Dining Room Furniture: Seating

Published: May, 21 2008

By Thomas A. Prais

Dining room sets are not just about the table; the look and comfort of the chairs are an important, if sometimes overlooked, part of the dining room furniture equation. Furniture stores — which must maximize their salesfloor space — need to make informed choices about what to stock. While there are several, general dining room furniture trends, seating preferences, according to results from The Retail Experience consumer survey, vary according to region and the furniture styles — Craftsman and Arts and Crafts furniture, transitional and traditional furniture, contemporary dining furniture — preferred by a given customer base.

Half of all dining room furniture purchasers who participated in The Retail Experience survey chose dining room furniture with wooden seating. About one-third of respondents in this category chose dining room furniture with upholstered seats. Leather was the third most popular material choice, while metal seating was chosen by only 6 percent of survey respondents.

Regional differences were slight in most parts of the United States, with the exception of the Mountain and West South Central states. Nearly two-thirds of respondents from the West South Central states reported purchasing dining room sets with wooden seats. Respondents from the Mountain States reported purchasing dining room sets with upholstered leather seats. Metal, while the least popular dining room furniture seating material, regardless of region, did about twice as well in the West and Northeast as it did elsewhere.

The biggest difference in preferred seating material for dining room furniture, however, depended on consumers’ preferred furniture styles. Respondents who bought contemporary dining furniture preferred fabric seating to plain wood (40 percent to 35 percent, respectively). They also were more likely than other dining room furniture consumers to have purchased dining room sets with leather-covered seating (18 percent of contemporary dining furniture purchasers bought dining room sets with leather seating, compared to 11 percent among all surveyed dining room furniture consumers).

Leather also was slightly more popular among consumers who identified their purchase as transitional in style.

Surveyed dining room furniture purchasers who bought Craftsman furniture (including Mission and Arts and Crafts furniture) greatly preferred chairs with wooden seats. Upholstered chairs also were fairly popular (though less popular than it was among consumers who chose other furniture styles for their dining room sets).