First impressions are essential for the hospitality industry. Often, guests first find your establishment’s reception area or lounge. The seating in your hospitality lounge chairs provides your guests with a place to pause and can easily set the tone for your business. The hospitality lounge chairs can become the backdrop for business meetings and conversations. The selection of the lounge chairs may look like a simple choice. However, it impacts the guest experience and your brand. Selecting lounge chairs can impact the business in the long term.
This will outline the factors to consider when selecting the lounge chairs for hotels or restaurants, helping keep your business’s functional needs at the forefront of your design vision.
Luxury Lounge Chairs
Lounge chairs are designed for your guests to linger in. When guests are waiting or socializing, they can be reading or even working. Because of these long forms of use, they need to be comfortable. Along with comfort, the seating you choose will be a main design feature and focus of the room. Because of this, the personal or business brand aesthetic will be more prominent in luxury lounge seating compared to any other type of seating you may choose for your establishment.
The widespread visibility and repeated use of most public-facing furniture mean that generic furniture doesn’t work well in hospitality. These chairs need to be constructed with the special needs of commercial spaces in mind, while also feeling custom, cozy, and residential.
Matching Style to Your Property’s Identity
Hotel lobby seating sets the tone the moment a guest walks through the door. Bold sculptural loungers may help differentiate a design boutique, while clean lines may be necessary for a hotel catering to business clients. Naturally, woven seating that signifies the location’s theme is often found in resort hotels.
The most important detail is that all your hotel’s seating is consistent with your hotel’s design aesthetic and style. The best way to assure this is to use a lounge furniture manufacturer that specializes in hospitality seating. A retail catalog manufacturer will have no understanding of the design language that hospitality furniture requires.
Seating Comfort Considerations
Lounge seating comfort extends far beyond just the cushions and upholstery, though they do play a part. Some factors to think about are:
- Depth and Height of Seating: Public space lounge chairs of the correct design balance seating support with chair depth. Chairs that are too deep will be hard to sit up straight in, while chairs that are too shallow lose depth and support.
- Back Support and Recline: The chairs should have a slight recline to encourage relaxing posture. This becomes very important in places such as lobbies and lounges, where guests can sit for thirty minutes or longer.
- Armrests: Sturdy, well-placed armrests help guests to sit in and leave the lounge chairs. This can be a small feature that can help the company’s overall satisfaction with the chairs.
Durability Standards for Commercial Use
The lounge seating for hospitality comes under a large amount of pressure compared to homes. There is a large client turnover. There is furniture that needs to be used even with food and drinks around. Because of this, contract lounge chairs are made with reinforced frames, commercial-grade foams, and heavy-duty upholstery
Ask about frame material, foam density, and fabric abrasion ratings (measured in double rubs). These ratings are important because they predict how well a chair will hold up after daily use for guests.
Choosing Between Fixed and Modular Layouts
As hotels tend to have business guests during the week and leisure guests for the weekend, modular commercial lounge seating becomes ideal to quickly and easily adjust the set-up for the business guests and leisure guests.
Unchangeable lounge designs are still great for smaller lobbies that need less flexibility and a more intentional design.
Things to Consider Before Buying
There are a few things to clarify with the supplier you are buying from before ordering lounge seating.
- Is the frame for commercial or contract use?
- What level of fabrics and finishes are offered and are they stain-resistant?
- What is the expected lifespan under daily use in hospitality?
- Are cushions and upholstery replaceable without replacing the whole frame?
A good lounge furnishing manufacturer should be able to give you an answer to these questions along with supporting documents or test data for the claims they make regarding durability.
Concluding Thoughts
Lounge seatings are the most prominent and most used furniture in a hospitality property, and they are the most important part of sourcing. Choosing the right hospitality lounge chairs should fulfill the requirements of comfort, style, and of course, daily guest use for years.
At Aura Seating, we design lounge and lobby seating tailored to the hospitality industry.
