The Best Bedside Tables and Nightstands

Consider, honestly, how many times a day a hand reaches for the bedside table — to switch off a lamp, silence an alarm, set down a glass of water, reach for a book mid-chapter. It is arguably the most physically used surface in the entire home, touched more often in a given week than a dining table or a kitchen counter, and yet it is routinely the last piece chosen when furnishing a bedroom, picked almost as an afterthought once the bed and wardrobe have taken up the real decision-making energy. This is worth reconsidering, because a genuinely well-chosen nightstand improves the daily experience of a bedroom in a way that is disproportionate to its size.

Getting the proportions right first

Before any consideration of style, the nightstand needs to be the correct height and depth for the bed it sits beside. The surface should sit roughly level with, or very slightly below, the top of the mattress — a table too low means reaching down awkwardly in the dark, and one too high crowds the sightline across the room. Depth matters more than most people expect too: a table too shallow will not comfortably hold a lamp, a book and a glass of water simultaneously, which is really the minimum a bedside table needs to manage. This is the same discipline that goes into choosing the right bed frame in the first place — proportion between pieces matters as much as any single piece chosen in isolation.

What to check before buying

• Height relative to the mattress top, ideally within an inch or two either way.
• At least one drawer or shelf for anything you would rather not leave visible on the surface.
• A surface material that tolerates a set-down glass of water without staining or watermarking.
• Enough surface depth for a lamp, a book and a small tray without feeling crowded.

Matching pairs versus considered mismatches

The old convention of an identical pair of nightstands flanking the bed still works well, particularly in a more formal or symmetrical bedroom, but it is worth knowing that it is a convention rather than a rule. Many considered bedrooms now use two genuinely different pieces — different heights, different materials, even different eras — chosen to suit how each side of the bed is actually used rather than for symmetry’s sake. A taller, drawer-heavy piece on the side used for reading and phone-charging, paired with a lower, simpler table on the other, can feel more personal and more functional than a matched pair bought purely to look tidy in a listing photo.

Styling what sits on top

What lives on a bedside table says as much about a bedroom as the furniture itself, and it is worth applying the same restraint here as styling a coffee table elsewhere in the home. A single lamp, one or two books stacked rather than a precarious tower, perhaps a small dish for rings or a watch removed before bed — this is generally enough. Resist the pull to turn the surface into storage for everything that does not have another home; a nightstand cluttered with chargers, tissues and half-finished glasses undoes the calm the rest of the bedroom is presumably working toward.

“The nightstand is the one piece of furniture people touch in the dark, half asleep — it needs to be intuitive as much as it needs to be beautiful,” notes a Singapore interior stylist who specialises in bedroom design.

Lighting from the table itself

The lamp chosen for a nightstand deserves as much thought as the table underneath it, since it is doing genuine functional work rather than purely decorative work — most people’s last conscious light source before sleep and first upon waking. A warm, dimmable bulb suits a bedroom far better than a bright, cool-toned one, and a lamp with a simple, single-handed switch, rather than a fussy multi-stage touch control, earns its keep at eleven at night when patience is thinnest. This sits within the broader logic of a genuinely pared-back bedroom, where every object present has to justify itself through actual daily use rather than decorative ambition alone.

Choosing for each side of the bed differently

Couples sharing a bed often have genuinely different nightly habits, and it is worth designing each nightstand around the actual person using it rather than assuming both sides need identical furniture. Someone who reads before sleep needs a table with room for a stack of books and a lamp bright enough to read by without disturbing a partner; someone who simply charges a phone and sets an alarm needs little more than a small surface and a discreet outlet nearby. Building in a hidden charging solution — a drawer with a routed hole for a cable, or a table with an integrated USB port — removes one of the more common sources of bedside clutter, the tangle of cords and adapters that tends to accumulate on a surface never designed to manage them. Thinking about the table this way, as a small piece of furniture in service of a specific daily routine rather than a generic decorative object, tends to produce a far more genuinely useful result than choosing purely on appearance.

Materials that suit a bedroom’s quieter register

A bedroom generally calls for calmer, warmer materials than the rest of the home, and the nightstand is a good place to carry that mood through in miniature. A softly finished wood, a woven rattan base, or a simple painted finish in a muted tone all tend to suit a bedroom better than anything too glossy or reflective, which can read as slightly clinical in a room meant for winding down rather than making a statement. If the rest of the bedroom leans toward natural materials and soft textiles, choosing a nightstand in the same material language keeps the whole room feeling coherent rather than assembled from unrelated pieces bought at different times for different rooms.

A small piece with an outsized daily role

Because the bedside table is used so constantly and so unconsciously, it rewards more careful thought than its modest size would suggest. Choose the proportions to genuinely suit the bed and the person sleeping beside it, keep the surface disciplined rather than cluttered, and treat the lamp as a functional decision as much as a decorative one. Explore more considered guides to furnishing the home across our Homes & Culture section.