How to Choose a Bedside Table: A Practical Guide for UK Bedrooms

Oak bedside table with two drawers beside a bed with linen bedding, lamp and book in a calm UK bedroom

Table of contents:

A bedside table is one of the smallest pieces of furniture you'll buy, and one of the few you use every single day. It's the last thing you reach for at night and the first thing you reach for in the morning. Get it right and you stop noticing it, which is rather the point.

Most guidance on the subject jumps straight to style. But the pieces that work are almost always the ones that got the measurements right first. So that's where this starts.

What height should a bedside table be?

The rule is simple: your bedside table should sit level with the top of your mattress, or slightly below it. Within about 5cm either way is comfortable.

Most UK bedside tables fall between 60cm and 70cm tall, because most beds with a mattress land in roughly that range. But bed heights vary far more than people expect — a low platform bed and a divan with a deep mattress can differ by 20cm or more.

So don't buy to the average. Measure from the floor to the top of your own mattress, and work from that number.

Why it matters: a table that's too low means reaching down and fumbling for a glass of water in the dark. Too high and it looms over the bed, which makes a small room feel more crowded than it is.

Width and depth: the measurement most people skip

Height gets all the attention. Width is what actually determines whether the room still works once the table arrives.

Measure the gap between your bed and the nearest wall, wardrobe or door. Subtract about 5cm for clearance. That's your realistic maximum width.

As a general guide:

  • 30–40cm wide suits a small or narrow bedroom, where the gap beside the bed is tight.
  • 40–50cm is the comfortable middle, and where most bedside tables sit.
  • 50cm and above works in a larger room, where you want the table to double as proper storage.

Depth matters too, though it's more forgiving. Aim for something roughly flush with the edge of your mattress, or a little shallower. A table that juts out past the bed is the thing you'll catch your hip on at 2am.

Our Narrow Rattan Bedside Table is 39cm wide and 60cm tall, which is deliberately at the slim end — it's designed for exactly the gap that most bedside tables are 10cm too wide for.

Drawers, shelves or a cabinet?

This is less about looks and more about what you're honest enough to admit you keep beside the bed.

A drawer hides things. If your bedside collects reading glasses, chargers, hand cream and half-finished notebooks, a drawer is what stops the room looking untidy. Our Oak Bedside Table has two, which is generous for a piece on slim legs.

An open shelf is better if you mostly keep books, and you like seeing them. It's also lighter visually — open space under a table makes a room feel airier than a solid block does. The White Bedside Table and the Pine Bedside Table in grey both pair a drawer with a shelf, which covers both habits.

A cabinet or multi-tier gives you the most storage in the same footprint. If your bedroom is short on drawers generally, a piece like the Rattan Bedside Cabinet or the three-tier white bedside table is doing the job of a small chest of drawers as well.

One honest note: more storage beside the bed is not automatically better. A large bedside cabinet in a small room can dominate it. If you don't need the space, don't buy it.

Small bedrooms: when to go narrow, when to go up the wall

In a genuinely tight bedroom — a box room, a flat, a room where the bed nearly touches the wardrobe — you have two good options.

Go narrow. A slim table at 35–40cm wide still holds a lamp, a book and a glass, which is all most people need. You lose almost nothing in function and gain the floor space back.

Or go up the wall. A wall-mounted bedside table has no legs and no floor footprint at all, which makes a small room read as larger because you can see the floor underneath it. It also makes hoovering considerably less annoying.

Our wall-mounted floating bedside table in white keeps a drawer's worth of storage while taking up no floor at all. For something warmer, the floating chestnut version does the same in solid wood.

The one thing to check before buying wall-mounted: your wall. Plasterboard needs the right fixings, and a stud or solid wall is more straightforward. It's a ten-minute job to check and a much longer job to fix afterwards.

Materials, and how they age

Bedside tables take more daily contact than most furniture — mugs, water glasses, hand cream, the corner of a book dropped down without looking.

  • Solid and natural woods like oak and pine mark, but they mark in a way that tends to look like age rather than damage. They also suit almost any bedroom.
  • Rattan and cane add texture without adding visual weight, which is useful in a small or plain room. Ours appear in several forms — a woven drawer, an arched cane door in white — depending on how much of the effect you want.
  • Painted and white finishes keep a room feeling light and recede into the wall. They show scuffs more readily on edges and corners.
  • Mixed materials — wood with black metal, for instance, as on the Black & Wood Bedside Table — give a room a bit of contrast without needing a whole scheme built around it.

One bedside table or two?

If two people sleep in the bed, two tables is the practical answer and also the calmer-looking one. Symmetry either side of a bed settles a room down.

They don't have to match exactly, but they should agree — similar height above all, then similar visual weight. Two different woods at the same height looks considered. Two identical tables at different heights looks like a mistake.

If there's only room for one, put it on the side you actually use, and consider a wall shelf or a small floating table on the other side rather than nothing at all.

Five mistakes worth avoiding

  • Buying before measuring the gap. The single most common problem. A beautiful table that doesn't fit is just an expensive obstacle.
  • Ignoring mattress height. Bed frames are quoted without mattresses. Measure the bed you actually sleep on.
  • Over-buying on storage. A big cabinet in a small room takes more than it gives.
  • Forgetting the plug. Check where the socket is before you decide which side gets the table with the lamp on it.
  • Matching everything. A bedside table that matches the bed frame, the wardrobe and the chest of drawers exactly can make a bedroom feel like a showroom. One thing that differs is usually an improvement.

A final thought

A bedside table is a small decision that you live with at close range, twice a day, for years. It's worth ten minutes with a tape measure.

Get the height right, be honest about the width you actually have, and choose storage that matches how you really use the space rather than how you'd like to. Everything after that is preference — and preference is the enjoyable part.

You can see the full range in our bedside tables collection, or browse the wider bedroom edit. If you'd like to know how we decide what makes it into the collection in the first place, read how we choose.