If you are living in huge spacious room, you may not need to read this, but if you think dining table is large portion of the entire room, it should be worthy to read.
Especially if you are living alone, dining table tends to be a low table(typically in Japan)
Spaces are limited. So when you pick a dining table, you should carefully consider what size, height and how many people will use it and choose right table. Large tables cannot be replaced easily-If you are not rich enough.
It is how we chose a table with using rough prototyping.
Difficulty
2(Low)
Tools
- Blanket
- Used cardboards
- Stepladder or Books
- Measuring Tape
- (Chair)
Required Time
30min-1h
What we want?
At first, what are we expecting for the table?
- Eating with relaxing mood
- Inviting guests
- Doing small work and chatting
From these wishes, we lead these 4 detailed conditions
- 2 person can sit comfortably
- 4 person can managed to be seated
- Space for diner set for two and large plate on the center
- Fit for atmosphere of the room, calm and sick.
Prototyping
So, what kind of table will fill our requirement..? We have completely no idea. Let’s start super dirty prototyping.
By Using Blanket
What?
What dimension will makes us comfortable? Will it occupy too much space of the room?
How?
I found a large blanket in bedroom when I was looking something larger than size of dining table. With folding large blanket, you can seek ideal dimension of the table.
Placing various plate, sit facing each other and etc.. folding blanket again and again until you feel the size is comfortable. Maybe 3 or 4 times trams are needed.
We found 85cm width and 140cm length is comfortable.
But height is not consider yet, go next step.
By Using cardboards
What?
How much height is needed? Won’t the table size annoys you when you are around the table? Enough space to drawing a chair?
How?
Gathering stuff like cardboards for the table top and something has height to elevate the table. By duck taping cardboards, you can make cardboard table easily. Size should be close to the size determined on blanket prototyping. After that, stacking books, using stepladder, use anything to elevate cardboard to find ideal height of the table.
Generally speaking, seat surface of chair will be about 30cm lower than top of table and table height is generally around 72cm. As we are not trying to reinvent the wheel, let’s start from 72cm. From our perspective 73cm was the best with existing chair.
Finally, let’s see whether the size fits your daily life. Looking the table from other locations you spend time in the room and moving around the table to check the table is not obstacle physically and also mentally.
For instance, I found the table makes me annoying when I sat on the sofa close to the table. Edge of the table are always in my sight. So I decided to shorten the length to 130cm.
With making two prototypes, our final dimension is 90cm(W) x 130cm(D) x 72cm(H)
This is actual table we bought.
By making prototype, you can find comfortable and practical dimension especially for your room, your personality and contexts of your daily life. You will never sense it if you just calculate, measure size or even seeing actual table on a showroom. Putting a thing where actual life is going makes much different even if it is dirty, clumsy prototype. I totally recommend to do some prototyping before purchase for avoiding the aftermath.
Reference
はじめての家具選び・ダイニングチェアー編
http://www.karimoku.co.jp/karimoku/more/more_chair.html