Where to put a bar cart

A cart that fits a wall does not necessarily fit a room. The measurement that decides it is not the cart's footprint but what is left over afterwards, and there is one number worth committing to memory: about 18 inches of clear standing room on the side you pour from. Less than that and you are reaching rather than serving, and the cart quietly stops being used.

The walkway arithmetic

Take the depth of the cart and subtract it from the width of the route it sits in. A 15 inch deep cart in a 36 inch hallway leaves 21 inches, which is passable but tight. An 11 inch deep cart in the same hallway leaves 25 inches, which is comfortable. A 19 inch deep cart leaves 17, which is a squeeze past for one person and impossible for two.

This is why depth matters more than width for placement, and why the shallowest carts in our library — the HOOBRO BF21TC01 at 11.2 inches and the BF35TC01 at 12.8 — are the ones to look at when the cart has to live somewhere people walk. Published depths for everything are in the dimensions reference.

The five placements that work

1. Beside the sofa

The most common and the most forgiving, because a cart here doubles as an end table. Match the height to the sofa arm within a few inches — a 32 inch cart beside a 28 inch arm reads correctly, a 36.5 inch one does not. You need the 18 inches of standing room to be at the front, not the side.

2. Against a dining room wall

The traditional placement, and the one that wants a long shallow cart rather than a deep one, because chairs pull out into the space. The HOOBRO BF21TC01 at 29.5 by 11.2 inches is almost exactly this shape.

3. The dead corner

Every room has one. A round cart wins here for a genuinely geometric reason: a circle wastes less of a corner than a rectangle, and there is no corner sticking out to catch a hip. The Nathan James Sage is the round option in our library.

4. Opposite the kitchen door

Practical rather than decorative — ice and mixers are steps away. This is almost always a walkway, so it is the placement where the depth arithmetic above binds hardest. Shallow cart, and check that the door swing does not hit it.

5. Under a window, if the window is not south-facing

Light is good for a cart and direct sun is not: it fades labels, it warms spirits, and it shows every mark on mirrored glass at exactly the angle you sit at. A north or east window is a good home for a cart; a south-facing one in a bright room is not.

Where a cart does not work

• Behind a door. Obvious in principle and constantly done in practice, because it is the empty wall. Check the door swing.
• In a main traffic route. A cart on wheels in a walkway moves, and a cart that moves spills.
• Anywhere you cannot get 18 inches in front of it. This is the rule that eliminates most of the tempting-looking gaps.
• Next to a radiator or heat source. Heat is bad for wine and for anything with a cork, and the temperature swing is worse than the temperature.

Floors and wheels

Placement and casters interact. On hard floors a light cart rolls when leaned on, which argues for a heavier cart or for locking wheels. On thick carpet the opposite: small hard casters sink and the cart stops being mobile at all, which makes the wheels decoration. Neither problem is visible on a listing photograph, and both are covered in the caster guide.

Once it has a home, the wall above it becomes part of the arrangement — what to put above a bar cart covers the sizing, and how to style a bar cart covers what goes on it.