Six of the best: sideboards are making a comeback

1. Own-brand House at John Lewis offers reliably good design at good prices. This Casper sideboard has fashionable colour-graded drawers. At 128cm wide, it costs £499 and comes in plywood with solid oak legs (johnlewis.com; 03456 049 049).

2. Designer Toby Sanders salvages panels generated as a waste product by computer-controlled factory machines and reuses them for sideboards. The relief patterns on the doors are the trace of the machine's previous activity. Prices start at £2,500, made to order (tobyhouse.co.uk; 07795 528082).

3. Everything at Kensa Designs is painted to order on carefully sourced pieces of furniture. This is a restored Waring & Gillow Thirties sideboard, painted with a wraparound image of Venice that is protected with many coats of lacquer. It costs about £18,000 — but you are buying a one-off artwork (07789 261107; kensa-designs.com).

4. Michael Armstrong has been designing and making in Newcastle since 2005 as Afid Design. This cabinet is from his new B range. There are several variations, priced from £1,450, and all are made to order. To create the black areas the wood is first surface-charred and then oiled to bring out its grain (afiddesign.co.uk; 07971 564513).

5. Orderly piles of "4x2" timber in a yard — complete with steel straps — inspired the Bundles sideboard, a piece of highclass cabinetry with push-open doors, concealed drawers and adjustable glass shelves. It's designed by Gary Mann, who founded Piece-UK a couple of years ago. Priced £4,500, it comes in ash, oak or walnut and is 190cm wide (piece-uk.com; 07912 036 026).

6. Scout & Boo are David and Teresa Beswick, who left London six years ago to set up their own business in the West Country. They find vintage pieces of furniture and then apply their own distinctive graphics. This Battersea Power Station design has become very popular and they can repeat it — albeit slightly differently each time — for about £1,200 (scoutandboo.co.uk; 07817 503824).