Dining Chairs

The upholstery of your dining chairs matters for both comfort and practical daily use. Leather and leather-look dining chairs are the most practical choice for busy households — they wipe clean in seconds, resist spills and stains and age gracefully over time. Fabric dining chairs bring texture, warmth and a wider range of colours to the table, and are particularly well suited to rooms where comfort and softness are the priority. Velvet dining chairs add richness and a touch of occasion to the dining room, while boucle dining chairs bring an organic, tactile quality that suits natural and contemporary interiors. Our range includes dining chairs in all these materials, so you can find the upholstery that suits both your daily life and your aesthetic.

Good dining chairs start with the frame. We stock dining chairs on four-leg timber frames, tapered wooden legs, metal hairpin legs, sled bases and fully upholstered designs where the base is wrapped in fabric. The frame material affects both the look and the longevity of the dining chair — a solid hardwood frame is built to take years of daily use without loosening at the joints, while a powder-coated steel frame is lean and strong for a more contemporary aesthetic. Our dining chairs are chosen for frames that hold their integrity over years of regular use, because a dining chair that wobbles or creaks within a year of purchase is no good to anyone.

Our dining chairs can be purchased individually or as a set, which gives you the flexibility to build your dining setting over time or replace individual dining chairs as needed. Buying dining chairs in a set typically ensures a consistent dye lot and upholstery match across all chairs, which is important if uniformity around the table matters to you. Mixing two or four dining chairs of one style with two of another — such as an armchair at the head of the table — is a popular approach that adds visual interest. When selecting dining chairs, check the seat height against your dining table height — most standard dining tables are 74 to 76 centimetres, and dining chairs with a seat height of 44 to 48 centimetres suit this range well.

Dining chairs that look good but feel uncomfortable after twenty minutes are not doing their job. We select dining chairs with well-shaped backrests that support the lower back through long meals, and with seat depth and foam density that remains comfortable across a two-hour dinner. Armchair-style dining chairs add an extra level of comfort and are particularly well suited to the head-of-table position. Testing the dining chairs in person in our Melbourne showrooms is the best way to assess comfort before you buy — sit in the dining chair and stay there for five minutes, because the way a dining chair feels under the lights in a showroom tells you a great deal about how it will feel at the table every night.

The right dining chairs finish a room, so it is worth matching the dining chairs to the table with care. As a guide, leave roughly 15 centimetres between the seat of the dining chair and the underside of the table apron so diners can cross their legs, and allow around 60 centimetres of table width per dining chair so nobody feels crowded. Timber dining chairs sit naturally alongside oak and timber tables, upholstered dining chairs soften the hard edge of a marble or travertine top, and mixing an armchair-style dining chair at each end with side dining chairs along the length is a classic way to add interest. Our team can help you pair dining chairs with any table in our range so the proportions and materials work together.

Our five showrooms across Melbourne — Alphington, Preston, Essendon DFO, Springvale and Nunawading — are open every day, so you can sit in a chair before deciding. Stock on hand dispatches within 48 hours and reaches you through white-glove metro delivery, or Australia-wide freight if you are further out. Frames are covered by our structural warranty, and Zip Pay is offered in store and online.