How to choose a table top for bars and restaurants?
Regardless of the stetic you would like to show of your business, there is a very important point when you want to choose the type of table you want in your restaurant, bar or café. It consists in the material your table top would be fabricated.
Though there are not so many types of different table tops, sometimes is hard to understand what is being bought, because some catalogues present the product with the commercial name (the name of the brand) and not the name of the product.
Wooden table top for restaurant tables:
Under that name, appear 3 different type of table tops. According to the way of fabrication and the wood. They can not fabricate in an industrial way solid wood table tops of all the type of trees, therefore, depending on the type of wood they use one system or the other one.
Solid wood table top for restaurant tables:
Used for Teka and Siroco for exterior, or Pino and Abedul for interior. Also, used in the structures of tables and chairs.
Plywood table top::
Used for beech wood. This table top is obtained of fixing (with glue) and different layers of wood. This generates that in the edge of the table top you can see the lines of the different layers. This system is used to increase quickness and prevent the table tops from being deformed.
Veneered table top:
You can find “table tops of base Dm or chipboards”, that in the seen faces (surfaces such as the edges) are covered with pinpoint accuracy layers of different type of woods. The most common wood used for this type of table tops is Oak, which also lets gye it and pretend to be other types of wood such as Wengué. Generally speaking, when commercially written we say it is a Wood table top it means this type of wood. In case that it is a Plywood or Solid table top they specify which type is it.
Melamine faced chipboard:
(also named as melamine or “bilaminated”): it consists in the same system used for the veneered table top, it means, is used for the base of the table top of DM and chipboard and recovered by both sides with melamine. This material is very resistant (it has so good resistance to scratch) and can pretend to be another type of wood. Its weak point is the touch, it is not comparable to natural wood, but it is so resistant and it is frequently used in office furniture, hospitality industry and even for the interior of the wardrobes and kitchens at the domestic environment. The edges are finished with synthetics edges of PVC and ABS.
(also named as stratified, wezalit, SM SOLO…) It consists in the same system used for the melamine table top, considering the top and lower layer is phenolic instead of melamine. Synthetic material of a high resistance. Its main uses are the furniture for interiors, office furniture and domestic kitchens. This material has a generalized use, each manufacturer uses a different commercial name. The edges are finished, just like in the melamine chipboards, with synthetics edges of PVC and ABS.
Phenolic table top:
(also named compacted). It exists the synthetic table top of “Solid Phenolic”, it means that every table top is fabricated with the same material. This table top can incorporate additives for different industrial uses, for example:
- Anti-ageing treatment by UV, to improve the resistance of the surface color to sunlight
- Fire-resistant treatment for public places that need it
This table top is the most resistant of all. Because of its resistance and rigidity characteristics, they are the thinnest of the market, when the most common sizes are 12mm. Generally, the edges are black and the surfaces are printed in a plain color or pretending to be wood.
Stainless steel table top (Aluminium table):
For hospitality industry, the great combination that is successful are the DM and chipboard table tops with water-repellent treatments (avoiding that the table top absorbs the humidity). It consists in covering it with a stainless steel layer in both sides and finish the edges with an aluminium layers.
In addition to the table tops mentioned before, we can find tables that are fabricated with aluminium, stainless steel and other; but they are the ones less used if we compare with the other ones.
