The Practicalities of a Glass Table

A glass table is not only a beautiful piece of furniture, it also a very practical and therefore functional piece of furniture that is ideal for any home. Whether you are looking for a glass coffee table or even a luxurious glass dining table the practicalities are universal. This article by the LiveIn|LiveOut team takes a look at the many practical features of owning a glass table, and how they can make your life easier whilst enhancing your home.

A Glass Table is Easy to Clean

Glass as we know is a very smooth surface and this means that it is very easy to keep clean. There are a myriad of glass cleaning products on the market, but the easiest (and cheapest way) to keep your glass clean is a solution of vinegar and water. Apply the vinegar/water solution to the table top and give it wipe over with old newspaper. This is quite honestly the easiest way to clean any glass in your home – it removes all of the grease and grime and is also environmentally friendly. Even though glass will pick up finger prints, so will a polished wood table, and if you have a ‘magic’ duster (the micro fibre type) a finger print is swiftly removed without you having to resort to the fantastic vinegar/water solution.

Glass is Actually Very Difficult to Scratch

Glass and particularly toughened glass is very difficult to scratch. Of course, like any material it will scratch but is certainly more difficult to scratch than say a wooden table top. Knives and forks on a glass table will pose it no significant threat, what you do have to watch out for though is ceramic objects as these may well scratch the glass table top. The bottoms of plates for example where you sometimes have the unglazed ring is a likely culprit for scratching a glass table.

Glass Will Not Stain

One property of glass is that it is inherently a non-porous surface and this makes it ideal for use as a table. In fact this is the very reason that you will see so many glass coffee tables. Spilt drinks, spilt dinner and colouring crayons simply will not stain or mark the glass. A glass table is far more resilient than a wooden one in this aspect. A polished wooden table top may not so readily absorb spilt liquids, but any table tops that are constructed from natural unfinished wood will readily absorb a nice glass of red wine. Rectifying this problem on a wooden table top is extremely difficult and potentially costly – get a table a glass table top though and you have no fear of this happening.

A Glass Table is Ideal for Use in a Smaller Home

If you live in a smaller home a glass table could be the best solution for you, what many sales people won’t tell you is this one big advantage of glass table; they take up no visual space. The very fact that you can see straight through a glass table to floor below means that they won’t impose themselves in your room, and hence they won’t close it in at all. Off course the table still takes up the same amount of space any other table would, but humans tend to only pick up on the visually sense of space and for this reason they are a great investment for the more compact home owner.

Glass is Very Strong

It is odd that we see glass as such a fragile and weak material. Many public buildings are built from glass which is designed to withstand a bomb blast. I’m not insinuating that your brand new glass table will be bomb proof, but it will be very difficult to break. Any glass objects in the home should be made from toughened glass; this term however is slightly misleading because toughened glass is actually no stronger than regular glass, let me explain. The process of toughening glass actually changes what happens to the glass when it breaks. The main hazard with glass is that when it breaks it breaks in to large sharp pieces and this is what people injure themselves on. However, when the glass is toughened and it breaks, it shatters in to lots of tiny fragments that pose no threat to any one.

After reading this article you can probably see why owning a glass table is quiet appealing. There are not many materials that are more special – in terms of there visual appeal and the practicalities – than glass.