is the base: it repeats the dining table's A frame at a smaller scale, so a living and dining area furnished from this range reads as one idea rather than two. The Oxford Acacia Console Table is 150 x 36 x 76cm and is the narrowest console in the catalogue, 2cm slimmer than the next one. In an Australian hallway around a metre wide, those 2cm are not nothing: they are the last of the clearance you need to get past with a laundry basket. The Oxford Acacia Side Table finishes the room at 55 x 55 x 58cm, the same square footprint every side table here uses. Beside a sofa it sits at arm height, and in a spare bedroom it doubles as a bedside table, which is the closest this range gets to a bedroom at all. Where the Range Stops There is no bed, no bedside table, no chest, no tallboy and no mirror. Eleven pieces, all of them dining and living. If you want this look through a whole house you will be mixing ranges, and the acacia here will not match the timber in a bedroom range exactly, because it is a different species finished a different way. That is less of a problem than it sounds. Bedrooms are the one part of a house nobody sees in the same glance as the dining table, so a change of range at the bedroom door is invisible in practice. What matters is that the rooms people move between in one line of sight stay consistent. Within its own territory the range is complete: you can furnish an entire open plan dining and living level from these eleven pieces without buying a single thing from anywhere else. The farmhouse range is small on purpose, and every piece in it is doing a job the others do not. Frequently Asked Questions What is the farmhouse range made of? Solid acacia on every visible surface, over a painted white frame, with an MDF back panel on the sideboard and TV unit. The timber is where you touch the piece and the paint is where you do not, which is the whole design in one sentence. Why is farmhouse furniture taller than other ranges? Because it stands on legs rather than a plinth. The TV unit is 60cm high against 55cm to 56cm elsewhere in the catalogue, and the sideboard is 85cm against 65cm to 76cm. Lifting a carcass off the floor adds height to the whole piece. Does furniture on legs make a room look bigger? It genuinely helps. You can see floor running underneath every piece in this range, and a continuous floor reads as a larger room than one interrupted by furniture sitting flush to the skirting. In a small living room it is worth more than the colour is. What sizes does the farmhouse dining table come in? Two. The 190cm is 90cm across and the 240cm is 100cm across, both 76cm high on an A frame trestle base. The 240cm seats eight and the 190cm six, and both are sold on their own or in a set with chairs. Does the farmhouse range include bedroom furniture? No. All eleven pieces are dining and living: table, chairs, sideboard, TV unit, coffee table, console and side table. If you want the same look in a bedroom you would be mixing in a different range, and the timber tone will not match exactly. Related Posts Modern Farmhouse Style: What It Is and How to Use It Well Byron vs Oxford: Two Acacia Ranges Compared 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.
Read more
If you have been comparing these two, the frustrating part is that nobody will tell you plainly what separates them. Both are solid acacia. Both put that timber on top and paint the frame white. Both cover a dining room and a living room and stop before the bedroom. Both come from the same maker, at nearly the same price per piece. The store files one as coastal and the other as farmhouse, and that is a genuine positioning difference, not a material one. What actually decides it for most households is a simpler question: how big is your room. Key Takeaways Same material in both: solid acacia top, white painted frame, MDF back panel on the sideboard and TV unit. Byron runs smaller, including the only acacia table under 190cm. Oxford runs larger: 180cm sideboard and TV unit against Byron's 160cm. Oxford carries timber onto the sideboard door fronts. Byron keeps it to the tops. The coffee tables are dimensionally identical and the chairs are within a centimetre. Same Timber, Same Build, Different Shelf Start with what is not in dispute. Both ranges list solid acacia, with the sideboard and TV unit in each carrying an MDF back panel that sits against the wall. Both put the acacia where you see and use it, and paint everything structural white. If you were shown an unlabelled tabletop from each you would not reliably tell them apart. Where they diverge is how the store groups them. The Coastal Furniture collection is exactly the twelve Byron pieces. The Farmhouse Furniture collection is exactly the eleven Oxford ones. Two labels, no overlap. Read those labels as descriptions of proportion, not of material. Byron is lighter and more compact, which is what coastal styling usually means in practice. Oxford is broader and more substantial, which is the farmhouse end of the same idea. Neither is more or less of a timber purchase than the other. Byron Goes Smaller The Byron Acacia Dining Table 160cm is the piece Oxford has no answer to. At W1600 x D800 x H760 (mm) it seats four, and it is 100mm shallower than every other acacia table in the catalogue. In an apartment or a galley kitchen where the walkway past the table is the constraint, that shallower depth is worth more than the length. The pattern holds through the range. The Byron Acacia 3 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard is 1600mm wide, the Byron Acacia 2 Door TV Unit the same, and the Byron Acacia 3 Drawer Console Table is 1200mm long. These are pieces drawn for rooms with normal walls, not long ones. Byron also gives you more drawers where it counts. Three drawers and three cupboards in the sideboard against Oxford's one drawer and four cupboards. If your dining storage is cutlery, placemats and candles rather than platters and serving bowls, that split matters more than the extra 200mm of width. Byron Acacia Dining Table 160cm [products-of-collection