A restaurant booth buying guide for rooms where guests stay for the second hour

From the middle of a booth, the room recedes. The back rises behind the shoulders, the table edge sits a hand's width from the ribs, and a party of four settles into what is often the longest stretch of the evening. That is the seat this guide is about. It is a different purchase from a chair, a fixed piece that decides how a party sits, how a server reaches the middle of the table, and what the wall looks like from the door.

A booth is also the one seat you cannot swap when it turns out wrong. Chairs get replaced a few at a time. A booth is measured to a wall, built to order from the options listed, and cannot be changed once it is in production. So the decisions come in a set order: the unit, its dimensions, the party it seats, the table that meets it, then the cover and the base. Loose seating comes last, because it fills whatever the booths leave behind.

Four kinds of booth unit

A single booth is one seat with one back, fixed to a wall. A double is two seats sharing a back, made to stand out in the room with a table on each side. The configurable booths list four shapes by name: single, double, deuce single and deuce double, deuce being the trade word for a table of two. Settle the shape before the style, because the shape decides where the booth can stand.

Two other units change the plan more than a shape does. The bar-height booth has a 30-inch seat and a back of 48, 54 or 60 inches, so it keeps company with bar-height tables, not dining ones. The modular booth arrives as loose pieces: armless and end pieces at 48 inches, corner pieces at 73. A run is then built piece by piece to the wall, which suits a room with a turn in it.

Length, depth and back height

Length is the figure buyers argue about, and it varies by model. Some configurable booths set it from 24 to 72 inches in one-inch steps. Others start at 48, or run from 54 to 78. The metal-legged booth with a wood back offers three lengths only: 48, 60 and 72. Read the range on the page of the booth you like before you commit to its back.

The back comes in 36, 42 and 48 inches on most booths. Depth is the third number, and it needs confirming for each model before the floor is drawn. The metal-legged booth lists 23 3/4 inches for a single and 43 1/2 for a double, which is less than two singles back to back (47 1/2) because the two seats share one back.

Pick the length last. Depth and height belong to the room; length belongs to the party and the wall.

Matching length to the party

Allow 24 inches of bench for each guest, 18 at the tightest. A 48-inch booth seats two with room to move and a 72-inch booth seats three. The table in front takes the same length: a 30 by 48 top between two facing 48-inch booths holds four, and a 30 by 72 between two 72s holds six.

Suppose the back wall of a dining room runs 18 feet, which is 216 inches. Three 72-inch booths fill it wall to wall and seat nine along the wall. With a facing bench or a row of chairs across each table, that is three parties of six, eighteen guests. Four 48-inch booths take 192 inches, leave 24 for a pillar or a door swing, and seat eight along the wall: four parties of four, sixteen guests. Eighteen one way and sixteen the other, so the mix of parties on a busy night decides, not the arithmetic.

A common mistake is to buy for the largest party. A 72-inch booth gives a couple an entire bench, and the party of six at the host stand watches them have it. Size the booths for the party you seat most often and let the rare large party take a loose table.

Where the table meets the booth

Two single booths face each other across a table. Take the depth from the metal-legged booth's listing, 23 3/4 inches for each seat, and a 30-inch table: 23 3/4 plus 30 plus 23 3/4 is 77 1/2 inches from back to back. Treat 77 1/2 as the planning figure. The table edge will tuck over the seat fronts and win some of it back, and that margin belongs to the guests' knees.

Behind each booth the room needs its aisle, about 36 inches for service. A facing pair with 36 inches on either side takes 77 1/2 plus 72, or 149 1/2 inches, a shade under 12 1/2 feet of floor measured across the pair.

How the top meets the seat is the finer point, and booth and table fit takes it on its own. For now, one rule: order the booths first and the tables second, since a top can be replaced next year and a booth cannot.

Cover, base and the part that gets kicked

Vinyl wipes down between seatings, and most configurable booths list 40 vinyl colors against 100 fabrics. Fabric earns its keep where the evening is slow and the room is quiet. The seat on these booths is padded vinyl, so a fabric back rides above a seat that takes the spill, and the upholstery materials article goes through that trade in detail.

A channel back adds a second place for color. On the three-channel booth the center channel can be covered differently from the two beside it. The base takes the beating from shoes and vacuum heads: a black kick base as standard, wood legs in seven finishes, metal legs in black or silver, or a reclaimed-style laminate in four patterns. A kick base hides scuffs. Legs let a broom pass under the seat.

Booths beside loose seating

A room of booths alone reads like a corridor. Booths take the wall, where a fixed seat helps; loose tables take the floor, where the party changes size by the hour. Parties of four and more suit the booths best. Pairs and walk-in singles sit in the middle at tables, where chairs can slide to make room, though a room with many pairs can run the deuce shapes along its wall. The comparison of booths and loose seating works that split through room by room.

The chairs on the open side of a booth table share that table with the booth, so choose chairs from the same family of cover and frame finish.

Tape it out before you order

Lay painter's tape on the floor at the footprint of one booth: its length and its depth, then the table, then the 36-inch aisle. Walk it with a tray of full glasses, once from the kitchen and once from the host stand. Tape shows a narrow aisle faster than any drawing.

When the footprint holds, save it as a section of a seating plan, with the wall length and the booth length written side by side. Then send the plan to a specialist from the talk to a specialist page. Booths are exempt from the eight-piece minimum for tables and chairs, so a single run can be ordered by itself, and a person reads the whole order before we confirm anything. The last number to write down is the one on the tape: the width of the aisle.