Petramadalena creates unique, sculptural furniture pieces that combine art and practicality, helping people shape spaces that truly feel like home.
Every home has a quiet centre. Sometimes it is a view from a window, sometimes a bookshelf, sometimes a single, well-placed piece of furniture you keep coming back to. Designing a bespoke coffee table is really about designing that centre with care.
This table will hold your morning cup, your late-night book, the laptop you open “just for a minute”. It sits at the exact height of your daily life. When it is designed thoughtfully, it can make a room feel calmer, more intentional, more like you.
In this guide, we’ll move slowly through the process: starting with the room itself, then exploring materials and shape, then layering in function, storage, and budget. Along the way, we’ll weave in references to Petra Madalena pieces so you can imagine the difference between birch and burl not as abstract ideas, but as real objects in a real space.
Before you draw a single line, stand in the room where the table will live. Forget the object for a moment and pay attention to:
Think of the table as a punctuation mark in a sentence that’s already been written. Is your living room full of straight lines and rectangles? Perhaps you need a gentle curve to soften it. Is it already busy with patterns and textures? Maybe the table should be calmer, more monolithic.
At this stage, it is often helpful to remove a few items from the room. Strip it back. Then imagine the table you’d be willing to live with for ten years, not just one season. Is it quiet and minimal? A sculptural statement? Something in between?
Materials carry mood. They decide whether your table hums in the background or sings in the foreground.
Birch has a gentle, unshowy character. The pale tone and fine grain sit beautifully in airy, Scandinavian-inspired rooms, but it also works well as a soft counterpoint to dark sofas or deep wall colours.
The Solid Birch Coffee Table from Petra Madalena is a good example of this kind of calm presence: honest, grounded, without noise in the grain.
A birch piece is ideal if you love:
If birch is a whisper, burl is a story. The Poplar Burl table feels almost like a frozen swirl of smoke or water. The grain moves, twists, and flows, making every angle slightly different.
Poplar burl works beautifully when:
Where poplar burl is light and fluid, the Walnut Burl piece has a deeper, more theatrical mood. There is warmth in the brown tones, but also a certain gravitas. It pairs well with dark fabrics, brass details, and evening light.
This is a material for spaces that already lean into richness: layered textiles, art on the walls, perhaps a fireplace nearby. A walnut burl table doesn’t ask for attention; it assumes it.
Once you have a sense of material, move to shape and size. Don’t rely on imagination alone; use tape on the floor to “draw” your future table. Sit down. Walk around it. See where you bump, where it feels generous, where it feels cramped.
A simple rule of thumb:
Here’s a quick reference table to start from:
Sofa Length (approx.) | Suggested Table Length | Suggested Table Depth | Suggested Table Height |
160–180 cm | 80–110 cm | 50–65 cm | 35–40 cm |
190–220 cm | 100–130 cm | 55–70 cm | 35–42 cm |
230–260 cm | 120–150 cm | 60–80 cm | 38–45 cm |
These numbers are not rules; they are starting points. A long, narrow room might favour an elongated oval. A square room with sofas facing each other might invite a round or square table to keep the geometry calm.
Look not only at the footprint, but at how the top relates to the base. A very thin top can feel elegant and modern, especially above a sculptural base. A deeper, thicker top in burl or solid timber feels more like a landscape—a surface you can spread out on.
A living-room table is not just a flat surface. It is also a quiet organiser of daily life. This is where you can borrow ideas from a finely made cabinet, without turning the table into a heavy block.
Think about:
If you already have a wall of Bespoke bookcases, the table can echo their lines or timber. Perhaps the shelf beneath the top lines up visually with the lowest shelf in the bookcase, or the leg detail picks up a profile from the joinery.
Across the room, a run of Custom cabinets might have a particular handle, a shadow gap, or a rounded corner you love. Lifting that single detail and repeating it on the table can create a subtle visual conversation between pieces.
Even the humblest storage gesture—a drawer with a beautifully proportioned front, a single open niche—can make your coffee table feel like part of a larger, considered architecture, not an afterthought.
To keep the whole process from feeling overwhelming, break it into clear, human-sized steps.
Your answers will determine things like height, edge softness, and how robust the finish needs to be.
Based on the earlier material section, decide:
Consider how each will sit against your sofa fabric, wall colour, and nearby joinery.
Using tape on the floor and the proportion table above:
Sketch simple elevations: front, side, top views. These do not need to be perfect; they simply help you explore.
Bring your sketches, room photos, and material preferences to your furniture maker. This is where the design gains precision:
Good makers think not just about appearance, but about movement of grain, stability, and how the piece will age. Their small suggestions often make the difference between a good table and a great one.
Custom furniture has a reputation for being mysterious when it comes to pricing. In reality, most of the cost falls into a few clear categories:
Cost Factor | What It Means in Practice |
Material | Birch vs burl vs mixed materials; rarity and quality matter. |
Size | Larger pieces use more timber and take longer to handle. |
Complexity | Curves, inlays, unusual joints increase design and build time. |
Storage Features | Drawers, lift mechanisms, and hidden spaces add labour. |
Finish | Multi-layer lacquer or complex colouring costs more than oil. |
Detailing with Other Pieces | Matching existing joinery details requires extra care. |
When you discuss budget with your maker, consider:
Think of it less as “expensive vs cheap” and more as “where do I want the attention and effort to go?”
Once the table arrives, the relationship changes. It is no longer an idea; it is something that will witness hundreds of mornings and evenings.
A few simple habits keep it aging well:
Depending on the finish, your maker may suggest re-oiling or light refinishing every few years. This is not a sign of weakness; it is part of the life of real timber.
There is also a difference between damage and character. A deep gouge might need attention. A soft change in sheen where you always place a book can be part of the table’s story. Many designers and publications, from independent studios to outlets like Architectural Digest, talk about this as patina—a record of use that makes a piece more, not less, yours.
A truly successful coffee table doesn’t just sit in a room; it belongs there, as if the room grew up around it. When you take the time to read the space, choose materials with intention, and collaborate with a skilled maker, you end up with more than a surface for cups and books. You end up with a small landscape of your daily life.
The same care that goes into a wall of Bespoke bookcases or a run of refined storage across a room can live in the heart of the living area, too. And when you invest in a bespoke coffee table that understands your rituals and rhythms, you create something that feels less like a purchase and more like a quiet, enduring companion.
You can explore more examples, materials, and design directions in the Petra Madalena catalogue, as well as the birch and burl pieces linked above, to begin sketching out the table that could only exist in your home.
Look at your floor plan. Long, narrow rooms often suit rectangles or ovals, while more compact, square rooms tend to work well with round or square tables. If your room is full of straight lines, a gentle curve can soften things.
Not necessarily. If you already have generous storage nearby, a simpler, more sculptural design might feel lighter. Add storage only where it solves a real problem—like hiding visual clutter—rather than by default.
Burl can actually work wonderfully in small rooms if the other elements stay calm. The key is not to compete with it. Keep fabrics and walls quieter and let the burl be the main visual texture.
Timelines vary with complexity and workshop schedule, but many bespoke projects take several weeks from final design approval to delivery. Highly detailed or experimental designs can take longer.
You can, but material choice often influences thickness, joinery, and how delicate certain details can be. It’s usually better to choose a material family early, then refine the design alongside it.
If you design around the proportions of the room and the core architecture, rather than a passing trend, your table will adapt more easily to evolving tastes. A well-proportioned, thoughtfully made table tends to outlast specific fashions.
