Nobody argues about tops. They argue about legs.
Same table, same species, same joinery. Put a straight 1¾" square leg under it and the thing reads like a workbench. Taper those legs to 1" at the floor and the same table lifts off the ground. The top didn't change. The joints didn't change. The leg changed what the piece says about itself.
Your eye goes to corners first. Legs live at corners. That first glance forms a judgment about the whole piece before you've registered anything else. Get the leg wrong and the table looks heavy in a room where it should float, or fragile in a room where it should anchor. Get it right and nobody notices the leg at all. They just think the table belongs there.
Taper
A straight leg is the easiest to make. Rip to width, joint the faces, done. It's also the hardest to justify visually on anything that isn't supposed to read as immovable. A workbench, sure. An Arts and Crafts blanket chest, fine. A dining table on four straight posts looks like it's trying to hold up a bridge.
Taper fixes this by following a logic your eye already knows. Trees get lighter as they move away from the ground. Columns get lighter as they rise. A tapered leg starts full-dimension at the apron, where the load transfers, and reduces toward the floor, where the stress is lowest. It's structurally honest, and that honesty is why it reads as right.
The window is 50 to 60 percent of the original dimension at the floor. A 1¾" leg running to 1" is at the upper edge of that window. Light, confident, refined. Push it to 7/8" and it starts looking nervous. Keep it at 1¼" and the taper barely registers. You're inside the window or you're not. There's no partial credit.
Where the taper starts matters as much as the rate. From the apron down, the whole leg is in motion. From below the stretcher down, only the visible lower section tapers while the structure above stays solid. That's the MCM approach. Neither is wrong. They make different furniture.
Direction is the question most plans skip. Taper on two inside faces and the outer profile stays parallel. The taper is nearly invisible from outside the table. Taper on all four faces and the leg reads as deliberate from every angle. Two-face is faster. Four-face is the right answer for anything meant to be seen from more than one side, which is most furniture.
Rake and Splay
Rake is the side-view angle. A raked back leg on a chair tilts backward from vertical, usually 3 to 7 degrees. This does two things at once: it moves the rear foot behind the seat for balance, and it gives the chair a visual line that reads as poised rather than parked. Most dining chairs have some rear-leg rake. Without it, the chair feels like a stool with a back bolted on.
At table scale, rake is rarer and more deliberate. A slightly raked leg on a side table reads as art. Use it knowing that's the statement you're making.
Splay is the front-view angle. Legs tilting outward from center. Where rake reads as forward energy, splay reads as breadth. A table with splayed legs is claiming its territory. Japanese workbenches use extreme splay because the bench needs to say "I'm not moving." In lighter furniture, 3 to 5 degrees widens the apparent base without adding mass. Push past that and a light piece starts looking like it's doing the splits.
Compound angles, both raked and splayed, are what make Windsor chair legs land exactly where stability demands. The visual effect is organic, like an animal bracing under load. It's not an accident that Windsor chairs look comfortable before you sit in them.
Section
The cross-section is the vocabulary.
Square says Shaker, Arts and Crafts, honest use. Tapered square says MCM, Danish Modern, refinement with edges. Turned says period furniture, Windsor chairs, country tradition. Tapered round says contemporary Scandinavian, modern warmth. Sculpted says Esherick, Maloof, furniture-as-art.
The section has to match the tradition or deliberately break it. A round-tapered leg under an Arts and Crafts case is speaking the wrong language. A square taper under a Windsor seat looks borrowed from another piece. When the match is right, the leg reads as inevitable. When it's wrong, the whole piece feels like it was assembled from parts that don't know each other.
Placement
Corner placement is the default. Legs at the corners, load path straight down. Solid, unambiguous, natural seat for mortise-and-tenon joinery.
Inset placement is the MCM signature. The leg set in from the edge, the top floating above it. Nelson desks, Eames tables, the Case Study tradition. The piece looks lighter than its dimensions because the top extends past the support. It also requires angled joints or a structural plate. Know what you're committing to before you draw the line.
Three Questions Before You Cut
Does the taper ratio land in the 50 to 60 percent window? Does the section match the tradition you're working in, or break it on purpose? Does the placement match the joinery you can actually execute?
Answer those before you touch the wood. You can change a leg on paper. You can't change it at the floor.