Chelsea Dark Grey Bar Stool: fit, spacing and the ring back

The Chelsea Dark Grey Bar Stool is a velvet stool on a chrome base, finished with a ring knocker detail on the back. One size is listed: 54 x 48 x 102cm. That makes it one of the slimmer stools on our bar stools page, which matters more in a real kitchen than it sounds.

The ring knocker, and the stool it is not

Two Chelsea stools are listed at the same size, both on a chrome base and both described as velvet, though neither listing says the two fabrics are identical. The difference the listings do draw is the hardware on the back. This one has a ring knocker; the Chelsea 01 Dark Grey Bar Stool has a lion knocker. The listing describes the ring as visual interest that does not interrupt the clean back, and that is a fair way to frame the choice: the ring reads quieter from across a room, the lion reads as a feature.

Decide it from where people will stand rather than from a photograph. At an island facing into a living space, the back of the stool is the side the room looks at all day.

The footprint, and the figure the listing leaves unlabelled

The size is printed as "54 x 48 x 102cm" with no labels. The 102cm is almost certainly an overall height rather than a seat height, but the listing does not label it or say what it is measured to. The 54cm and 48cm are the footprint, and which of them is the width and which the depth is not stated either, so confirm the figures with the shop if the stool is going into a tight run.

The smaller of those two figures is the one to think about in a narrow kitchen. Galley layouts live or die on what is left of the walkway once someone is sitting down, and the gap you need behind a stool is the depth of the stool plus the space a person needs to stand up and someone else needs to pass. Mark the footprint on the floor with tape before you buy, then walk the route with a full laundry basket. It is a cruder test than a drawing and a more honest one.

Working out how many you need

Using 54cm as the across-the-front figure:

• Two stools take up 108cm of counter, before any gap between them.
• Three take up 162cm.
• Four take up 216cm.

Those are stool widths only. Add your own gap between each one and at both ends, because people are wider than the seats they sit on. If the sums are close, go with the smaller number: two stools used comfortably beat three that nobody can get into.

One more thing to check before you order. Measure from the floor to the underside of the worktop, including any overhang, and ask the shop for the seat height. The listing does not state the seat height, and the 102cm overall figure will not tell you, because the back takes up a good part of it.

What else is worth looking at

If you want a deeper, buttoned back in place of the Chelsea's plain one, the Lewis Bar Stool has a Chesterfield back with button detailing and is listed in light grey and mink, at 58 x 50 x 98cm. For a larger stool, the Mayfair Bar Stool (Ring Knocker) carries the same ring detail and is listed at 64 x 60 x 100cm, bigger on both footprint figures. And if you want a piece that moves around the house rather than a fixed counter seat, the G-Milan Stool (Gold Legs) has an integrated handle, and its listing offers it as a footrest or extra seating as well as a stool. Its heights are not labelled either, so ask before you buy it to sit at a counter.

Where the listing is silent

The listing gives the material as velvet, the base as chrome and the detail as a ring knocker. It does not give a seat height, a weight limit, a rub rating for the fabric, an exact grey reference, or whether the stool arrives assembled. No swivel or gas lift is described, so take the height as fixed. Ask us about any of these before you order rather than after.

Delivery is free within 50 miles of our Glasgow store and £50 beyond.

Six photographs are on the Chelsea Dark Grey Bar Stool page.