The dining room is where the best food and conversations are enjoyed, families come together every day, or friends are warmly welcomed with cosy feasts and heart-warming conversations. Even after a meal ends, conversations often linger, people sit relaxed in their chairs and the communal experience carries on. Creating a great dining and social experience for both family and friends comes with choosing the right balance of style and functionality for your dining chairs. We share how you can choose the best dining chair material, backrest height, and weight to create the best dining experience in Singapore!

1. Upholstery material

The dining chair’s upholstery refers to the padded fabric that covers it, providing comfort and ease to any dining space! This means that family members or guests can sit in these chairs for hours at a time, chattering away about the latest movies, books, talking about their favourite food, or day at work. The upholstered dining chair can be found in different materials like leather, velvet, cotton or polyester – each material creates its own style, comfort and vibe.

Leather upholstery creates a luxurious, posh, expensive look, and brings an extravagant style to the dining space, while velvet brings amazing elegance but greater formality. Cotton fabrics are comfortable and easy to maintain – they also induce a more casual and relaxed vibe. Polyurethane Leather or PU Leather Upholstery is the most practical because it is durable and can be cleaned super easily – just wipe and any stains come off fast. PU Leather can also look like leather, faux leather, and therefore is also a popular choice for families who want a modern, luxurious design but need to prioritise practicality.

Remember – choose a material that suits both style and functionality! Families with children, for example, should pick a material that is more functional like PU Leather because genuine leather and velvet are difficult to clean and will absorb stains. If you are keen on a velvet material, you can choose colours that are darker so that stains are less obvious – like a dark maroon, dark blue or dark green.

2. Backrest

Your dining chairs’ backrest will also contribute to the dining room’s sense of style and comfort. Chairs with higher backrests add to a formal dining look, while chairs with lower or medium-height backings create a more casual and relaxed atmosphere. Higher backrest chairs can be more comfortable for longer periods of seating, while chairs with low backrest may be tiring on the user over time. Medium-height chair backrests fall in-between. They provide the comfort needed for long seating times, and can work for mid-formal settings like modern luxury home settings where clean lines and expensive style play a larger role than the formality of the interior.

3. Heavy or lightweight?

 Bigger and heavier chairs are a good fit for large dining rooms and bring out greater formality or grandness with their heavyweight, yet do not compromise on the comfort and spaciousness of the space. Contrarily, smaller dining rooms with big chairs look overly cluttered and make it difficult for users to get up and sit down, or navigate around the table.

The ‘heaviness’ of a chair refers not only to the actual weight of the chair, but also to its visual weight – meaning bigger chairs in a small home contribute to visual clutter, even if they may be lighter in weight. If you want to create a sleeker and cleaner look, you might choose chairs that are either not upholstered at all, like wooden or metal framed chairs, or if you prefer upholstery, chairs with narrower and lighter frames.

This Eliza Chair, for instance, reduces visual clutter even with thick upholstery because it has thin and sleek metal legs and framing. Consider the chair’s seating and frame to decide whether you want a heavy or lightweight dining chair for your home!

All in all, you want to find a balance between style and functionality for the dining chairs in your Singapore home. It’s a good idea to speak to a professional at the furniture store to give you further advice on how your dining chairs can match the already-finished interior in your home, like the dining table and other elements. Don’t be afraid to mix things up and reach out for advice if you need!