Breakfast nook sets often feature a rectangular wooden table.  These tables are usually about 50 inches long and 34 inches wide and they generally stand about 29 to 34 inches high.  The larger tables can be up to 65 inches long and 48 inches wide.  Almost all of the wooden rectangular tables have two wide legs toward either end of the table in the long direction.  Generally, there is a trestle that connects the legs together.  The trestle adds stability to the table and keeps the legs from sliding apart and doing the “splits” if the table has any weight on it.  A very popular style for these tables is a distressed style or treatment.  Distressing a table gives it a rustic or country tone.  This also called farmhouse style from time to time.  One method to distress a table is to indent or flatten the edges of the table and darken or round out its corners.  Then the surface is treated with medium to dark brown stain.  Emulating the look of distressed wood is fairly difficult with a particle board tabletop so look for a distressed appearance as an indicator that the table is solid wood, possibly even a solid oak table.

Less common, though not uncommon, are square wooden tables.  Averaging roughly 42 inches on a side, square tables seem like they are a bit taller than their rectangular cousins.  I’m somewhat at a loss to explain this difference.  Square tables almost exclusively have a single leg with anywhere from three to five feet for support.  Other than height difference and the difference in the number of legs, square tables come in the same style and options are the rectangular ones.

Moving away from wood, we have tables with tabletops made with vinyl laminate and legs of powder coated metal.  50s era styling is very popular right now and these types of tables are the dominate offering.  The tabletops generally are white or off-white and have a number of different accent colors like red, orange, green, or black just to name a few.

Finally, there are a number of less common tables.  There are round tables that convert to square or rectangular tables via drop leaves.  There are several sizes of round glass tabletops with metal bases.  Lastly, there are metal topped tables in rectangle,  square and round flavors.