The internet’s favorite Transformer Table is a really great hack for small space hosting

I try to be a healthy skeptic of DTC furniture that I see endorsed by celebrities and influencers on my For You page. As someone who works in media, and also just exists in today’s internet age with a basic level of digital literacy (at least before AI entered chat), I usually assume that vlog-style clips touting specific products or even noticeably involve at least some level of affiliate marketing or influencer gifting, as Dwell does. (If that assumption surprises you, fashion and culture writer Emilia Petrarca has a helpful explanation about how affiliates workand how they might influence the decisions of writers and content creators, in her newsletter, Shop Rat.) So when the Transformer Round dining table showed up on my TikTok feed just before my partner and I moved into our 700-square-foot Brooklyn apartment this summer, I envisioned the extendable table—with a round wood top and a thick fluted base, quite invisible at first glance from West Elm’s Ellington round dining table-probably wasn’t exactly what was advertised. But we were Real I’d like to be able to host in our space without sacrificing style for functionality.

The Canadian modular furniture company, founded in 2016 by six friends (none of them had experience in furniture production), was created from a Kickstarter campaign that raised millions. The brand has always done almost all of its advertising through videos on Facebook and other social platforms and sells directly to consumers his website and at Costco, where the original rectangular Transformer table is located extremely popular. A section of the website under the words “From our celebrities to your home” contains embedded vertical videos of TV personalities in the home design universe: organization expert Marie Kondo, who collaborated with the brand in 2024 (essentially she just publicly gave the products to her stamp of approval), former Strange eye interior designer Bobby Berk, HGTV star Sabrina Soto and real estate influencer Heather Rae El Moussa of Selling sunset fame – explaining how to use the company’s various modular tables, desks and outdoor furniture. There are also sponcon-adjacent clips from actresses Ashley Greene and Sophia Bush. In Bush’s video, she says in a voiceover, “I can’t tell you what I would have given to have this in my first New York City apartment,” as she places her Transformer Round dining table in a space that, like the others, has plenty of room for the whole thing when fully extended.

Arrival and assembly

My order arrived a week after I placed it. Three men maneuvered three heavyboxes look at our second floor walk-up. We had a white glove service so I can’t speak to the ease of assembly, but the bench was completely intact and it took about 10 minutes for the guys to put together the head of the table and the two pieces that form the base using what looked like standard Allen wrenches.

I almost immediately realized one element that knocked a few points off the scale for its small space-friendly design: The table, which retails for $3,537, and the bench, for $1,615, each contain three extension panels, and while the bench panels fit neatly into a space in the seat when you’re not using them, you’ll need a place to store the extra table tops, which measure about 20 by 45 inches and are quite heavy. We keep ours under our bed (we consciously opted for a bed frame that’s about a foot off the ground so we have extra room for unsightly storage), but otherwise we’d have to tuck them away in our already stuffed closets or lean them against a wall in plain sight, which would be a significant aesthetic sacrifice. The brand’s solution to this is that it Transformer Round sideboard has storage space for the table’s three panels, if you want to spend the $2,615 price for it and have room for the extra item. (We didn’t do that on either front.)

Quality control

While I’m on the mid-lower end of the materials snob spectrum (at least for someone in my particular profession), I have very few complaints about the actual look of the sofa and dining table, which use solid wood and engineered hardwood with oak veneer and come in four finishes: Scandinavian oak, royal walnut, smoked hickory, and dark walnut. We chose the first.

So far we’ve only added one panel to the table to seat six people, but that only took us three minutes. To extend both the table and bench, simply pull the sides apart to make room for the additional panels on the telescopic steel rails, then press the sides back together and secure the panels with the safety locks underneath. The most complicated part of that experience for us was maneuvering the panel out from under our bed, which has only a few inches of clearance from the wall on each side, without scratching the panel or the hardwood floor below.

There are small, visible gaps between the leaves of the table and bench when the panels are attached together. The spaces may be a little more visible than some marketing images suggest, but that appearance doesn’t really bother me. At the bank, however, the central opening between the panels caused some problems. Even with the safety locks secured underneath, the opening wasn’t completely tight, and the pieces often jammed our legs when we moved slightly on the seats. Our solution to this was to purchase self-adhesive child safety strap locks from Home Depot and add them in addition to the existing safety locks under the sofa panels, which allowed the sofa tops to be secured more securely. (You can’t see them from eye level.) This met expectations, although I do think that any piece of furniture that sells for four figures should be sufficiently surprise-proof without the extra help of adhesive fasteners.

My favorite part of the Transformer Round dining table, somewhat surprisingly to me, is the hidden storage built into the fluted base on two sides. From the company’s furniture offering, this feature is unique to the round dining table. I didn’t expect how much we would use the tucked away cabinets: in Bobby Berk’s videothat’s where he keeps his wine glasses, but we use the shelves to store random things that we use quite regularly but don’t want to put on display, like a lint brush or compost bags. That extra storage space has become invaluable to us; it’s a feature of the table that we rely on much more often than its ability to seat more people.

The verdict

In the few months since we moved into our 700-square-foot apartment, the Transformer Round dining table is the piece of furniture we’ve received the most compliments on. Most people comment on how it looks and ask where it comes from before we even tell them it’s extensible. Admittedly, I usually expect their enthusiasm to wane when I tell them the price tag. (And that usually happens.)

What I tell them, though, is that while the pieces are certainly on the higher end of what’s on the market for slide-out furniture, they’re also forward-thinking in terms of design (although that’s a little less so at the moment during the company’s operations). 35 percent Black Friday sale sitewide), I would probably buy the table in the future, even for a larger apartment. Although I understand if they are still a little skeptical.

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