Visitor Chairs: Comfort for People Who Don't Stay All Day

A visitor chair has a different job from the one you sit in all day. Nobody adjusts it. Nobody reads the instructions. Someone arrives, sits, stays for twenty minutes or an hour, and leaves, and the chair has to be comfortable from the first second because there is no second chance. Choosing visitor chairs is easier than choosing task chairs, as long as you stop trying to buy them the same way.

I came to this from hotels, where the chair in reception was judged in the time it took someone to sit down in it. The same rule applies to an office. The person in the chair is waiting to see you, and the chair is the first thing your business has said to them.

What visitor chairs have to do

Three things, and none of them is a lever.

• Quick comfort. A fixed seat at a sensible height, a back that supports the middle of the spine without needing to be set, and a seat that is not so deep a shorter person has to perch. The visitor chairs we sell mostly sit between 45cm and 49cm at the seat, which suits most people in shoes.

• Easy in and out. Arms help people stand up, especially in a waiting area that sees older visitors, but they also stop a meeting chair tucking under the table. Decide by the room, not by the catalogue.

• Fabric that forgives. Coffee, biro, wet coats. A visitor chair is cleaned less often than a task chair and sat in by more people. Darker fabrics and wipeable finishes earn their keep here.

Where people over-spec

The usual mistake is buying visitor chairs with task chair ambitions. A gas lift on a reception chair gets set once by the first person and never touched again, so it adds cost and a part that can fail. A high back looks generous and turns a meeting room into a row of thrones. And a 24 hour usage rating on a chair that is sat in for twenty minutes at a time is a rating you paid for and will never use.

Look at the usage rating on the product page and match it to the room. Most of our visitor chairs are rated for 6 or 8 hours, which is the right number for a chair that is never sat in for six or eight hours.

Two that get it right

The Brunswick medium back stacking visitor chair is the one I would put in most receptions. Fixed 49cm seat, a medium back, arms or no arms, rated for 8 hours and 115kg, and it stacks, so the room can be cleared for a training day. It starts at £76 ex VAT and comes in the same Camira fabric ranges as our task chairs, so it can match the chairs at the desks without costing what they cost.

For a room that takes more punishment, the Academy heavy duty stacking visitor chair is rated for 130kg with a three year guarantee on its components, and starts at £112 ex VAT. Same fabric ranges, sturdier build, and it is the one I would choose for a busy front desk or a training room that turns over all week.

If the room is a meeting room rather than a waiting area, a cantilever chair gives a little give in the frame without any mechanism at all, which is about as much as a visitor chair should ever move.

A short plan

Count the seats you need at the busiest time of the week and add two. Pick one fabric colour and use it across the building, so that a spare is a spare wherever it ends up. If the room doubles as a training space, buy stacking. Then order from the reception and visitor chairs category, and if forgiving fabric is the priority the black reception chairs page is the shortlist.

Every listing shows the usage rating, the seat height, the weight capacity and the guarantee, so the comparison is on the page rather than in a phone call. And if the room is unusual, a corridor that doubles as a waiting area, say, or a reception with no natural light, tell us. There is usually a plan for it, and I have probably already made it.