News
Solid Oak Wall Shelves: A No-Nonsense Styling Guide for Every Room
How to style solid oak & walnut wall shelves in the kitchen, hallway, bathroom and living room — plus real spacing and fixing tips from Kohba.
Learn more
What Is Scandinavian Redwood? Meet Kohba's New Solid Wood TV Stand (UK Made)
What is Scandinavian redwood, and why did we build our newest TV stand from it? A no-fluff guide to this solid wood, its hard wax oil finish, and how it compares to oak.
Learn more
How to Style a Solid Oak Console Table in Any Room
A console table has one job: hold your keys, your lamp and your dignity when guests walk in. Most of them fail at all three. Get the size, height and styling right, though, and it quietly does more heavy lifting than almost any other piece in the house. How to Style a Solid Oak Console Table in Any Room Whether it's catching your post in the hallway or backing up your sofa in the living room, a solid oak console table only works if it fits the space and isn't just a flat surface for clutter to breed on. Here's how to get it right, room by room, using real Kohba pieces so you can see exactly what we mean. The Entryway Rule: Leave Room to Breathe In a hallway, the biggest styling mistake isn't the table — it's the traffic jam around it. Leave at least 90cm of clear walking space in front of your console, and don't push it flush to the wall if there's skirting board in the way; 5–8cm of clearance stops it rocking and keeps the back edge flat. Our Oak Console Table with Hairpin Legs is built for exactly this — solid oak top, slim metal legs that don't eat visual space, and 16 widths from 50cm to 200cm, so you're sizing to your actual hallway instead of squeezing a showroom piece into it. Behind the Sofa? Different Rules Apply A sofa console table lives by its own maths: aim for it to sit roughly 2/3 the width of your sofa, and keep the height within a few centimetres of your sofa back — too tall and it looms, too short and it disappears. Ours sits at ~80cm high, which lines up neatly with most standard UK sofas. The Elm Sofa Console Table comes in 11 widths from 100–200cm and two depths, so it's one of the few pieces of furniture you can actually measure for rather than guess at. Browse the full range in our Console Tables collection. Oak for Warmth, Walnut for Drama This is the fun part. Oak reads light, warm and Scandi — it plays well with pale walls and linen. Walnut goes darker and richer, so it earns its keep as a statement piece against neutral backdrops. Same silhouette, completely different mood. If you want the drama option, the Narrow Solid Walnut Console Table is the walnut sibling of our hairpin-leg design — same slim profile, deeper colour, and it works just as well in a hallway as it does anchoring a reading corner. The Styling Formula (Steal This) Once the table's the right size, styling it is genuinely just a formula. Use it and move on with your life: Rule of three: one tall thing (lamp or vase), one medium thing (stack of books, small bowl), one low thing (a dish for keys). Never four items in a neat row — it reads like a display cabinet, not a home. Anchor with a mirror or art above it, roughly two-thirds the table's width, so the eye has somewhere to land. Leave a third of the surface empty. A fully-dressed console just looks like storage overflow. Wipe with a barely damp cloth, then a dry one — hard wax oil finishes (like all of ours) don't need polish or spray, just avoid leaving it wet. Solid wood also moves slightly with the seasons — a hairline gap appearing in winter is the wood doing its job, not a fault, and it'll close back up once the air's more humid again. Whichever one you land on, measure your space before you fall for a photo. A console table that fits does more for a room than one that just looks nice on Instagram — and yours will be doing this job for a good few decades yet.
Learn more
How to Care for Solid Oak Furniture (Without Losing a Weekend to It)
No-nonsense care tips for solid oak and walnut furniture with a hard wax oil finish — keep your Kohba pieces looking great for years. SEO title: How to Care for Solid Oak Furniture | Kohba
Learn more