Occasional

What you'll find here

Coffee tables make up the biggest share, in solid timber, travertine and stone, including nests and half moon pairs. Lamp and side tables come through in good numbers and are the easiest way to finish a seating arrangement without committing to anything large. Console tables and console units suit a hallway or the back of a sofa in an open-plan room.

Storage is well represented too, covering sideboards, display cabinets, tall cabinets, cupboards, TV units and bookcases. Because these are showroom pieces, they have usually been styled as part of a room set, so the proportions have already been tested against real furniture rather than chosen from a specification.

Buying a piece that fits the room

Occasional furniture is easy to get slightly wrong, and a few measurements prevent it. A coffee table sits most comfortably at roughly the same height as your sofa seat, and leaving around 40cm between the table and the sofa keeps the room easy to move through. Side tables work best level with or just below the arm of the chair beside them.

For storage, depth matters as much as width, since a sideboard that projects too far into a walkway will annoy you every day. Measuring the wall, the skirting and any radiator or socket position before you order is well worth the five minutes. Our coffee tables and lamp and side tables pages show the current dimensions across the range.

Building a room from separate pieces

Because clearance pieces arrive individually rather than as sets, occasional furniture is the department where mixing works best. A timber coffee table with a stone side table reads as considered rather than mismatched, provided the undertones agree, so warm timber with warm timber and cool grey with cool grey.

Repeating one material across two pieces is the simplest way to tie a room together, for example a console table and a coffee table in the same finish with everything else left to contrast. Several ranges appear here regularly and remain available new across their full size options, including the Miller range and the Micah range, which is useful if you find one piece and want to add a match later.

The wider range

Clearance occasional turns over faster than any other department here, so the selection looks different from week to week and there is rarely a second chance on a specific piece.

If nothing quite fits, the full living furniture and storage ranges cover every size and finish currently in production, and our sideboards and console tables pages are good starting points. The other clearance departments are worth a look as well, at clearance sofas and chairs and clearance dining. For ideas on how these pieces sit together, our living room inspiration pages are worth browsing.