Rattan Side Tables: How Much of the Table Is Woven
The table beside a sofa or reading chair is the one surface your hand finds without looking. A lamp base goes down, then a mug, then a book, and the table has to hold all three without shifting. Rattan side tables are often chosen for the way that moment looks — light, woven, a little informal — but the material is also making a practical promise about what the surface can do. The useful question is not whether to buy rattan. It is how much of the table is woven, and whether the top is woven or hard.
A fully woven top is a surface with gaps. It rewards a lamp with a broad base and punishes a mug that can tip. A glass or wood top gives you a true plane, and the weave moves to the frame or the shelf below. That single decision — woven top or hard top — changes where the table belongs and how you use it. It also sets a limit on where the piece can live: the Side Table Elephant Natural Rattan is specified for indoor use and dry locations only. If the table is going to a covered porch, the material line matters before the weave style does.
The Fully Woven Table
The most direct expression is a table that is rattan all the way to the top. The Side Table Saba Hexagon Natural Rattan is the archetype: a hexagonal top, a lower shelf for a stack of books, and a frame that is entirely woven, at 22.83 inches high. Its 23.62-inch length and 20.47-inch width make it a generous side table without being a coffee table. The Side Table Elephant Natural Rattan uses the same material for a different purpose. At 26.77 inches wide and 15.75 inches front to back, it is a broad, shallow sculpture with a flat top, and it is the one piece here that states its indoor, dry-location use outright. The Boracay Side Table is the geometric extreme: a 22-inch pentagonal dodecahedron wrapped in cane, 22 inches high, with no shelf and no straight line to align with a wall.
All three are surfaces for light objects and strong visual statements. The Saba's shelf gives it a second job; the Elephant's form is the job; the Boracay is a piece of sculpture that happens to hold a drink. If the table will carry a lamp with a heavy base and a cup of coffee every evening, a fully woven top is the harder choice. If it is mostly a place for a book, a small vase, or the room's texture, the woven surface is the point.
A Woven Base Under a Hard Top
The compromise most rooms end up wanting is a woven base with a solid top. The Side Table Tiago Square Natural Rattan Incl Glass Top puts a glass plane on a rattan frame at 23.62 inches square and 27.36 inches high. The glass is 12 millimeters thick, and it protects the weave while letting the pattern read through. The Turtle Beach End Table - Bermuda Sands takes the same idea in a round, warmer form: 22 inches across, 24.5 inches high, with an inset glass top and a honey rattan finish. Glass is the choice when you want the weave visible and the surface truly flat.
Wood is the other hard top. The Martinique Side Table pairs a rattan base with a quartered oak veneer top, 24 inches wide and 21 inches deep at 28 inches high — the tallest single table here, and a good fit beside a sofa with a high arm. The Trinity Nesting Tables use a rattan frame under three graduated tops in quartered oak veneer: the largest is 24 by 16 inches at 22 inches high, with a medium at 19.5 by 16 inches and a small at 15 by 16 inches. Nesting gives you one footprint and three surfaces, which is useful when guests arrive but less so when every surface needs to hold a lamp.
Cane Panels in a Solid Frame
The tables that use cane here set it into a solid frame rather than weaving the whole piece. The Cane End Table carries a wood-backed cane inlay inside a solid oak case with a round silhouette, 21 inches across and 23.75 inches high. The cane is framed by a smooth wood border, so the texture is contained rather than structural. The Freya Cane Side Table With Matte White Lacquer Wood Frame is the smallest piece here: 18 inches square and 22.25 inches high, with natural woven cane panels set into a white lacquer wood frame. It is the table to consider when the floor plan is tight and the room needs a little texture without another full woven surface.
The Dania Sea Glass End Table - Caribbean Sands uses a painted frame and a fixed rectangular glass top at 23 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 22 inches high, with rattan and woven raffia in the mix. It is the painted, coastal version of the same decision: the hard top does the work, the woven material supplies the character. The Mariner Storage End Table - Caribbean Sunset goes further, pairing a single upper drawer and two lower doors with woven raffia, rattan, and crushed bamboo in a warm brown case at 26 inches wide and 28 inches deep. At 120 pounds, it carries the heaviest published weight among the tables discussed here, and it is the one to choose when the side table also has to hide something.
How to Choose
Start with the top. If the table will hold a lamp, a drink, or anything that can spill, choose a hard top: glass for lightness and a view of the weave, wood for warmth and a quieter surface. If it will hold a book, a small plant, or nothing at all, a fully woven top gives the room more texture for the same footprint.
Then check the footprint and the height. The Freya is the smallest at 18 inches square; the Saba is 23.62 inches long and 20.47 inches deep; the Martinique is 28 inches high, which suits a sofa with a taller arm. A nesting set such as the Trinity covers more occasions with a smaller permanent footprint, but each pulled-out table is smaller than a dedicated side table. Finally, confirm where it can live: the Elephant's listing specifies indoor use and dry locations only, and a woven table by an open window is a different proposition from a woven table on a rain-exposed terrace.
If none of the fully woven or glass-topped pieces fits the way you use the corner, the solid oak and cane of the Cane End Table or the white lacquered frame of the Freya may be the better compromise: you keep the texture of rattan, and you gain a surface that behaves like a side table first. That is the trade worth making deliberately rather than by default.
Shop the story
- Side Table Saba Hexagon Natural Rattan
- Side Table Elephant Natural Rattan
- Boracay Side Table
- Side Table Tiago Square Natural Rattan Incl Glass Top
- Turtle Beach End Table - Bermuda Sands
- Martinique Side Table
- Trinity Nesting Tables
- Cane End Table
- Freya Cane Side Table With Matte White Lacquer Wood Frame
- Dania Sea Glass End Table - Caribbean Sands
- Mariner Storage End Table - Caribbean Sunset
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