Buying guide
How to seat six people in a small living room
A small living room has room for the people who live there. The problem turns up three times a year, when six come to dinner. The right question is not where they sit, it is where those seats live the other 362 days.
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Work out which problem you have first
Three different pieces of furniture share this section and get confused constantly, and buying the wrong one is the commonest and most expensive mistake.
If the problem is people coming to dinner, you want seats that disappear: chairs that fold. What to measure is not the seat, it is the gap they will live in. A pair folded flat is ten centimetres, which is nothing, but that nothing has to exist somewhere.
If the problem is clutter, you want seats that store things inside: a bench chest, an ottoman with a lid. It is the only furniture in the house that does two jobs without taking twice the floor, and the difference between one that holds a duvet and one that holds a pair of shoes is a number the maker either publishes or does not.
And if the problem is somebody staying over, you want a convertible. Ask what it measures as a bed before you buy: it is the figure most likely to be missing from the listing, and the one you will care about at midnight.
Our picks
Best overall
Home Source Folding Ottoman 38 cm
The one that best combines what it solves, how little room it takes and what buyers say about it.
A 38 cm corduroy cube that is a seat, a footstool and a box at the same time, and folds flat when it is empty. 858 ratings averaging 4.6.
Also swallows the clutter
SONGMICS MAZIE Storage Bench 110 cm
Two jobs on the same square metre: it is a seat, and it holds about 131 litres inside.
A 110 cm bench holding 131 litres inside and taking 300 kg on top, padded with 2.5 cm of foam and with a removable divider. 1,554 ratings averaging 4.7.
Turns into a bed
FILUXE Convertible Sleeper Chair
If somebody has to sleep as well as sit, this is the one that does both without needing two pieces of furniture.
A chair that unfolds into a single sleeping surface with no tools and no frame, in washable linen over high-density foam. 514 ratings averaging 4.3.
The sum nobody does: pounds per seat
A pair of folding chairs works out at under twenty pounds a seat; a convertible that sleeps someone costs a hundred and ten on its own. Both prices are reasonable, because they answer different questions: one is for three dinners a year, the other is for the friend who visits every other month and has nowhere to sleep.
The practical rule: the more often you use it, the more you can afford to spend. A seat used daily that lasts ten years is cheap at fifty pounds. Chairs used three times a year do not justify much.
The place it gets stored either exists or it does not
Before buying any folding seat, go to the place you intend to store it and measure it. Behind a door there are about 10 cm of usable depth; down the side of a wardrobe, 15 to 20; under a bed, about 20 of height. If the gap does not exist, the folding chair ends up leaning against a living room wall, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid.
One figure disappears from this category with suspicious frequency: the maximum load. A reinforced board chest takes two adults sitting on it; a folding fabric box does not. Of the four here, two publish a load and two publish nothing at all, and that silence is itself an answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many folding chairs do I actually need?
Count the people who live in the house and add two. Sets of six look cheap per seat until you have to store six chairs. If you only ever need two extra places, a good pair takes far less room and gets used more often than a stack that lives in the loft.
A foam sofa bed or one with a frame?
They are two different pieces of furniture. Foam with no frame is very light, needs no assembly and moves from room to room, but you sit and sleep close to the floor. Ones with a metal frame and legs sit at normal height and take daily use, but weigh twice as much and have a mechanism that can seize. If it is the main seat in the living room, you want legs.
Is a storage bench worth it in a hallway?
It is one of the best buys in a small flat, because it solves two problems at once: somewhere to sit to put your shoes on, and somewhere the shoes stop being on the floor. What to check is the depth. Around 35 to 38 cm passes in almost any hallway; from 45 it starts to get in the way.
How do I know the lid will take an adult sitting on it?
Look for a published load and for what the lid is made of. A reinforced board lid with metal corner guards takes hundreds of kilos; a folding fabric box with a padded top takes the weight of what is inside it and no more. If the listing gives no figure, treat it as a box you can occasionally perch on rather than a seat.
Which seat takes the most weight?
Board benches with a reinforced structure declare the most by a wide margin: the one in this section takes 300 kg on the lid. Padded folding chairs on a steel frame are around 114 kg each, which is plenty for what they are for. The pieces that publish nothing are the foam ones, and there the limit is not weight but the fact that there is no frame under you at all.
Compare them yourself
The products in this section set against each other, with the charts overlaid and the best value in each row marked.
Open the comparison toolSee the 4 products in compact chairs and sofas · All the guides