Siena Tub Chair: an 80cm square swivel, and where it fits

The Siena Tub Chair is listed at 80 x 80 x 69cm, which is a different animal from the dining chairs next to it. Eighty centimetres square is close to twice the footprint of a 55cm chair, and 69cm is low. Taken together, those two figures tell you most of what you need to know: this is a chair that wants its own floor rather than a place at a table. The listing also gives a boucle covering and a 360-degree swivel.

The figures, exactly as listed

The figures are not labelled. Two of them are 80cm, so the footprint is square whichever way round they are meant, and 69cm is almost certainly the overall height. That is worth pausing on: 69cm is below the height of a typical dining table top, so the back of this chair would sit under the table rather than above it. Confirm with the shop which figure is which, and ask for the seat height, which is not published and matters more here than on a straight-backed chair.

Why it reads as an accent chair

• It will not tuck in. A tub shape with an 80cm width does not slide under a table edge the way a dining chair does, so it occupies its full footprint all the time.
• Two of them need 1.6m of floor side by side before you allow any gap. Measure the space, not the photograph.
• Low and deep suits sitting back, not sitting up to eat. The listing itself describes it as a focal point or an accent to existing furniture.
• It swivels, which is a feature of a chair meant to turn towards a window, a fire or whoever is talking.

That makes it a bay-window chair, a bedroom-corner chair or the odd seat beside a sofa, rather than one of six round a table. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it is what you are buying.

What a swivel needs

A rotating seat gets left facing wherever the last person left it. If that will bother you, ask the shop whether the mechanism is free-spinning, sprung to return to centre, or lockable, because the listing does not say. Also ask what the feet are finished with before you put it on a hardwood or vinyl floor: a chair that turns loads its feet differently from one that stays put, and the page gives no detail on the base at all.

Boucle, grey or ivory

The listing names boucle and calls it textured, and the written copy mentions both a grey and an ivory version while the page offers Grey and Ivory as finishes. Beyond the word boucle there is nothing: no fibre content, no cleaning code, no wear rating, nothing on whether the cover comes off. Boucle is a looped yarn, and loops are the part a claw or a zip finds, so if the chair is going somewhere a dog sleeps or a child climbs, ask what cleaning and what wear the covering will take. Ivory will show the answer first.

What the listing does not state

• Seat height, seat width and seat depth.
• Which figure is width, depth and height.
• Frame material, filling and any weight limit.
• The type of swivel mechanism and the base finish.
• Boucle composition and any care code.
• Whether the chair arrives built.

What it sits with

The Oslo Chair is the other boucle seat in the range and is narrow enough to use at a table, so the two work together in an open-plan room where the dining end and the sitting end need to agree. For a swivel that is genuinely dining-sized, the Roco 360º Chair (Black Legs) is listed at a far smaller footprint. Browse the rest on the Dining Chairs page, or the seating at Living Room. Delivery is free within 50 miles of our Glasgow store and £50 beyond.

Mark out 80cm square on the floor where you intend to put it, then choose a finish on the Siena Tub Chair page.