How to choose a bar cart finish

Finish is chosen from a photograph and lived with under a lamp, which is why it is the decision people most often regret. A mood board will not fix that, because a mood board is also photographs. What does fix it is matching the cart to things that are already in the room, under the light the room actually has.

Step one: find the metal already in the room

Walk into the room and look at the door handles, the lamp bases, the curtain pole, the picture frames and the light fittings. One metal will appear more than the others. That is the metal your cart frame should be.

This sounds obvious and it is routinely ignored, because carts are chosen on their own merits and then delivered into a room that has already made this decision. A gold cart in a room of brushed nickel does not read as a bold choice; it reads as a mistake. A black cart works nearly everywhere, which is a large part of why black is the safe answer when the room is undecided.

Step two: decide how much you will wipe

Be honest here, because it is the difference between liking the cart and maintaining it.

• Mirrored glass: wipe after use. A mirror shows the light source as well as the surface, so a ring is visible from across the room.
• Clear glass: wipe when you notice. Completely cleanable, indifferent to spills, chips at the edges if the cart is dragged over a threshold.
• Wood-look: wipe when something spills, and do not let a spill sit on a cut edge, which swells engineered board permanently.

Full detail in glass versus mirrored shelves.

Step three: check depth before you commit to a color

This is the step that saves people. A cart under about 15 inches deep cannot take a standard 12 by 16 inch serving tray flat, and a tray is what protects any finish from bottles being dragged across it. If the cart you have chosen on looks is 11 inches deep, you are choosing a finish that will wear at the shelf edges and accepting that.

Published depths across our library run from 11.2 to 20 inches. The dimensions reference lists each with its source.

The pairings that reliably work

• Gold frame, mirrored shelves — the category standard, the best photograph, the most wiping. Best in a dark corner where the reflection adds light.
• Gold frame, clear glass — most of the look, much less maintenance. Underrated.
• Black frame, glass shelves — recedes into a room, shows dust, works nearly anywhere.
• Black or bronze frame, wood-look shelves — the most forgiving combination in the category, and the one that suits a room with wood furniture already in it.
• Walnut and slim metal — the mid-century answer, and the one that ages best if the wood is real.

What not to do

Do not match the cart to the sofa. Fabric and metal do not relate to each other and matching them is how a room ends up looking like a showroom display. Match metal to metal and wood to wood, and let the cart be a different color from the upholstery — it is supposed to be.

And do not choose a finish before you have measured. The flagship roundup starts with the fit check for exactly this reason: a beautiful cart that does not fit is worse than a plain one that does.