Live edge coffee tables are popping up in some very high-profile places. They have been featured more frequently in movies, talk shows, and in architectural and interior design publications over the last few years, and the reason why is simple: They are beautifully unique pieces that tell a story and that stand the test of time. Coffee tables may not be the furniture pieces that people think of the most often as “making” a room—that distinction is usually reserved for dining tables or huge sectional sofas—but if you think about it, coffee tables really are the centerpiece of the action in a family home.
Coffee tables usually sit in front of a sofa in a room where everyone gathers, whether that be a den, a family room, or a living room. They are typically in the room that has the TV in it, and they are the perfect spot for people to rest their beverages while they’re having conversation or watching something together. All of this is to say that a coffee table is a high-visibility piece that has a very important function in a home. It’s no wonder we’re seeing a shift towards people looking to custom furniture makers for that perfect live edge coffee table.
Here at Smith Farms, we love creating live edge coffee tables for our clients. We know that we can create something unique and special that you could never find in a furniture warehouse or retail store, but more importantly, we want to highlight how individualized and personal the process is. It is a completely different experience than purchasing something off the floor in a store.
If you’ve been inspired by a live edge coffee table you saw somewhere and you’ve been on the hunt for one of your own, this post is for you. We realize we’re a little biased, but we truly believe working with custom furniture makers is going to be the best way to go. Read on to learn about what the process is like from start to finish, and when you’re ready to stop the search and get started with us, we look forward to hearing from you!
Live Edge Coffee Tables Aren’t Often in Retail Stores Anyway
If you’ve started looking and have become frustrated that you haven’t found anything yet, you’re not alone. The main reason you are not finding the live edge coffee table you want as you search through the furniture warehouses and retail stores in your area is because there just aren’t that many. Live edges are so unique—each one is completely different, even when we’re talking about pieces of wood that come from the same tree. This uniqueness makes it impossible to create uniformity, which is so important in retail.
So, if you can’t find the exact table you are looking for in the stores near you, what are you supposed to do? This is where custom furniture makers like Smith Farms come in. By working with an artisan woodworker, you get to be part of the process from start to finish, which means you will end up with a piece that checks all of your personal design boxes.
This may bring up some questions, and even some anxiety, especially if you have never worked with custom furniture makers before. That is understandable! But, we’re here to reassure you—the process of commissioning a live edge coffee table will be much easier than you might expect, and we think you’ll find it to be incredibly fun and rewarding.
You Don’t Need to Have All the Answers Before Reaching Out
One thing we hear from clients all the time is that they don’t know quite what they’re looking for in a live edge coffee table but that they’ll “know it when they see it.” You’ve probably said something similar! That is a perfectly acceptable place to start. Our job at Smith Farms is to ask questions to narrow down what you do and don’t like so that we can help you find the right wood for your table as well as start sketching out a design. Don’t feel like you need to have all the answers before contacting us—we will work with as little or as much information as you have.
Something our clients often don’t realize is how versatile live edge pieces can be. We have certainly had clients contact us and say something along the lines of, “I really like the idea of a live edge coffee table, but this piece is going in my home, which has mostly modern furniture. It’s not going in a rustic ski cabin or a barn. Is it going to look silly?” Let us clear this up once and for all: Live edge furniture can be as sleek and modern or as rustic as you want it to be. The simple fact that the piece has one or more live edges on it does not dictate the style of it.
We realize that opening the door to any style you can think of will excite some and intimidate others. More options can seem much more daunting for those who already didn’t know where to begin. Our hope is that you actually find this freeing because this means you can have the beautiful live edge you want, while also ensuring that it will fit the overall aesthetic of your home.
Designing Your Live Edge Coffee Table with the Help of Custom Furniture Makers
Our process at Smith Farms is collaborative from start to finish, and we really enjoy the early brainstorming phase. We love being able to help shape the early design, and we find that the results tend to be so much more creative and innovative when we start with more unknowns than knowns. This isn’t to say that we don’t enjoy it when clients come in knowing exactly what they want—that’s a fun process in a different way—but there’s something magical about a client and artisan working together to turn a vague glimmer of an idea into an actual live edge coffee table that is so beloved, it becomes a family heirloom.
