A nest of tables is a piece of furniture designed around the way people actually live. Three small tables tuck inside one another, taking the footprint of one, and separate whenever the room needs more surfaces. In a British living room where floor space is finite and guests appear without much notice, that flexibility is genuinely useful.
Because a nest is usually bought as a set rather than a single item, questions about spreading the cost come up often. This guide covers how payment options work at checkout, then moves on to sizing, materials and the practical business of choosing a nest that suits your room.
Layaway is a system where a retailer holds an item while payments are made, and the item is released once the balance is complete. It is more common in some markets than in Britain, and we do not operate a layaway scheme.
What is available at checkout is PayPal Pay in 3, a payment option provided by PayPal that divides the total into three payments. The difference is important. With Pay in 3 the furniture is dispatched straight away rather than being held, so you have the tables in use while the payments complete.
For a set of nesting tables, which sits at the lower end of most furniture prices, that arrangement is usually all anyone needs.
Whenever a cost is divided, the useful number is the total. No interest means nothing is added, so three payments come to exactly the price shown on the product page. Comparing retailers on total rather than on instalment size protects you from arrangements that look small each month and cost considerably more overall.
Add delivery into the comparison too. Free UK delivery applies across our range, which removes the variable that most often changes a total after the decision has been made.
The typical modern living room has room for a sofa, a coffee table and very little else. A nest solves several problems at once. Closed, it works as a side table beside the sofa. Open, it becomes three separate surfaces for drinks, plates or laptops.
They also travel well within a home. The smallest table can move to the armchair, to a bedside, or out to the conservatory. Few pieces of furniture change role so easily, which is why they hold their usefulness through house moves and changing family stages.
The full modern nest of tables UK sale range shows how much the silhouettes vary, from square stacking designs to rounded shapes that suit rooms with children.
The largest table in a nest is usually between forty five and sixty centimetres wide. Check the height against your sofa arm, because a side table that sits well below the arm becomes awkward to reach across, while one that rises above the arm interrupts the line of the seating.
Allow clearance for the tables to slide out. A nest pushed tight into a corner cannot open, which defeats the purpose. Around ten centimetres at the front is enough for most designs.
If you have a deep sofa, look for a taller nest. Low tables suit low seating, and matching those two heights is the detail that makes a room feel considered rather than assembled.
Glass topped nests keep a small room feeling open because sightlines pass straight through them. Toughened glass is standard and handles daily use well, although it shows marks in bright sunlight. They pair naturally with a matching glass coffee table, and the modern glass coffee tables UK sale range makes it easy to keep the finishes consistent.
Wooden nests bring warmth and hide wear better than any other finish. In a family room where cups land without coasters, timber is the forgiving choice.
High gloss reflects light and suits contemporary schemes, particularly in white or grey rooms. It wipes clean in a second, which makes it practical, though it does show dust more readily than matte finishes.
Metal framed designs with timber or stone tops sit somewhere in the middle. They tend to be the lightest to move, which matters if the tables will be shifted daily.
The temptation with small tables is to match everything exactly. In practice a room reads better when finishes rhyme rather than repeat. If your coffee table is oak, a nest with an oak effect top and black legs will feel intentional. Three identical timber pieces in a row can flatten the space.
Think about the whole arrangement. A sofa, a nest, a coffee table and a lamp form the working core of a living room, and each should be reachable from where people actually sit. Browsing the modern side tables UK sale collection alongside nests helps you decide whether one flexible set or two fixed tables suits your layout better.
Nesting tables have a habit of becoming the most used furniture in a home. Working from a sofa with a laptop on the middle table. Feeding a toddler from the smallest one. Setting out food when there are more guests than dining chairs. Holding a lamp and a book beside a reading chair.
In a bedroom, the smallest table makes a slim bedside surface for a room too narrow for a cabinet. In a home office, the middle table takes a printer off the desk. This adaptability is the strongest argument for buying a nest rather than a single side table at a similar cost.
Leg design affects a nest more than it affects larger furniture, because these tables get moved constantly. Four legged designs are the most stable and the least likely to tip when leaned on. Cantilever shapes, where the top extends from a single upright, slide over a sofa base neatly and suit anyone who works from the sofa with a laptop.
Splayed legs look light and suit mid century schemes, though they take slightly more floor than the tabletop suggests. Straight legs stack most efficiently, which matters if the nest lives closed most of the time.
Check the base of the smallest table too. It has the narrowest footprint and is the one most likely to wobble on an uneven floor or a thick rug, so a wider base is worth having.
The temptation with three small surfaces is to decorate all of them. Resist it. The value of a nest is that the tops stay clear enough to be used, and a set covered in ornaments quietly stops being furniture and becomes display.
A workable approach is to style the largest table lightly, perhaps a small lamp or a stack of two books, and leave the other two empty until needed. That way the set reads as intentional while still doing its job when guests arrive.
If the nest sits beside a sofa, keep the top surface at a height where a mug can be set down without looking. That sounds trivial, and it is the difference between a table used daily and one used occasionally.
Glass wants a soft cloth and a spray without harsh abrasives. Timber wants dry dusting and prompt attention to spills. Gloss wants a damp cloth rather than anything gritty, since fine scratches show on a reflective surface.
Check the feet occasionally. Small tables get dragged rather than lifted, and felt pads on the base protect both the floor and the joints. It is a small habit that adds years to a light piece of furniture.
Nests arrive flat packed in a single box in most cases, and assembly is usually a matter of fitting legs to tops. Fifteen to thirty minutes with a screwdriver covers it. Because the box is compact, access is rarely an issue even in a flat with a narrow stairwell.
If you are ordering more than one piece for the same room, ordering together means a single delivery and a consistent finish batch, which matters slightly with timber tones.
At Furniture in Fashion you can shop modern furniture for every room with free UK delivery, and a wide range of tables is on sale throughout the year. PayPal Pay in 3 is available at checkout if you would rather divide the total into three payments.
No. We offer PayPal Pay in 3 at checkout, which splits the total into three payments and dispatches the furniture straight away rather than holding it.
Most sets contain three, although two and four table designs exist. Three is the common configuration in the UK.
Roughly level with your sofa arm. Matching the height of the seating makes the tables comfortable to use and keeps the room visually settled.
Toughened glass is durable, but timber or wood effect finishes hide daily marks better if children use the room constantly.
In a small room, yes. Opened out, three tables cover much of the same function while taking far less space when not in use.
Plenty of UK furniture stores now let shoppers pay in instalments without interest, and this…
A bed is used for around a third of every day, yet it is often…
Credit scores make people cautious, so a payment option at a checkout naturally raises questions…
Bedside tables are small purchases with an outsized effect, since they are the first surface…
Bunk beds are bought out of necessity rather than preference, usually when a second child…
UK furniture stores do let you pay for a bedroom set in interest free instalments,…
This website uses cookies.