Database Design Principles Every Airtable User Should Know

Airtable’s greatest strength is also its greatest trap: it looks like a spreadsheet.

Because it looks like Excel, new users treat it like Excel. They mash different data types into one column, they create new "tabs" for every month of the year, and they manually type the same customer name fifteen times.

But Airtable is a Relational Database. If you fight against its nature, it will fight back. Your automations will break, your interfaces will look messy, and your team will hate using it.

As a developer who often has to come in and "fix" broken bases, I see the same architectural mistakes over and over. Here are the core database design principles that will turn your fragile base into a robust software application.

1. The "One Entity, One Table" Rule

In a spreadsheet, you might have a tab called "January Sales," another for "February Sales," and another for "March Sales."

In a database, this is a crime.

• The Principle: A table should represent a type of thing (an Entity), not a time period or a status.
• The Fix: You need one table called "Sales." To see January's data, you don't make a new table; you use a Filter or a View where the Date field is in January.
• Why it matters: If you split data across tabs, you cannot summarize yearly revenue or create a dashboard that shows all-time trends without massive headaches.

2. Normalization (The "Single Source of Truth")

Do you have a column in your "Orders" table where you manually type the customer's email address? Stop.

• The Principle: Information about a specific entity should live in one place and one place only.
• The Fix: Create a separate Customers table. In your Orders table, use a Linked Record field to select the customer. Use Lookup Fields to pull in their email or phone number.
• Why it matters: When "Lara Rosenfeld" changes her email, you update it once in the Customers table. If you had typed it manually in 50 past orders, you would have to update it 50 times.

3. The Junction Table (Handling Many-to-Many)

This is the concept that separates the pros from the amateurs.

Let’s say you have a Students table and a Classes table.

• One student takes many classes.
• One class has many students.

If you just link them directly, you hit a wall: Where do you store the Grade? You can’t put the grade on the Student record (they have many grades). You can’t put it on the Class record (there are many students).

• The Fix: You need a third table in the middle, often called a Junction Table (e.g., Enrollments).
• Structure:
• • Student links to Enrollment.
  • Class links to Enrollment.
  • The Grade lives on the Enrollment record.

4. Primary Keys (Unique Identifiers)

Every record needs a name. In Airtable, the first column is the "Primary Field."

• The Mistake: Using a generic name like "New Order" or leaving it blank.
• The Principle: The Primary Field must be unique and descriptive.
• The Fix: Use a Formula for your Primary Field to auto-generate a unique ID.
• • Bad: "Invoice"
  • Good: CONCATENATE({Client Name}, " - ", {Date}, " - ", {Order ID}) -> output: "Acme Corp - 2026-01-12 - #1042"
• Why it matters: When you are linking records or using a mobile interface, you need to know exactly which record you are selecting.

5. Field Naming for Automation (The Developer’s Edge)

If you plan to use scripts, APIs, or tools like Make/n8n (which we specialize in), your field names matter.

• The Mistake: Using field names like Client's 1st Email (Main)?? 📧.
• The Principle: Keep field names clean, consistent, and predictable.
• The Fix:
• • Avoid special characters (like ?, /, &) in column headers.
  • Avoid emojis in field names if you plan to write code (it makes Python/JS scripting annoying).
  • Be consistent: Don't use Client_Name in one table and customerName in another. Pick a style and stick to it.

Conclusion: Build for Tomorrow

A spreadsheet is a scratchpad; a database is a foundation.

When you design your Airtable base with these principles, you aren't just organizing data—you are building the backend of your company's custom software. It takes a little more thought upfront, but it prevents a complete teardown six months later.

Is your Airtable base a tangled mess of duplicate data and broken links?