Revitalize Your Dining Space with Stylish New Chairs

We rang the new year in with a big ticket upgrade and I can't believe I haven't blogged about it earlier. Especially when I did make a fairly low key YouTube video about them as soon as they arrived to replace or very old and tired old dining chairs. So since the video exists and is all about my experience with the brand Finch Fox (usefull info only if you live in India), I'm going to just let you all know how easy it is to revitalize your dining space with stylish new chairs that work for you home and lifestyle.

But first a trip down memory lane shall we?

The dining set I have is quite OLD, we bought it in 2010 we we were living Navi Mumbai and our living/dining area was finally big enough to have a dining table after years of living in a tiny flat in Bangalore with no space whatsoever for such a "luxury". The set was a lovely hardwood 6 seater dining table with carved chairs and I really had to dig DEEP in my photo archives to find this gem of a picture :

It was back in 2011 after two cross country moves in our first Mumbai apartment, the set was still look fresh, and yes it was VERY brown. As we found out over the years, the padding on the chair was low quality with poor density foam and elastic webbing that struggled to do its job after a few years, but as a former upholsterer, I managed to give them a quick fix and at one point I even reupholstered them with old curtain fabric, because you know, waste not want not. Sadly I don't have a surviving picture and that fix didn't hold long without me having to buy chair pads to place on top of the seating area. It did the trick for a short while before I completely gave up and bought chair covers because at the time buying new chairs or even re-padding ours was way out of budget as we went from crisis to crisis.

Here can can see said chair covers (Amazon affiliate link) in action and yes, the table got painted white, this was in 2021 when plagued with cabin fever after 1.5 years of being home all the time (pandemic joy) I just couldn't stand the sight of our old dark brown dining table standing in the darkest area of our current flat. I needed light, so I took matter in my own hand and yes I will make a blog post about painting your furniture in the future. Those chair covers were a blessing, because they hid the dirt spot and ugly cushion underneath, and because I was. (and still am) teaching art class in my home, it protected the chairs from paint splatters. If you are on a budget but your dining space needs a refresher, chair covers is 100% the way to go. You can change the look of your space in minutes and they can be tossed in the wash when they get dirty, it's a big win. The pandemic years brought more financial hardship so those chairs had to stay, and they stayed until I started planning to get new ones all through 2024. We were sinking through them, some were wobbly and reupholstering them made zero sense in every way : style and cost wise. They REALLY had to go, and quite frankly after 13 years, they had a good life, they were really not worth trying to salvage considering they were mass produced and the whole assembly was coming apart. If I had still been in love with the color, or the wood carving, yeah sure, but I wasn't. Plus my students had a VERY bad habit on rocking on those chairs giving me a fright a few times. I really didn't need anyone breaking their back and skull falling backward on those old chairs.

I wanted nicely padded chairs that were sturdy, and in a more mid-century modern style. I also wanted them in a blue or teal color to go with my urban coastal aesthetic that I have going through my whole home, and last but not least I wanted them to be un-rockable and easy to wipe clean without them being plastic or PU leather that would be uncomfy as soon as the heat and humidity hits. I still conduct art classes for kids in the evenings, and I needed chairs that wouldn't break or topple easily. A lot of research going, I found that for my needs a chair designed for a public space like a cafe would be the best option, so I skipped looking at all the home deco and furniture stores websites meant for residential use and went straight with websites catering to commercial and public space. There are several in India and as I said above I went with Finch Fox which I can 100% recommend. I've had these chairs for 6 months now, the microfiber velvet wipes clean easily, minus a few glue stains courtesy of one student that couldn't stop rubbing their hand clean on my chair (grrrr). When I do a painting activity I use the old chair covers to protect them and all in all I'm sure I'll be able to get the glue off with a hot water compress. I just need the time and patience to do it, or I'll hire a cleaner to come do a deep clean around Diwali.

Honestly, from my experience I would recommend ANYONE to skip the dining chairs meant for residential use, they are often low quality and will wear out rather quickly and they aren't even cheaper than going through a company that caters to corporate offices and restaurants. Most of my possible options from furniture stores like IKEA or Urban Ladder were all a lot more expensive than what I paid for these chairs from Finch Fox. Having worked in the uphosltery industry, I also know that chairs and sofas marked for heavy duty use in a commercial spaces all have a fabric with a much higher Martindale abrasion test score, they are meant to endure repeated heavy usage that no regular home upholstery fabric ever will.