Choosing a sideboard for the kitchen, dining room or living room
A solid wood sideboard does a different job in each room, so the room is the right place to start. Our range spans oak sideboards, painted sideboards and sideboard cabinets, and the designs suit each room in their own way.
In a kitchen, a sideboard can continue the cabinetry into the space where people eat. Chichester, Suffolk and Henley also exist as full Neptune kitchens, and Chichester began as a handful of freestanding kitchen pieces. The Chichester potboard still works that way, with an oak surface for preparation and a tongue-and-groove undershelf for pots and pans. The low Chawton sideboards sit close to dining table height, which makes them good at marking the line between kitchen and eating area in an open-plan room.
In a dining room, a sideboard is a serving station, with drawers for cutlery and table linen, cupboards for serving dishes and a top to serve from. The Holborn is a natural partner for our Arundel collection.
In a living room, a sideboard gives books, records and games a home, and keeps routers and their cables out of sight. The Chawton Tall Double sideboard, inspired by full-wall libraries, is a natural fit for a sitting room that also serves as a study.
Choosing the storage and features of your sideboard
- Sideboards with drawers: Chichester and Suffolk sideboards have drawers above cupboards, on soft-close concealed runners. The Chawton Sideboard pairs a bank of drawers with a sliding-door cupboard.
- Cupboard sideboards: the Holborn has two compartments behind its doors, each with an adjustable shelf, and the Colworth’s panelled doors open onto zig-zag shelving.
- Glass-fronted sideboards: the Farlow has glass doors over adjustable shelves, so tableware and books stay on view.
- Open sideboards: the Chawton Single and Double Open designs leave their shelves open, so they work as a low bookcase as well as a sideboard.
- Tall sideboards: the Sunbury Tall stands 109cm high, with an oak drawer box and shelves behind a painted frame on gently splayed legs. The Chawton Tall designs sit at 89 to 91cm.
- Sideboard cabinets: Chawton storage cabinets stand at kitchen worktop height, 91cm, with drawers and an oak interior.
- Modular sideboards: a Chawton sideboard can be added to later, with more modules alongside or above it, and it can grow into kitchen shelving for a low-beamed cottage or a bookcase under the sloping ceiling of a barn.
- Oak or painted: choose an all-oak sideboard, or a painted finish with an oak top or oak interior.
- Practical details: cable access in each Colworth compartment and cable cut-outs on several Chawton pieces, height-adjustable feet on Suffolk and Chawton designs, and a pull-out slide on the Henley, borrowed from antique campaign furniture.
How a solid wood sideboard is made at Neptune
Every wooden sideboard we make follows a promise our co-founders, John Sims-Hilditch and Giles Redman, made early on: no MDF and no chipboard. Neither lasts long enough to hold the traditional joints we rely on, so we build in solid oak and tulipwood instead, using hardwood ply only where a panel needs extra stability.
The joinery is where that choice pays off. The drawers in our Chawton storage cabinets are made with traditional dovetail joints, and the Farlow’s legs are joined with mortise-and-tenon joints. Shelves on most designs adjust on our traditional zig-zag system, timber supports that take a full stack of plates without complaint, while Chawton uses bronze-finished pins that let a shelf move up or down.
Every Neptune sideboard is covered by our lifetime guarantee, which takes in all the structural elements: frames, joints, hinges and handles.
