What a restaurant table buying guide should settle before you order a single top

The top gets chosen from a photograph. Everything after it is arithmetic. How many elbows can the edge hold? How high does the surface stand once the base is under it? Is the base wide enough to carry the top when a guest leans on a corner? A table is three parts that have to agree, and guests feel the disagreement long before they notice the wood.

At eight in the evening a table does a quiet job. It holds a candle, four glasses and two plates, stays where it was set, and leaves the knees alone. This guide follows the order in which a good table gets decided: the edge, the height, the base, the top, and then the guests who need a different surface from everyone else. Browse the tables with those questions in hand, and the catalog gets smaller quickly.

Start from the edge each guest gets

Give each diner 24 inches of edge, and 18 if the room is tight. By that count a 24-inch square holds two who share a candle and little else, and a 30-inch square holds two with their plates. A 42-inch round or a 36-inch square takes four, and for a party of five or six you step up to a round of 48 inches. A 30 by 48 rectangle also holds four, two to a long side, while a 30 by 72 takes six at 24 inches each or eight at the tight figure.

Each chair needs 18 to 24 inches behind it to slide back, and the service aisle beyond that runs about 36. Count both before the top is picked, because the usual correction is a table that looked right on the plan and then ate the aisle. How the sizes mix across a whole room is a separate question, and table mix for party sizes takes it up.

Height is a sum

A table is not 30 inches tall because a page says so. It is as tall as its base plus its top. A 28-inch base under a 1 1/2-inch solid wood plank tabletop makes a table 29 1/2 inches high. The same base under a 2-inch resin top makes 30, and under a 1 1/8-inch laminate top, 29 1/8. All three land in the 29 to 30 inch range for dining. At bar height the base is 41 inches, and a 1 1/2-inch top lifts the table to 42 1/2.

The chair closes the sum. An 18-inch seat under a 30-inch top leaves 12 inches, the upper end of the 10 to 12 that feels right at dinner. A 30-inch stool seat under a 42-inch bar-height top leaves the same 12. Add base to top, subtract the seat, and look for a number from 10 to 12. The high-top dining tables article asks where that taller sum belongs in a room.

Pairing the base with the top

The base is the quiet part, and the one people leave to the end. One standard-height base on the site is listed by the top it fits. For a 30 by 30 top it is 28 by 28, and for a 36 by 36 it is 34 by 34. For a 30 by 48 it is 28 by 46, for a 30 by 60 it is 28 by 58, and for a 30 by 72 it is 28 by 70. Each runs 2 inches inside the top it is listed for. Even the table sets ask you to choose the base apart from the top. The solid wood butcher block table offers 22 top sizes and 9 base sizes, including a pair of 22-inch bases as one choice.

Round bases follow another rule: a base should spread across two thirds of the top's diameter or better. A 30-inch round top needs a base spanning at least 20 inches, so a 22-inch base works and a 17-inch base, at 57 percent, does not. A 36-inch round wants 24: a 30-inch base clears it, and a 22-inch base, at 61 percent, falls short. The standard-height round metal base comes in 17, 22 and 30 inches, so the rule picks the size for you.

The mistake here is to buy the handsome top first and find a base afterward. The top then dictates a base chosen from what is left, and what is left tends to be a leg where a knee wanted to be. Choose the base by the knee. A single pedestal leaves the corners clear, while four legs put one at every corner. The base design comparison sets the shapes side by side, and the table bases are sorted by shape and height.

Top material, thickness and the warranty clock

Listed thickness runs from 1 inch on some laminates to 2 inches on a resin top, with granite at 1 1/4 and solid wood plank at 1 1/2. Material decides how the top is cleaned and how long it is covered. A solid wood top carries a six-month warranty, because wood moves with the humidity of the room and that natural movement is excluded. Indoor tables with laminate, resin or any other top that is not solid wood sit under the one-year cover that the base carries.

Samples of table top materials cost nothing, so hold the surface in your hand before you order a dozen. The table tops come in wood, laminate, resin, granite and melamine, among others.

A 60-seat evening room, counted

Consider a dining room that seats 60 at 12 tables of four and 6 tables of two: 48 plus 12. Full-service rooms plan on 12 to 15 square feet a seat. At 13, 60 seats call for about 780 square feet, and the occupancy limit in your building code comes before any of it. The fours take 30 by 48 tops on 28 by 46 bases, and the twos take 30 by 30 tops on 28 by 28 bases.

Now the guests who need a different surface. Section 226.1 of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design sets the share: 5 percent of the seating in a dining area, at the least, must sit at an accessible surface. In a 60-seat room that is 3 seats.

The surface itself stands 28 to 34 inches above the floor (section 902.3). Beneath it, knee clearance runs at least 27 inches high, 30 wide and 19 deep (section 306). Around it, the standard asks for clear floor measuring 30 by 48 inches and an accessible route at least 36 inches wide (section 403.5.1). A 29 1/2-inch table clears the height, and the base decides the knee room. Treat these as planning guidance. The architect or designer confirms them against the standard as it now reads and the code that governs your building.

Write each table as three numbers

Write every table in the plan as three numbers: top size, base size and finished height. A table with a blank is not finished, and the blank is where the surprise will come from. Save the tables section by section in a seating plan, which keeps the configured items, quantities and notes together and can be downloaded as a project sheet.

Then look at how the ordering works. A line is one configuration, so a 30 by 48 top in two finishes is two lines. We read each order through before confirming it, and no payment is taken on the site. Ask for a top sample before the twelfth table is committed, since a surface you have held in your hand is a decision you will not revisit on delivery day.