Sideboards and Buffets That Fit Behind the Dining Chairs

A sideboard is the one piece of dining room furniture that isn’t a table or a chair, which makes it the place where the room gets its character. It holds the plates and the napkins, but it is also the surface for a lamp, a bowl of fruit, and whatever you like to look at over dinner.

Start with the doors. Glass doors turn the contents into a display, so they suit people who own dishes worth showing. Solid doors hide everything and let the front do the decorating, with fluting, carving, paneling, or a strong color. A mix of open shelves and drawers falls between the two.

Size matters most where the sideboard has to share floor with dining chairs.

HOMCOM Modern Kitchen Sideboard With Glass Doors

A sideboard with glass doors is a display cabinet, so it is one to choose if you own dishes worth looking at. White frames divide the glass like window panes, and stacks of plates and a row of glasses behind them become the decoration. Turned legs give it a traditional, slightly country look. Keep what goes inside to one or two colors and it will always look composed.

Tribesigns Solid Wood Buffet Sideboard

The planks on the doors still look like planks, knots and all, and that roughness is what makes the piece. It belongs in a dining room with a farmhouse table, linen runners, and nothing too polished. We’d fill the open shelves at one end with cookbooks and a big serving bowl and leave the rest behind the doors.

HOMCOM Modern Sideboard With Glass Door and Drawer

The look is cottage dresser, the kind with a little of everything on the front. Glass doors, open shelves, and drawers break it up so it never looks like a plain cupboard, and the coppery handles and curved base add to the charm. Put the pretty things in the middle where they’re easiest to see, a teapot or a jug of flowers.

Homrest Fluted Black Sideboard Buffet

The fluting on these doors runs on the diagonal and meets in a chevron, so the closed front is a pattern in itself. In black with two slim gold-toned handles, it is a smart, graphic piece that would suit a modern dining room, or a living room where it could stand in as a drinks cabinet. A tray of bottles on top would finish the idea.

HOMCOM Glass Door Buffet Cabinet, Grey

Weathered grey wood grain gives the buffet a soft, pale farmhouse look, and the glass doors mean your dishes are part of it. White plates and clear glasses look calm against the grey, and a plant in the open middle adds some green. It would sit well with a pale table, woven chairs, and black iron light fittings, which pick up the black handles.

RoyalCraft Buffet Cabinet

Buy this for the color. The forest green is deep enough to anchor a dining room of white walls and pale wood, and the raised panels, turned legs, and ornate bronze handles give it the look of a painted antique. We’d hang a gilt mirror or a still life above it and keep the candlesticks brass.

HOMCOM Sideboard Buffet Cabinet With Glass Doors and 2 Drawers

Small and symmetrical, the cabinet appeals for its neatness. It can stand centered under a mirror or between two windows and look as though it was made for the spot. Behind the glass doors, a set of good glasses becomes the decoration, so the top can be left to a pair of candlesticks.

Tribesigns Fluted Sideboard Buffet

Rounded ends give the Tribesigns a soft, contemporary outline, with fluting that follows the curves round. The warm wood tone and plain doors keep it calm, which leaves the shape to make the point. It would be at home in a dining room with a round table and curved chairs, where it repeats the same soft lines.

HOMCOM Kitchen Sideboard With Open Shelf, Black

The open shelf under the top is what makes this one useful as a serving station. Plates and bowls can wait there within reach during a meal while the closed cabinet below keeps the rest away. In black, with slatted sides and slim silver handles, it has a slightly Mission look that suits a kitchen as well as a dining room. A coffee machine on top would make it the breakfast corner.

Homrest 2 Door White Storage Cabinet

This small white cabinet has the manners of a much grander piece, with paneled doors, tiny gold knobs, and tapered legs. It is one for the end of a dining room, or beside the table in an apartment, where a full sideboard would be too much. A lamp and a framed photo on top are all it needs.

Tribesigns Wood Sideboard Buffet With 2 Shelves

The doors here are carved with diagonal lines and notches, a pattern with a handmade, almost folk art feel. In pale wood on round feet, it brings texture to a room without adding color, which makes it a good match for white walls, linen, and stoneware. It would be as good in a hallway as beside the dining table.

Treku Aura Modular Sideboard

Long, low, and raised on slim legs, the Aura is a sideboard in the Nordic manner. Treku lets you choose how the case is filled, with doors, drawers, and open compartments in whatever order suits you, and in walnut, oak, or lacquer. The version shown mixes pale wood fronts with a dark open section that would frame a row of art books or a record player. It needs a long wall and deserves one.

Placing a Sideboard

Drawers pull out and doors swing open, so keep floor clear in front of the sideboard for both. Behind a dining table, measure from the wall to the back of the chairs when they are pulled out, since that is the space a sideboard has to share.