So, where do we begin?
As referenced earlier, we start by asking some probing questions. We certainly want to utilize any ideas you’re coming in with, so any answers you have will help us. If there are questions you can’t answer or simply aren’t sure about, that’s okay—we’ll suggest looking at some reference images for inspiration. Also, feel free to bring any reference images you have found on your own. All visual inspiration is helpful!
This initial conversation and image search will give us a great jumping off point for the style you’re aiming for and will help us guide you when it comes to making choices like color and wood selection. We have seen clients get very overwhelmed when we start talking about wood options because there are so many incredible choices, but we have enough experience to know which woods tend to work best with which styles, so we can help you narrow down the field.
The other thing we’ve found, and this is one of the joys of the creative process when working with custom furniture makers like Smith Farms, is that the nature of the design can change and develop on its own, based on the wood you choose. For example, we may initially be working towards an oval shape for your live edge coffee table, but then once you choose the slab you want for the top, we may all look at it together and agree that we want to preserve a beautiful swirl near the corner. It may turn out that the only way we can really do that is to change the shape to be more rectangular.
Another scenario that comes up sometimes is around stain and color. We may initially be going for a darker stain, but then the slab you choose may have this incredible grain pattern that we want to highlight in a different way. Stains can be used to bring out the natural personality of wood, but that may mean that the overall color turns out a little different than originally planned.
What’s most important is that you are involved in all these decisions. Again, this is the advantage of working with custom furniture makers for your live edge coffee table. You will have a relationship with the person building it, and you can call the shots as it comes together. You may find that you want to stick as closely as you can to the original design we create together, or as you start to finalize pieces of the project like the slab of wood for the top, you may adjust your ideas. That’s what we’re here for!
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You Choose the Actual Piece of Wood for Your Live Edge Coffee Table Top
While we’re on the topic of choosing wood slabs, let’s talk about how that process works. First and foremost, we have some incredible pieces of wood in stock in our shop at Smith Farms. If you’re local to the San Diego area, we will encourage you to come by and look at different pieces so you can see them in person and truly get a feel for the different qualities that different slabs have. As we have mentioned, every wood slab has its own unique personality, and slabs from the same tree can have very different features to them.
Another great option for locals is to come with us to one of the private sawmills in the San Diego area that we have a relationship with. We are so fortunate to have contacts in the area who have beautiful wood pieces that aren’t available to the general public. You wouldn’t necessarily come across a slab from one of these sawmills by doing an online search, so we are thrilled to be able to accompany you so you can see with your own eyes what they have to offer.
For those who live far away from San Diego, or if you simply don’t find something that makes you fall in love at our shop or at one of the sawmills nearby, the good news is that we have access to sawmills all over the country. If you find a piece in your local area that you want to use for your live edge coffee table, we will talk about the process of having it shipped to us at Smith Farms. We can also look at slabs together online, and if you find something you’re interested in, we can have it shipped in from anywhere.
The one caveat to choosing a piece of wood that is not in stock in our shop is that there will be extra costs for shipping. That said, a shipping fee is just a small piece of the puzzle if it’s the perfect piece of wood for your live edge coffee table.
How the Design for Your Live Edge Coffee Table Takes Shape
To ensure that the live edge coffee table we build for you is exactly the one you are hoping for, we work up sketches before we ever touch a piece of wood to start building. This is another place where you get to give feedback and drive the direction of the design. If something isn’t looking right to you or if you simply get a flash of inspiration that sends the design in a different direction, this is the time to speak up.
At Smith Farms, we have found that this part of the collaborative process tends to be the most productive. This is where rough ideas start to become more specific, and we find that clients can start to really visualize how the final piece is going to look. For that reason, we love this part! It’s where we start to see clients’ faces light up, and it’s where we get the most useful feedback. Clients who came to us with only vague thoughts about their live edge coffee table start to be able to give us concrete direction, and this is where the project truly starts to come to life.
