10 seater dining tables — five places a side, in stock in the UK

Every seat count on this site rests on the same allowance: about 60 cm of table edge to a place. It is not a generous figure — it is a plate, a glass, cutlery and the width of a pair of shoulders, with elbows shared out between neighbours. Below it people eat with their arms tucked in. So a length is a seat count in disguise: take the length, divide by 60, and halve the answer, because nothing sits at the ends.

That last clause is the one that catches people out, and it is the rule the whole page turns on. On a live edge table the two narrow ends are where the tree’s own outline shows — the line the trunk drew, bark taken off, the contour beneath sanded and sealed — and they are left open on purpose. Chairs go on the two long sides only. A rectangle sawn square on all four sides can put a chair at each end, so at the same length it seats two more than a table here does; turned around, a live edge table has to be longer than a factory one to arrive at ten. That is the trade the edge asks for, and it is worth knowing before the tape measure comes out rather than after.

One caution about the 60 cm: it is per person, and chairs are where the sum quietly goes wrong. A dining chair with arms takes more width than a side chair does, and five of them along a side can stop being five. Measure the chairs before the room, or at least before the order — the journal has a longer note on choosing chairs for a table with an edge like this.

The Glacier sits outside that rule, and only halfway outside it. Stone, not wood: a solid marble top on two columns cut from the same block. There is no slab and no grain — the drift through it is vein. No live edge at the ends, then, and nothing to leave open — but it is offered on the same footprints as the wood tables and carries the same seat labels, which puts five a side just the same.

The Estuary, The Tempest, The Cascade, The Cataract and The Rift all arrive at ten on the same footprint and at the same price, £3,850. That is worth noticing, because it means the decision has stopped being a decision about size. What is left to choose between is the surface — Indonesian Suar and Solid Walnut — and the way each top is put together.

How the top is built is the other half of it, and no single word covers the page. The Estuary, The Tempest, The Cascade and The Cataract are one slab in the catalogue’s own terms — a single, unjoined width of timber. The Rift (two boards, resin channel) is put together another way, which the product page states in those words rather than leaving “slab” to cover it. At this length it is the widest question worth asking, and the answer is never a matter of guessing from a photograph.

The Glacier sits above that at £5,250 — the same footprint in stone rather than timber, which is simply what the material costs here.

Allow about 90 cm on each long side, so a chair can be pulled right out and someone can pass behind it while it is occupied. That is this site’s own published figure and it has not moved. Across the room it settles the question quickly: 110 cm of table plus 180 cm of clearance is about 290 cm wall to wall, and 290 cm is the number to hold a tape measure against before anything else is decided.

The ends are easier, because nothing sits at them. The sizing guide gives them no clearance at all — the length to plan for is the table itself, 320 cm, plus however much room you want to walk past. It is the width of the room that tends to decide a ten-seater, not the length.

Where the room will not give that, the honest answer is a shorter table rather than a tighter squeeze. The eight-seater and six-seater pages run the same arithmetic at their own counts, and the sizing guide in the journal works through a room from scratch.

Not every table in the collection is offered across a range. The ones above are sold across six footprints, each with its own price, which is how ten is reachable at all — the ten-seat size being the top of that scale. Others are finished objects in a single form: one footprint, one price, no size to choose.

The Riverbed, The Highland and The Ravine are sold that way, which is why they are absent from the grid above: the single footprint they come in seats fewer than ten, and there is no larger version to move up to. Each is listed here with the size it is actually sold in, and with how its top is built.

• The Riverbed — 215 × 100 cm, seats 6, £3,000 · One slab, resin-stilled fissures
• The Highland — 240 × 100 cm, seats 8, £2,400 · Live-edge boards, joined
• The Ravine — 220 × 100 cm, seats 6, £1,800 · Live-edge boards, joined

A table at this length is not something to wrestle through a hall alone, and nobody is asked to. Every piece here is finished and waiting in the UK rather than made to order, so an enquiry — with no payment taken — is answered with a delivery slot inside 24 hours and the table itself inside 48. It is carried in by hand, assembled where it will stand, set level, and the packaging leaves again.

The old table can go the same day. The trade-in takes it away in the van the new one arrives in, its value credited against the price, and the table itself passed on rather than landfilled.