The coffee table has an innate ability to solidify or completely dissolve the style of an entire living room with a single punch. Choosing the right coffee table is essential to achieving the overall vibe you desire. For those who lean toward the contemporary, metal coffee tables are an excellent way to achieve a great modern look.

But even if you’re not into whole-scale modern design, a coffee table that incorporates even a bit of metal can add a fantastic contemporary feel to your space. Here are some examples:

It’s not entirely modern, per se, but this scissor-styled coffee table is purely a specimen of the hard-working industrial style. Which can work very well in modern spaces. We love the adaptability of this table, with its adjustable height and casters.

Modern style embraces a clean line, and this coffee table fits right in. What a fabulous contemporary presence it gives to a classic, neutral living room.

Chic and packed with personality, this brass coffee table is fabulously interesting. A perfect showstopper in a sophisticated and fairly neutral space.

Mirrors and metal go together like this unique jewelry box-shaped coffee table. Very glamorous on its plush carpeted throne.

A dark metal coffee table with a laser-cut top provides depth to an otherwise airy space. The table also ties in nicely with metal patio chairs, which seem perfectly at home here.

We love a multifunctional piece, and when your functional coffee table can double as a piece of sculpture, you’ve really got something there.

Nothing adds a luxe look quite like a brass-legged glass-topped coffee table. Being paired with white and pale neutral furniture helps the coffee table’s lines really pop. Those legs!

This original coffee table reverses the standard glass-top-metal-legs layout, with its polished metal tabletop and many clear acrylic sideways legs. Quite the conversation piece, this.

A clean-lined steel coffee table is the epitome of contemporary chic in this modern, grey space. The length of this particular coffee table, visually, leads perfectly to the geometric circle at the far end of the room.

When chrome and brass combine, as they do on this coffee table’s legs, the design world as a whole comes that much closer to perfection.

The modern sputnik-esque layout of this glass coffee table’s brass legs is modern and ultrachic and looks fantastic on a diamond-pattern Moroccan area rug.