The Best Coffee Tables for Every Living Room Vibe

When it comes to home decor, you have to be honest about what really pulls rank in your house. Is it the velvet couch? The nine-foot rug that looks like an M.C. Escher painting? Any one of these Big Investment™ pieces would be deserving of your veneration, but we would found a whole new religion for the right coffee table. 

Your coffee table is basically an evolving altar for some of the best things in your life, including your Taschen art books, errant tchotchkes, rolling papers, and Japanese snacks. Why wouldn’t you want to pedestal your feet upon a Design Toscano dragon coffee table, or this $11,000 glass-top masterpiece, which is flanked by two nude, bronze babes? The coffee table is the heart of the home, and deserving of the utmost swag. There’s a coffee table for every person and every budget, from Virgos who want a coffee table with lift-top storage to vintage snobs on the hunt for a mid-century modern coffee table that blends in with their Japandi decor. 

Pick your fighter aesthetic, and let’s ride. 

We head to West Elm for the best faux fur throws and statement chairs, but we sprint to its hallowed mid-century modern halls for its coffee tables. We’d love to put our feet up on the sturdy two-tier Calgary coffee table, which is built from a solid wood frame and treated with a walnut finish. 

Look, sometimes you just want to have more mobility from your furniture, which is when you need a slick rolly boy such as this mid-century modern-inspired emerald coffee table from Urban Outfitters. It’s perfect for when you need to transform your living room into a dance floor/cuddle puddle pile.

We’ll take more storage wherever we can get it. This lift-top coffee table from Wayfair has a 4-star average rating from over 500 reviews, and has three hidden compartments for stashing your magazines, blankets, books, and whatever else you want out of view. 

If Piet Mondrian were to design a coffee table, it would be West Elm’s dynamic Profile coffee table. This baby comes in four different colorways, and is equipped with three artfully placed shelves for highlighting your treasures (and especially that Gaetano Pesce vase).  

The Felix coffee table at Urban Outfitters gets a gold star for providing us with ample foot room, and ample drawer storage. You could style this white sled to fit everything everything from a 1970s Pierre Cardin aesthetic to a completely contemporary look. 

A blend of Scandinavian minimalism and traditional Japanese design principles, Japandi decor is the equivalent of giving your home a hot, essential oil-infused bath and a Klonopin, because the vibes are just that warm and relaxing. This three-legged Googie number is a mere $89 at Amazon, and reviewers say it’s perfect for smaller spaces and easy to assemble.  

Inside you, there are two wolves: The one that’s a fan of blonde Scandi wood aesthetics, and the one that craves a Japandi coffee table with a slightly more angular, brooding base. If the latter is where your heart lies, cop this mango wood coffee table from West Elm. 

Perhaps the biggest design flex for a coffee table is an Isamu Noguchi piece. The late artist’s glass-top coffee tables can cost thousands, but Amazon has a doppelganger for around $400 that will leave the design heaux none the wiser.  

On the complete opposite end of the design spectrum, we have Cocaine Decor, the 1980s-nostalgic aesthetic that favors lucite and glass coffee tables, mirrors on mirrors, and Patrick Nagel posters. One day, we’ll be ready to lay down the Benjamins for this postmodern panther coffee table, but in the interim, Amazon’s glass coffee table is a luxurious (yet affordable) way to get the Miami Vice look for less. Plus, an all-glass coffee table will open up your living room by giving the illusion of taking up less space.  

… OK, we take it back. This kiln-dried wood coffee table sits at the intersection of Cocaine Decor and Japandi design, and will give the impression that you’re living a whole tax bracket above your current means. 

A little playful, a lot of smoky. This tempered glass coffee table is cheeky enough to let people know you have a Feeld account, but understated enough to retain an air of mystery. 

In a way, every coffee table is a personality coffee table, because there’s a coffee table for every kind of person. But, as with people, some coffee tables are louder than others. Just take this 1980s lacquered coffee table, which screams “I’m a nepo baby artist/your biggest crush from Malibu who just had a residency in Montpellier, France.” 

If you own a wiggly wrought iron coffee table, you are most likely an Enyacore king who loves tassels, Medieval Times, and blasting your Enigma records.

… And if you’re the proud overlord of this Design Toscano masterpiece, you’re most likely leading a sick D&D campaign and own some sick Frank Frazetta art books.

Garnish with a fancy candle, and you’re Gucci.

The Rec Room staff independently selected all of the stuff featured in this story. Want more reviews, recommendations, and red-hot deals? Sign up for our newsletter.