collection="coastal-furniture" heading="Byron: the Coastal Grouping" limit="8" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-byox-1"] Oxford Goes Bigger Oxford starts where Byron's mid-size sits. The dining tables are 190cm and 240cm only, and the case pieces step up: the Oxford Acacia 4 Door 1 Drawer Sideboard is W180 x D45 x H85cm and the Oxford Acacia TV Unit the same 180cm width. The console is the piece that best shows the difference in thinking. The Oxford Acacia Console Table is W150 x D36 x H76cm: half a metre longer than Byron's and two centimetres shallower. That is a hallway piece for a proper hallway, one where you want length along the wall and as little intrusion into the walking space as possible. Four cupboard doors rather than three also changes what the sideboard is for. Oxford's is closed storage with a single drawer across the middle, which suits platters, serving bowls and the things that come out when you entertain. It is the range for a house that hosts, not one that mostly eats. Byron Oxford Dining tables 160cm, 190cm, 240cm 190cm, 240cm Sideboard 160cm wide, 3 door 3 drawer, 86cm high 180cm wide, 4 door 1 drawer, 85cm high TV unit 160cm wide, 55cm high 180cm wide, 60cm high Console W120 x D38 x H82.5cm W150 x D36 x H76cm Small table End table, 55 x 55 x 55cm Side table, 55 x 55 x 58cm Coffee table 130 x 70 x 45cm 130 x 70 x 45cm Chair W47.6 x D54.1 x H88.5cm W46.8 x D55 x H88.7cm Pieces 12 11 Where the Timber Stops Is the Visual Difference This is the one you can actually see across a room, and it is not in any specification. On the Byron sideboard the acacia is the top and nothing else. The body is white, the doors are white, and the timber reads as a warm line along the upper edge of an otherwise painted piece. On the Oxford sideboard the acacia carries down onto the door fronts. The timber occupies most of the visible area and the white becomes a frame around it. Standing in front of both, Byron is painted furniture with a timber top and Oxford is timber furniture in a painted case. That is the practical version of the coastal and farmhouse labels. A white-dominant piece keeps a small or bright room feeling light. A timber-dominant piece gives a larger room something with weight in it. Neither is a better design, and if you are mixing ranges it is worth knowing which way each one leans before you put them on the same wall. Byron Acacia 3 Door 3 Drawer Sideboard [products-of-collection collection="farmhouse-furniture" heading="Oxford: the Farmhouse Grouping" limit="8" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-byox-2"] The Pieces That Are Genuinely the Same Three items make the mixing question easy. The coffee tables are identical at 130 x 70 x 45cm in both ranges. The small tables are within three centimetres, at 55 x 55 x 55cm for the Byron end table and 55 x 55 x 58cm for the Oxford side table. And the chairs sit within a centimetre of each other on every dimension. The Byron Acacia Dining Chair Set of 2 is W47.6 x D54.1 x H88.5cm and the Oxford Acacia Dining Chair Set of 2 is W46.8 x D55 x H88.7cm. Both upholster the seat on a white timber frame. Nobody sitting at your table will ever identify which range a chair came from. That matters if you are furnishing in stages or buying secondhand later. Cross-range mixing usually fails on colour, and here the whites and the timber tones are the same because the construction is the same. A Byron table with Oxford storage is a legitimate plan, not a compromise. Which One to Buy Take Byron if the room is compact, if you want a four-seat table, or if your dining storage is small items that want drawers. Twelve pieces, the lightest look of the two, and the only acacia table that fits a genuinely small space. Take Oxford if you have a long wall to fill, if you host and need cupboard space for serving pieces, or if you want more visible timber in the room. The 180cm case pieces and the 150cm console need the space, and in the right room they carry it where a 160cm piece would look under-scaled. And if your room sits between the two, remember the pieces are compatible. Buy the table from whichever range fits the floor and the storage from whichever fits the wall. That is a better answer than forcing one range to do a job the other was drawn for. Frequently Asked Questions What is the difference between Byron and Oxford? Size, mostly. Byron runs a 160cm dining table and 160cm case pieces. Oxford starts at 190cm and its sideboard and TV unit are 180cm. Both are a solid acacia top on a white painted frame. Which one suits a small dining room? Byron. Its 160cm table at W1600 x D800 x H760 (mm) seats four and is the only acacia table under 190cm in the range. Oxford has no equivalent. Do they use the same timber? Yes. Both are recorded as solid acacia, with an MDF back panel on the sideboard and TV unit in each range. The visible timber and the white frame are the same idea in both. Why is one called coastal and the other farmhouse? They are grouped that way in store: the Coastal Furniture collection is the twelve Byron pieces and the Farmhouse Furniture collection is the eleven Oxford ones. The construction is the same, so treat the labels as shorthand for proportions rather than materials. Can I mix Byron and Oxford in one room? Yes, more easily than most cross-range mixes, because the timber and the frame colour match. The coffee tables are identical at 130 x 70 x 45cm and the chairs are within a centimetre of each other, so a Byron table with Oxford storage reads as one room. Related Posts Byron Collection Room by Room: Acacia Tops on a White Frame Thirty-One Acacia Pieces, and the Timber Only Shows on Twenty-Three What Is Acacia Wood Furniture? Pros, Cons, and Durability Stay in the loop Get styling ideas and early access to new arrivals, straight to your inbox.
Step into the Cedora® Virtual Reality Showroom — where innovation meets elegance. Explore our curated collections in immersive 3D spaces, walk through lifelike interiors, and experience every design from every angle as if you were truly there.
