Walnut and Wood Bedside Tables

A bedside table is the piece of furniture you look at last thing at night and first thing in the morning, and it is almost always an afterthought. It should not be. In a warm, dark bedroom it is where the lamp sits, and the lamp is what the whole room is lit by after ten o’clock.

Walnut is what I reach for. It is dark enough to sit comfortably against a deep wall colour, warm enough not to read as black, and the grain catches low light in a way that painted wood never does.

What I looked for

Real walnut or walnut veneer, not a printed foil. There are two exceptions, the Bille in mango wood and the Zumi in a dark wood, and I kept both for their marble tops: the stone suits the room and the wood tone matches the rest. A size that suits an actual bedroom: most of these are around 40cm wide, which fits beside a double bed without crowding it. And somewhere to put things away, because a bedside table covered in clutter undoes every other decision in the room.

How to pair one with a lamp

Keep the lamp shade light and the base small. A dark table with a dark lamp turns into one heavy block in the evening. A linen or pleated shade on a walnut table gives you the warm pool of light this kind of room is built around. I wrote more about that in a bedroom with one good lamp, and gathered some lamps that fit in ceramic and linen table lamps.