Single Lounge Chairs: Find the Right Fit for Your Living Room

Walk in the front door of most living rooms and you see the length of the sofa first, then the back of the one chair standing at an angle to it. That chair was bought alone, and it will be looked at alone, from behind, in profile, from the far side of the room, while the sofa gets to rely on its own symmetry. This is the quiet problem behind a search for a single lounge chair: there is no second chair to share the work.

Single describes the purchase before it describes the size. These seven chairs are all one-person seats in the same category, and their widths run from 30.75 inches to 51.5, a spread wider than most people expect. The narrow ones keep the floor visible and settle politely beside another seat. The wide ones hand one person the room of a loveseat, and ask the sofa to share the stage. Breadth, the back you will be looking at, and the height of the seat are the three things that settle it.

How Much Chair One Person Needs

The Mcclain Swivel Single Sofa is the clearest case of a name doing more work than the size suggests. It is 32 inches wide and 35 inches deep, armless, finished in onyx black top-grain leather with the seat 17 inches from the floor, and it turns on a swivel base. Nothing beside the seat gets in the way, and the chair can face the sofa or the window without being dragged across the rug, which makes it an easy chair to set at an angle rather than square to a wall.

The Cameron Lounge Chair takes that idea to the smallest footprint in the group: 30.75 inches wide, 32.5 deep, 31 high, on a stainless steel frame in a gold finish, with sloping arms that reach 21 inches and a seat 15.75 inches tall and 22.5 inches deep. It comes in two Nono fabrics, Petrol and Shitake, a polyester the maker notes for its natural variation between light and dark. If the only place left for a chair is the gap between a sofa and a wall, this is the one that asks least of it.

The Kitsui Lounge Chair Coffee Bean Fabric sits between the two at 35 inches wide and 38 deep, but only 26 inches high, and 27.27 pounds in a coffee bean chenille. A back that low leaves the wall above it open, and the weight means it is the piece you slide elsewhere when the room needs a different arrangement.

Then the widths jump. The Charlotte Bulbeux Lounge Chair is 48 inches wide with a 28-inch seat, wrapped in an ivory bouclé over a solid hardwood frame and legs. The Savile Leather Chair is 51 inches wide and 118 pounds, a rolled-arm Chesterfield in leather. The Catalan Chair - Palma Cream is the widest at 51.5 inches and as deep as anything here at 42.5, a cream basketweave over poplar plywood with spring suspension in the seat and webbing in the back. Each of these seats one person with room to spare. Each also takes the wall space and the visual mass of a small sofa, which means the room has to hold two upholstered masses without letting them argue.

The Back You Will Be Looking At

Few people photograph the back of a chair before they buy it, and almost everyone ends up looking at one. The Kees Chair answers that directly: 38.25 inches wide and squared off, carried on a cross-base frame in solid oak, its Monte Navy upholstery a viscose and wool velvet whose highs and lows shift with the nap and the light. From behind, the oak frame is the detail in the room rather than the thing the room hides.

The Savile Leather Chair makes the opposite case. Its back is the point: rolled arms, pleated armrests and buttoning across the back, standing on wood feet in either a green or a brown leather. At 118 pounds it is the heaviest chair here and the least likely to be moved, which suits a chair meant to hold a wall by itself.

The Mcclain handles its back differently again. The leather is drawn into horizontal channel lines across both the back and the seat, so an armless chair with nothing to lean on still gives the eye something to follow.

Seat Height, Arms and the Floor It Takes

Four of these chairs publish a seat height, and they land in a narrow, low band: 15.75 inches on the Cameron, 16 on the Charlotte, 16.54 on the Kees and 17 on the Mcclain. Low seats are good for sinking into with a book and less good for a conversation with someone sitting higher, where you end up looking up to talk. Compare the chair's figure with the seat you already own before deciding, rather than reading the number on its own.

Arms decide placement as much as width does. The Mcclain and the Kitsui are armless, open at the sides, so either can sit close to a sofa arm, a side table or a window without a wooden frame or a rolled arm colliding with anything. The Cameron gives you sloping arms at 21 inches, low enough to lean over but still closing the sides of the seat. The Catalan's arms are deliberately bold, which is part of why it wants the space around it kept clear.

Depth is the number most often overlooked. These chairs run from 32.5 inches deep to 42.5, and a chair standing in a walking line spends its depth out of the room. If the single chair has to sit in a passage or between two zones, read the depth before the width; if it stands against a wall with a table beside it, the width matters more. Motion is the last variable: the Mcclain turns, the Kitsui's 27.27 published pounds are the lightest figure in this group, and the Savile is placed once and stays.

Settling on One Chair

If the chair is filling a tight gap in a room that already has enough upholstery, start with the Cameron at 30.75 inches wide, or the Mcclain if you also want the seat to turn between the sofa and the view. If the goal is one chair carrying a large, empty wall on its own, the Charlotte at 48 inches and the Catalan at 51.5 both give a single person the width of a loveseat, with the Catalan claiming the most floor of anything here. If the body of the chair is what you want to look at from across the room, the Kees shows a solid oak frame and the Savile shows a buttoned leather back. If the chair will be moved, or lives where the seating has to change with the season, 27.27 pounds is a real advantage.

A chair bought alone has to hold its ground without a twin. Choose the breadth first, because it decides whether the chair joins the room or competes with it, then choose the back, because that is the part you will see most. Seat height, arm height and depth can all be checked against the seating you already own.

Shop the story

• Mcclain Swivel Single Sofa
• Catalan Chair - Palma Cream
• Cameron Lounge Chair
• Charlotte Bulbeux Lounge Chair
• Kitsui Lounge Chair Coffee Bean Fabric
• Savile Leather Chair
• Kees Chair

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