Wooden Desk Top: Oak, Walnut or Pine, and Buying the Top on Its Own

A wooden desk top is the one part of a desk you touch all day, so it gets more thought from me than anything else in the build. People come to me wanting a wooden desk top for three fairly different reasons: they want a whole desk and the top is the bit they actually care about, they already own a sit stand frame and want something better than the board it arrived with, or they have a pair of trestles and want to replace the plank lying across them. The right answer is different in each case, so here is how I think about it in my workshop, with the real sizes and prices from my own range rather than vague advice.

Oak desk top, walnut desk top or pine: how they behave

I build tops in three timbers and they are not interchangeable.

Pine is the softest of the three. It dents and marks more readily than either hardwood. Some people hate that and some people like it, because a pine top quietly picks up the history of being used. What pine does better than the others is take colour, which is why the choice of finish really lives here: my pine desks come in Antique Oak, Light Oak, Walnut Stain, Ebony, Granite Grey, Silk Grey, White, Mahogany, Lightly Steamed Beech and plain pine. I finish pine in Osmo Wood Wax.

An oak desk top is the dent resistant one. British oak is hard and dense, pale golden, with a tighter and straighter grain than pine. If you shove a chair into the edge of it, drag a heavy monitor arm across it, or hand the desk over to a child with a biro, oak is the surface that comes out of it best. I finish oak in Osmo Polyx-Oil.

A walnut desk top means American black walnut: dark chocolate brown, strongly figured, and no two boards alike. It is a hardwood too, though slightly less hard than oak, so it is not quite as dent resistant. What it does better than either is hide the everyday. Dust, crumbs and fine surface scratches vanish on a dark top in a way they never do on pale pine. Walnut also tends to lighten and warm up as it ages rather than going darker, which surprises people who expect it to deepen. Polyx-Oil on this one as well.

If you want the broader comparison across furniture generally rather than desk tops specifically, I went through it in oak vs pine vs walnut.

32mm or 40mm thick?

My standard top is 32mm. That is rigid enough across a full 200cm span and it reads as solid wood rather than as a board. I also make a 40mm version of the pine, oak and walnut tops.

I would call 40mm a look rather than a performance upgrade. It is chunkier, which helps on a very wide top where a thin edge can look a bit mean. It also costs more and weighs more, and the weight is the part worth thinking about if the top is going onto a sit stand frame. Check the lifting capacity your frame maker quotes before you order the thicker option. On a fixed desk against a wall, 40mm is purely about taste.

One number that matters if you are matching a top to legs: my desk legs are 71cm, so a complete desk lands at 74.2cm with a 32mm top and 75cm with a 40mm top. If you are buying the top for a frame of your own, the frame sets the height and the top thickness just adds to it.

The sizes I can make

Pine tops run from 80cm to 200cm wide in 10cm steps, with depths from 50cm to 90cm. Oak and walnut run from 100cm to 200cm wide in 10cm steps, with depths from 50cm to 80cm in 5cm steps. Everything is made to order, so if the size you need sits outside those lists, ask me and I will quote for it.

On depth, the honest version is that 50cm is enough for a laptop and not much else, 60cm is where a single monitor and a keyboard start to feel comfortable, and 70cm or more is what you want if you run two screens or like having paper open beside you.

Buying the wooden desk top on its own

Every desk I make has a leg style option called Desktop no legs. Choose it and you get just the top, in your size and finish, supplied with no legs, screws or fittings. It is the right choice if you already own a sit stand frame, a set of trestles or hairpin legs you are happy with, and the top is the weak link.

Three things to check before you order one. First, your frame's own size limits: most adjustable frames have a minimum and maximum top width they are rated for, and a minimum depth. Second, the fixing pattern, because the fittings come from your frame rather than from me, and you want to know where the holes are going before the top is in front of you. Third, the weight, especially in 40mm.

And the honest trade-off: once the top is yours, the fitting is yours too. Drilling into a solid wood top is not difficult, but it is not reversible either, and a hole in the wrong place is a hole in the wrong place. If you tell me what frame you have I am happy to sanity check the dimensions before you buy, which is a cheaper conversation than a replacement top.

One exception worth flagging: the Somerton desk, the one with the built in monitor shelf, is not available as a top on its own. The shelf is part of how the desk is built, so that one only comes complete.

What a wooden desk top actually costs

Pine is where this gets affordable. The smallest pine top, 80cm by 50cm in 32mm, is £175. The same top in 40mm is £200. A more typical home office size, 140cm by 60cm in 32mm, is £325.

Oak and walnut are a different conversation. Both start at £685 for a 100cm by 50cm top, and a 140cm by 50cm top in either timber is £780. That is the hardwood premium, and it is most of the cost of the desk.

Which brings me to the comparison I would rather you made before ordering. An oak or walnut top on its own, at £685, costs considerably more than a complete pine desk with legs, which starts at £235. And if you do not already own a frame, buying the whole hardwood desk makes far more sense than buying the top alone: a complete Halse oak desk or Wedmore walnut desk starts at £745, so the legs are adding around £60 to the £685 top. Buying the top on its own only saves you money when the legs you already have are legs you want to keep.

So who should buy a top rather than a desk?

Buy the top on its own if you have already spent money on an adjustable frame and want to keep it, if you have trestles or legs you like the look of, or if you are replacing a failed top on an otherwise sound desk.

Buy the complete desk if you have no legs yet, if the maths above makes the top look like poor value, or if you would simply rather not be the person responsible for drilling it. There is no prize for doing it the hard way.

Where to look next

All of it sits in my desks collection. For pine in the full range of finishes, with both the 32mm and 40mm tops and the desktop only option, that is the Bruton desk. For an oak desk top or a walnut desk top, both are in the hardwood desks. And if a built in monitor shelf is what you are really after, have a look at the Somerton range before you commit to a plain top.

If you are still unsure which timber or which size, send me the measurements of the space and what you have for legs, and I will tell you what I would build.