Modern dining chairs: what we have and what we don't
This is where open information needs to be provided. There is no series of chairs. The program knows exactly one chair, one bench and one stool. If you're looking for four or six identical modern dining chairs, you won't find them here, and no one should be advised to have six individual pieces made by hand just to add up the number. That would be an expensive path to a result that others can solve better.
A mixed seating arrangement is a natural alternative: a bench along the wall, chairs on the open side and one individual piece at the head of the table. The bench disappears completely beneath the top when not in use, also solving the space problem in narrow rooms. A chair cannot do that; it stays where it is even when empty.
Bench versus chair is therefore less a question of style than one of distance from the wall. A bench hardly needs any space behind it because it is entered and exited from the side. A chair needs the 80 cm that it takes up when pushed back. In a room that is narrow on one side, this difference determines whether anyone can sit there at all.
A single designer chair at the head gives direction to the table without making the room feel cluttered. Six identical chairs tell the story of a single purchase. A bench, two chairs and a lounge chair at the end tell of a table where people sit in different ways, and that is closer to what actually happens in an evening.
Four genres around the table
The focus is on the Dining tables: four models, rectangular or round, in lengths from 200 to 300 cm and in special lengths in between, all 75 cm high, made of stainless steel, the heavy ones weighing 122 kg. In the dining room, they are less interested in the top than in the space they leave free: at the ends if the frame is on the inside, on the long sides if there is to be a bench underneath.
If you need to fill a particular recess or seat an unusual number of people, the dimensions can be made to fit instead of rounded up. With furniture that remains in the same place for twenty years, the difference between the right size and the next size up is barely visible on purchase day and noticeable every evening afterwards.
Seating furniture includes a bench and lounge chair, sharing the material language of the tables. Consoles suit the wall, while Objects and mirrors occupy the space above. Four categories that sit naturally together because they come from the same workshop.
A set of materials without changing collections has a practical advantage in the dining room: the room can be completed over the years. First the table, the following year the bench, and eventually the console. It doesn't matter in which order, as long as the table is at the beginning. It is the reference point from which everything later finds its distance.
Sideboard or console: the wall behind the table
There is no such thing as a classic sideboard with doors and compartments. What there is is the slim cousin: a console that stands against the wall, requires hardly any depth and offers exactly the space that is actually used in the dining room. On it are the carafe, bowl and the things that can be quickly grabbed when setting the table without anyone having to get up and look for it.
A console is the wrong place for dishes that need to disappear; This requires closed storage space, and it doesn't offer that. It's better to have that here than to have to explain a storage area later that doesn't do what was expected. In return, a console takes up almost nothing from the room. The chair in front of her can still be pushed back where a deep sideboard would have already closed the way.
The wall above is the second point. A single mirror or large object is enough, and the height is based on the furniture underneath, not the height of the room. What rarely works in the dining room are groups of pictures. People sit longer here and look at the same place more often than in any other room; A restless wall therefore tires more quickly. A quiet area with a single person opposite lasts longer.
A mirror has an advantage that only becomes visible in the evening: it doubles the light from the lamp above the table and brings the room closer to the table a second time. Anyone sitting at the head of the chair sees the faces that are missing from them. The wall behind the table becomes a side of the table where no one sits and yet everyone is involved.
How to recognise good dining room furniture
Instead of a brand recommendation, three test points that say something about a dining table. The first is the material thickness of the panel in relation to its length, as this determines whether the surface will still be flat after ten years. The second is its own weight: a light table shifts a little every time it is leaned against, a heavy one does not, and in a room with a single reference point this is not a detail, but a prerequisite.
The third is the ability to repurchase the seating furniture. Seating is almost never created in a single move; it grows over the years, with the guests, with the space. A repurchase after three years, which is no longer possible from the wrong manufacturer, leaves you with a table and chairs from two worlds. These three points can be checked without having to mention a name.
Here, each piece is made to order, in Germany, from two materials that have not changed for years. It then takes five to six weeks until delivery, during which the table is created. If you are not sure which table length fits in the room, send room dimensions and the position of doors and windows. The traffic areas are calculated and the largest dimension that still works comfortably is returned.
Often this is smaller than what you want. It's called it anyway because a dining room is not measured by the length of the tabletop, but rather by whether someone can get up at the end of the evening without everyone else having to move. The table is the occasion. The distance is the furniture.
