How a hotel chair price is built, from one configured chair to the freight quote

Price the ballroom before the color. It sounds backward to a designer, but a director of food and beverage asked for a number on Monday needs the count and one configured chair, not a fabric decision that may take a month.

A hotel chair price on our site is built from the options you choose, and it moves as you choose them. The figure on a product page is where that chair starts. Freight is quoted later, after a person on our team has read the order, and sending the order costs nothing on the day. Once you know those three facts, a budget for a whole property can be put together in an afternoon.

What the price on a product page means

Most chairs we list show a starting price. The steel banquet stacking armchair starts at $106; the ladder-back wood chair with arms for the hotel restaurant starts at $170. That first figure is the chair in its opening configuration. Pick a metal finish, a padded vinyl or fabric seat, a back, a wood stain, and the page reprices the chair to match what you selected.

A few chairs come with nothing to configure. The gold vein banquet chair with a black vinyl seat is one finish with one seat, and it is listed at $56 flat. Most of the chairs in our banquet chairs and the wider chairs department work the other way, so read the starting figure as the floor of the budget rather than the answer.

Count first, then configure one

Start with the number of seats each room needs on its busiest night. Then configure a single chair exactly as the room will have it, note the configured price, and multiply.

Say the ballroom sets 240 for its largest dinner and you choose the steel stacking armchair. At its starting price of $106, 240 chairs come to $25,440 before any option that changes the price and before freight. Configure the finish and the seat, read the new figure on the page, and multiply again. The difference between those two sums is what the options cost the property, and it is worth seeing before anyone falls for a fabric.

Do the same for the restaurant. Seventy-two seats in the ladder-back armchair at its $170 starting price come to $12,240 on the same terms. Two rooms, two lines, two sums: that is a working budget for the food and beverage floor.

Cover belongs in the comparison too. Our limited warranty runs 7 years on metal chairs that do not swivel, such as the banquet armchair, and a single year on wood armchairs like the ladder-back. Both periods describe how long we answer for a defect present at delivery, and a controller weighing two prices will want them on the same page as the sums.

One line for each configuration

Each line on an order is one configuration. Gold vein frames with ivory vinyl are one line; the same chair in silver vein for the function rooms is a second. A line counts quantity, not variety, so 240 identical chairs sit on one line and 200 plus 40 in two finishes sit on two.

We ask for at least eight pieces on an order, counting chairs and tables together however you mix them. A ballroom clears it many times over. A small top-up does not always: four armchairs and two tables for a private dining room come to six, and two more chairs bring the order to eight. Add your purchase order number to the order notes, and a property that buys tax-free or for resale writes that in the notes at submission.

Freight arrives with the review

When the order reaches us, a person reads every line before anything is confirmed. Our confirmation email then sets out the final order, the payment instructions and a freight figure for every address on it; the invoice comes after. No payment is taken on the site, and nothing is charged at submission.

Each property is quoted separately, so a group furnishing two hotels sees two freight figures. Services such as a liftgate, inside delivery or a limited-access site go on the order when you submit it and appear in the quote. Settle the invoice by wire transfer, by check or money order, or on an American Express, Mastercard or Visa card, and a standard order is settled before it ships. Custom lines, a fabric off our lists for instance, ask for a 40 percent deposit with the balance due before delivery. For a ballroom of standard chairs, allow 14 to 21 business days until the chairs ship, custom pieces can stretch toward 8 weeks, and the carrier's transit is added on top as an estimate. Read how to order for the full sequence.

The mistake that costs a restocking fee

The expensive error is ordering on a starting price, then changing your mind after the chairs are packed. Stock items can come back, but a 35 percent restocking fee applies to the returned value, and freight both ways is the buyer's.

Work it through. Forty stock chairs at $106 each are $4,240 of furniture, and the restocking fee on them is $1,484, before a single mile of freight. Custom lines cannot be returned or cancelled at all once confirmed. So settle the count and the configuration before you submit, and ask for a fresh finish swatch if the order matches chairs already in the building.

A budget sheet the controller can read

Save each room as a plan in property plans: the ballroom with its stacking chairs, the restaurant with its armchairs from our arm chairs, the lobby bar on its own. Each plan keeps the items as configured, the quantity on each line, your notes and the price on the day you saved. When a plan moves to the basket, those prices are checked against the current catalog, so the figure you hand the controller is the live one.

Download the project sheet for each room and staple them together for the budget meeting. If the property is planning a pool restaurant as well, our notes on commercial pool furniture cover timing that order. For work beyond the listed options, read about custom hotel furniture, and for what to ask any seller before you sign, see choosing hotel furniture suppliers.