Barstools

Barstools

There is one measurement that decides whether a barstool works, and it is not the one people ask about. Get the seat height wrong and nothing else helps.

Seat height: the rule, and the number to send us

Leave 25 to 30 cm between the top of the seat and the underside of the worktop. A 90 cm kitchen island wants a seat at about 65 cm; a 105 to 110 cm bar counter wants about 75 cm. A stool 10 cm too tall puts your knees into the cabinet; 10 cm too low and you eat with your chin on the counter. These stools are made to order, so tell us the counter height and the seat is set to it — and send the depth of any overhang too, because a wide seat has to pass under it.

Full back or low back

This is the second decision and it is about space, not looks. A full back supports your lower back, so Sky, Echo and Anna are stools you can sit at through a meal — but they cannot disappear under the counter, so they stand in the room and take floor when nobody is on them. Rope's low back clears the underside of the worktop, so it pushes right in and the kitchen reads as a clean line instead of a row of chairs. What you give up is honest: a low back holds the base of your spine but not your shoulders, which is fine for a coffee or a drink and less good for two hours.

Then the character

Sky has the widest seat, generously padded — and a wide seat on a narrow base means the leg geometry has to be set out to stay stable when someone leans sideways. Echo is the plain curved one: nothing applied, so the making is what you see, and because a stool is seen from every side there is no forgiving face. Anna carries the leather straps that run through the house — the same motif as the Mellow dining chair, the Bravo bench and the Ranger bed — on the back, which is the face a stool actually shows.

Materials and ordering

Solid wood frames; deeply padded seats, because a bar seat takes your full weight on a small area with your feet unsupported. Any of seventy-six leather shades across twelve families — genuine leather only — or fabric, with your own fabric (COM) accepted, so stools can be matched to the dining chairs in the same room. Measure the counter first; everything else follows from it. Made in our Istanbul workshop.