Well-designed banquette seating has the ability to transform even the most lifeless restaurants into a luxurious dining experience. Available in all shapes and sizes depending on your needs, there’s a banquette for everyone.

Here at Craftwood we have a wealth of experience with this type of seating. So if you’re considering installing some banquettes in your restaurant, we’ve put together this handy guide featuring everything you need to know.

Why should you choose banquette seating?

There are a lot of reasons banquette seating is so popular in restaurants. These built-in benches are comfortable and stylish, creating cosy and intimate booths for guests to enjoy their meals with a level of privacy.

Banquettes can also be used to indicate the main direction of foot traffic throughout the restaurant, while helping to divide the space. For example, you could use a row of banquettes to separate the restaurant from the bar area, using the space behind them as a sort of corridor for customers and staff to use without disrupting the rest of the room.

The main benefit banquette seating provides, however, is the ability for restaurants to maximise the floor space, allowing more guests to be seated comfortably in a smaller area compared to individual tables and chairs.

Which upholstery and materials should you choose?

Choosing the right upholstery for your banquettes is key to ensuring your seating will be durable and practical, while still looking beautiful.

Considering the likely fact that some food and drink may be spilled on the seating, some restaurants choose faux leather materials that can easily be wiped clean. Others opt for textile fabrics with a patterned design that can cleverly disguise any stains.

When choosing a coloured fabric, it’s useful to remember than long lengths of plain fabric can look a little lifeless and uninteresting. Introducing two-toned fabrics, buttoned backs, fluted or piped upholstery will give your design added texture and interest.

How do you install banquette seating?

There are a few things to think about when installing banquette seating – door widths, the evenness of the floor, skirting profiles and dado heights all need to be taken into account.

Because of this, we offer a thorough pre-installation survey to ensure your space is suitable and everything looks good before we install the banquettes.

When ordering your seating from Craftwood, our industry certified CSCS site fitters travel to your venue in our sign written vans to deliver and install your seating. Key to managing and mitigating impact on your business, we typically install our fully constructed seating during times that suits you.

So we’ve spoken about the benefits of banquette seating, the different upholstery and materials to consider, as well as the installation process.

Click here for more information about banquette seating and whether it’s right for you.