We have designed live edge coffee tables in a wide variety of styles, but there are some basic design fundamentals that we believe apply to any style. Ultimately, we recognize that any piece we build is going to live in your home and therefore needs to match your chosen aesthetic, but as we reach the sketching phase with you, we want you to understand some simple reasons why we make some of the initial choices we do.
1. We will design a more simplistic base when using a live edge for the top.
We have had clients ask for live edges on the top as well as for the base, and in our experience, it just ends up being too much. The live edge top is truly the star of the piece, and our general philosophy is that you don’t want the base to be competing with it. Simple doesn’t mean boring—we can create something strikingly beautiful out of either wood or metal—but it will be simple enough that it won’t distract from the incredible piece of wood on top.
We suggest that you look at some examples of coffee tables, both live edge and not, so you can see different styles of bases. We can do pedestal bases, or we can do a design with four, or even three, legs. We have different types of metal we can work with, or we can use a wood that is either the same as the top or something that is purposefully contrasting. There is no wrong answer here!
2. We let the piece of wood drive the design when necessary.
In some cases, the particular piece of wood that is chosen for the top will drive certain design choices. As we mentioned before, we’ve seen cases where there is a unique feature in the wood that is so stunning, we recommend changing the shape of the table to accommodate it. We’ve also seen situations where a client wants only one live edge on their table but then changes their mind once they see the piece of wood. The only real limit we have is the original size of the wood piece—from there, we can cut the shape into anything you want, and we can leave as many live edges as you want.
Other than those two basics, which are not strict rules—they’re more just guidelines for us—the design for your live edge coffee table truly is yours. You have the final say on the sketch, and we want you to be as involved in the process as you want to be. It is not uncommon for clients to tell us that they “trust us” to come up with a finished design because they don’t feel “qualified” to give feedback, but then once they see the first sketch, they get excited and want to get more involved.
At Smith Farms, we find that the same thing happens once the wood slab is chosen. There’s something about physically seeing the piece of wood that is going to become the top of your live edge coffee table that suddenly makes everything so real. We may work up a rough sketch before you choose the wood for your top, and you may have a few thoughts about it, but we are fairly certain you will have much more input once you see the wood in person!
Building and Delivering Your Live Edge Coffee Table
Once you have chosen your slab and we have a finalized sketch that you are happy with, the rest is up to us! We will put your live edge coffee in our queue to start building, and we’ll give you an estimated timeline so you know what to expect. We’ll also send progress photos along the way, and we know you’ll love seeing how it’s shaping up.
Every now and then, we are asked to make a design adjustment as we’re building. The changes are usually very minor because we do our best to be thorough in finalizing the design before we start, but it does happen. If you see something in one of the progress photos that inspires a minor change in direction, please let us know! That is why the process of working with custom furniture makers is so rewarding. You get to watch your piece being made in real time, and you get to forge a relationship with the woodworker that allows you to really create something unique and special. That could never be possible outside the realm of custom-built pieces.
Once we are finished with your live edge coffee table, all that’s left is for us to get it to your home, and there are several ways to do that. You are more than welcome to come pick it up from our shop, but we are just as happy to deliver it to you. By delivering it right to your home, you also benefit from our expertise in making sure it is set up correctly and leveled, and we can also answer any final questions you may have. At Smith Farms, we are so passionate about being able to make that final connection in your home, we are willing to provide white-glove delivery anywhere in the United States.
If you would prefer for us to ship your live edge coffee table to you, of course we can do that as well. The delivery method is entirely up to you!
Working with Custom Furniture Makers Is the Way to Go
We believe the process of working with custom furniture makers is something that is so special and cannot be replicated any other way. In our opinion, every live edge coffee table tells a story, not only through the wood itself, but through the process of bringing it from a rough concept into a real piece of furniture that you and your family interact with every day.
If a live edge coffee table is on your list for 2025, we cannot wait to hear your ideas and start working with you. Don’t let yourself get to the point of absolute frustration searching for that perfect live edge coffee table—contact us today and let us create it for you.
