A bit on the side

Fashions in furniture may change more slowly than catwalk creations, but they can be just as fickle. Take the humble sideboard. Ten years ago no design-conscious interior would have given a look-in to this highly practical storage unit. It was considered naff and old-fashioned: something belonging to the sets of Coronation Street or EastEnders. But now that sideboards have been re-invented for 21st-century living, it seems we can't get enough of them.

Fashions in furniture may change more slowly than catwalk creations, but they can be just as fickle. Take the humble sideboard. Ten years ago no design-conscious interior would have given a look-in to this highly practical storage unit. It was considered naff and old-fashioned: something belonging to the sets of Coronation Street or EastEnders. But now that sideboards have been re-invented for 21st-century living, it seems we can't get enough of them.

Historically, sideboards were used to store glass, china, silver or linen. They were the first line of defence against dust or moths and were usually designed as part of a dining room furniture collection.

These days, they are more likely to be filled with CDs, videos and so forth. But their sleek shapes and glamorous exteriors belie their use as repositories for living room detritus. The new home collection orchestrated for Marks & Spencer by Vittorio Radice embraces several desirable sideboards. There's the Relax model - a gorgeous Asian-inspired design with tactile woven doors (£599); a wooden sideboard with ribbed doors reminiscent of a beehive exterior (£799); a streamlined unit with two cupboards and three drawers in a walnut veneer (£599); and Nantucket (£399), a waxed-pine model like a traditional dresser. As Brian Jackson, the company's homeware concept developer, says: "Sideboards remain a useful source of storage in an age where space is at a premium."

Habitat has some sleekly practical designs, too. Medina (£299) comes in birch-veneered particleboard with a cupboard, drawer and pull-down door concealing two movable shelves. Typhoon (£429) is made of the same material and comes on five castors, two of which can be locked. Internal shelves and a drawer are hidden behind six white doors. Radius (£429), designed by Simon Pengelly, has a solid-oak frame whose two doors conceal a pair of height-adjustable shelves and a drawer.

Terence Conran has designed some modern sideboards in his Content by Conran range, which is available at House of Fraser. His Dove console in pale oak (£895) appears to be seamless but has two drawers and two cupboards with interior shelves, while the leaner Dove plinth (£695) contains two drawers. His Stripe console (£895) conceals dedicated cutlery drawers.

Jeff Banks, who has designed a clean-limbed beech sideboard for his latest home collection at Debenhams (£570), believes that a renewed interest in cooking accounts for their new-found popularity.

"I've included sideboards in each of my three furniture collections because people are choosing to eat at home a lot more now rather than going out for supper," he says. "They're buying more crockery and cutlery to vary their table-settings when friends come round, and they also need a surface as a side-table from which they can serve. So it makes complete sense to have a sideboard in the dining area of the home."

And in virtually every other room, too.

Content by Conran: 01352 719183

Debenhams: 0845 609 9099; www.debenhams.com

Habitat: 0845 601 0740; www.habitat.net

Marks & Spencer Lifestore: 0845 603 1603; www.marksandspencer.com