Upholstered chairs for the kitchen and dining room

Why an upholstered chair rather than a wooden one

A kitchen chair differs from a dining-room chair in how long people sit on it. If it is a fifteen-minute breakfast, a hard seat bothers no one. If it is a two-hour dinner, guests or working at the table, a soft seat stops being a matter of taste.

The difference is in what takes the load. On a wooden chair it is your hips and lower back. On an upholstered one it is polyurethane foam padding of varying density: the denser layer keeps the shape, the softer one takes the weight. In some models there are also rubber-textile webbing straps under the filling — they give a little and stop the seat from sagging over time.

The frame is still wooden. Solid wood and plywood inside, softness on top: the construction is just as reliable as a wooden chair, it is simply more comfortable to sit on.

The second argument is the same as for bed headboards: an upholstered chair can be reupholstered. In five years you change the fabric instead of buying eight new chairs.

Fabric for the kitchen is a separate story

A kitchen chair lives in the harshest environment in the flat: grease in the air, spilt coffee, children with felt-tip pens, a chair back used as a coat hook. Its fabric is not chosen by colour.

A water-repellent treatment is the place to start if the chairs will stand near the hob or children will eat on them. Stains come out of such fabric much more easily because they do not have time to soak in.

A dense weave — if you have a cat. Claws catch the loop, not the fibre, so a loosely woven basket-weave fabric (rogozhka) does not last long in a kitchen with a pet.

A colour darker than the table. An obvious rule, but it works: a light chair next to a dark tabletop shows every crumb, a dark one does not.

All our fabrics are hypoallergenic. The three collections — ECO, PRESTIGE and PREMIUM Textile — differ in composition and price, but each has water-repellent and dense options: the category sets the price, not the features. Tell our manager who lives in the home and where the table will stand — we will pick a few fabrics and send samples so you can see them in your own light.

How many chairs and how to arrange them

Two figures worth working out before ordering.

Tabletop width per place — 60 cm. A 180 cm table seats three on each long side, not four. Squeeze in a fourth and neighbours will be elbowing each other.

Behind the chair back — 75–80 cm to the wall or furniture. This is not a margin for looks: with less, you will have to ask your neighbour to stand up so you can get out from the table.

Then look at the dimensions of the specific model; they vary noticeably. Dali is 48 cm wide, the narrowest in the range: at a table where Sea fits three times, Dali fits four. Pourvie has the smallest depth — 51 cm, so it sticks out less into the walkway in a narrow kitchen.

Backrest height is a question not of space but of how long you sit. Louis, with a 74 cm backrest, does not visually block the kitchen and suits a table by the window. Muse, with a 100 cm backrest, supports the back up to the shoulder blades — it is a chair for long dinners, not a quick breakfast. The rest are in between, 79–90 cm.

Only Novial in the range has armrests. Check the height of your tabletop: a chair with armrests does not always slide all the way under the table.

What they are made of

Frame — solid wood and plywood. Not melamine-faced chipboard and not metal tubing: a chair takes a person’s whole weight at one point, and the frame here is not decoration.

Filling — polyurethane foam padding of varying density and polyester wadding. There are no spring units in the chairs, and that is deliberate: in a piece that takes someone’s full weight every day, springs are the first thing to give out. Some models have rubber-textile webbing straps added, and Muse also has Fibertex non-woven fabric: together they give a springier seat and keep its shape longer.

Legs — solid ash. Ash is chosen for its toughness: it is more flexible than oak and takes knocks better, and over its life a chair takes more of them than any other furniture in the home. There is one exception in the range — Sea: a shell chair on gold-coloured metal legs. That is how the model is designed; its fabric choice is the same as for the rest.

Decoration — if you wish: furniture crystals, nail-head trim or buttons. This is not a separate line but an option for the model you chose.

Warranty — 24 months.

A set with the rest of your furniture

Our chairs are upholstered in the same palette as our sofas, armchairs and bed headboards. This is rarer than it seems: in furniture shops chairs and sofas come from different suppliers with different fabrics, and “matching” means matching roughly.

With us you can order chairs in the same fabric and the same colour as the sofa in your living room — provided it is the same collection. If you have already bought the sofa from us, give our manager the order number: the fabric will be taken from it.

This goes furthest with Novial — there is a sofa, an armchair and a chair under this name. The dining area and the seating area come from one family, not from “something similar”.

In a kitchen-living room where the dining area flows into the seating area, chairs and a sofa in a shared fabric turn two zones into one — without everything being the same colour.