Which aluminum chair stays in the function room and which may go to the terrace

Eleven pounds. That is what our slim aluminum banquet chair weighs, and it is the number your setup crew will feel two hundred times before the doors open. An aluminum chair earns its place on the food and beverage floor by being light to lift, quick to stack and easy on the cart.

There is a second question, though, and it decides more than the weight does. Which aluminum chairs may go out to the terrace, and which belong in the function room for good? The frame metal alone does not answer it. The usage line on the product record does.

Light frames and the changeover

Picture a Saturday that turns a ballroom from a wedding dinner for 200 into a Sunday brunch. Every chair comes off the floor, onto a stack and back again.

The slim aluminum banquet chair weighs 11 pounds, is 17 3/4 inches wide and has an 18 3/4 inch seat with a padded back. Two hundred of them come to 2,200 pounds of chair. Our steel banquet stacking arm chair weighs 19 pounds, which puts that figure at 3,800 for the same room, so the aluminum frame takes 1,600 pounds off every full reset. Spread across a crew of eight, each person lifts about 200 pounds less per changeover.

Weight is not the only thing aluminum frames share. The aluminum banquet models in the aluminum chairs category all stack, and each record gives a weight capacity of 500 pounds. Their records give the stack count too: most go five high, the slim banquet chair six, and three of the flex-back frames ten, so one cart can carry twice as many of one model as of another. Plan the carts and the store room around the count of the chair you choose.

Aluminum chairs for the function room

For the ballroom, the restaurant and the function rooms, the indoor aluminum chairs bring two things that suit a hotel well: a light frame and a padded seat and back.

The aluminum chair with a ganging option is a good example. It weighs 14 pounds and stacks five high; the back rises to 36 1/4 inches, the seat to 18 3/4. Its options include a ganging mechanism that links the chairs side by side, which keeps theater rows straight for a keynote, along with a choice of glides or front casters. The frame comes in 17 powder coat colors or 22 wood-grain finishes, and the seat and back can be vinyl or fabric. A hotel that runs both meetings and dinners can keep one chair for both rooms and change only the layout.

Neither chair carries a patio listing. Their upholstered seats belong under a roof.

One finish across the floor

A property often wants the ballroom, the restaurant and the terrace to read as one place. Aluminum makes that easier than most frames, because the indoor models share a long list of finishes. The slim banquet chair and the ganging chair both list the same 17 powder coat colors, from black sandtex and silver to champagne gold and nordic white, so the function room and the restaurant can match exactly while seating different events.

The terrace is harder to match, since many patio chairs come in a single listed color, such as the grey frame and natural faux teak of the chair below. Choose the indoor finish after the outdoor chair, not before. Then order metal finish swatches from samples and hold them against the patio chair's photograph in daylight. For rooms that need a quick stack between sessions, the wider set of stacking chairs is worth comparing at the same time.

Which aluminum chairs may go outside

Here is the rule of thumb. If the usage line on the record says Patio, the chair may go to the terrace; if it says only Indoor, it stays inside, however light and metal it looks.

Patio-listed aluminum chairs use seats that suit the weather: faux teak slats, resin, woven synthetic rattan or rope. The grey aluminum patio chair with faux teak slats weighs 10 pounds, stacks, and its usage line names the patio as well as the indoor room. That double listing is useful on a property. The same chair can set the terrace for lunch and the garden room for a private dinner, and it can go in the breakfast room when the weather turns. More of them are under aluminum and steel patio chairs.

Even a patio chair needs care to last. Rinse it, let the slats drain, and cover or store it when the terrace closes for the season.

The wedding on the lawn

This is the mistake we would most like to prevent. The ballroom chairs are light, the ceremony is outdoors, and someone decides to carry the indoor aluminum banquet chairs out to the terrace for an hour. The frames may look none the worse, but the upholstered seats sit in the sun and catch whatever the evening brings.

Out in the weather, upholstery fades, wood swells and unprotected metal rusts, and our warranty does not cover any of it: indoor furniture taken outdoors is one of its exclusions. If the property hosts outdoor ceremonies or terrace events, give them their own set of patio-listed chairs and keep the ballroom chairs inside.

What the warranty says about each

The two kinds of aluminum chair sit under different terms, and it helps to know which is which before ordering. A metal chair without a swivel has 7 years of cover for faults in its materials or its making. A patio chair is covered for 6 months. So the indoor banquet chair and the patio chair may share a frame metal and still sit under different periods. Product pages state the period where it is clear, and our warranty page sets out every term.

A claim needs an email: the order reference, a few lines on the fault, and photos of the whole chair and the defect up close. Any defect has to be reported within three days of receipt. Check each delivery soon after it arrives.

Setting the property in two plans

Keep the indoor and outdoor chairs apart on paper as well as on the floor. Open one property plan for the function rooms and another for the terrace, and the usage line on each chair keeps them honest.

Then compare frames side by side in the banquet chairs. The metal banquet chairs guide weighs steel against aluminum for the ballroom, and the hotel chair guide walks the property room by room. Before ordering, weigh one stack on the cart you already own: that one number tells you how many trips the next changeover will take.