You know the feeling. Forty minutes into a good chapter, you shift. Then you shift again. Ten minutes later you have given up and taken the book to bed.
That is almost never the book. It is usually the chair — and usually one of three things about it, none of which you can see in a photograph.
Your feet are the whole problem
Reading is the one thing you do sitting down where you barely move for an hour. That makes the seat height matter more than it does anywhere else in the house. Too high and your feet dangle, the front edge digs into the backs of your thighs, and your legs go dead. Too low and your knees end up above your hips, which is fine for twenty minutes and grim for ninety.
Here is the useful part: you can measure the right height on yourself in about ten seconds. Sit on any hard edge with your feet flat, and measure from the floor to the crease behind your knee. That is your ceiling. A seat taller than that will never let your feet sit flat, no matter how good it looks.
You cannot guess this from your height, either. Two people who measure the same standing up can need completely different seats sitting down. It is why one chair suits one person in a house and not the other.
For scale: our lowest seat is the Taru at 38 cm. The Naro rocker sits at 51 cm — thirteen centimetres higher, and we go higher still. That is the difference between your feet flat on the floor and your feet swinging, and it is invisible in every photo either chair appears in.
The measurement nobody checks
Seat depth is the one that catches people out, because a deep chair looks generous and photographs beautifully.
If the seat is deeper than your thigh is long, you get two options and both are bad. Slide forward, and your back loses the backrest entirely. Sit back properly, and your feet leave the floor. Either way you are propping yourself up with your own muscles for as long as you sit there, which is the opposite of reading in a chair.
A deep seat is not a fault — it is a chair built for lounging sideways with your legs tucked up, and plenty of people want exactly that. It just is not a reading chair unless you add a cushion behind your lower back, at which point the cushion is structural rather than decorative.
Ours run from 44 cm to 66 cm. The deep end — the Luva and Milo at 66 cm — are lovely chairs to fall asleep in and hard work to read upright in. Both things are true at once, and we would rather say so than let you find out in week three.
Where your head goes when you look up
The third one is back height, and there is a trick to reading it: measure the back from the seat, not from the floor. A "97 cm" chair sounds tall until you notice that 43 cm of it is the seat.
Do that subtraction and the range gets stark. Our Wing gives you 54 cm of back above the seat — shoulders and head, with the wings closing off the sides at head height. Our Ryan tub chair gives you 25 cm. Lower back only. Nothing above your shoulders at all.
Neither is wrong. But if you read at night and like to rest your head between pages, one of them is going to annoy you every single evening.
And do not buy back height from the product name. Names describe silhouettes, and a silhouette is whatever the designer decided to call it — there is no standard behind the word. The subtraction takes five seconds and it is the only version of the number that means anything.
About footstools
If the seat is taller than your knee crease, a footstool is not a luxury — it is the fix. If it is not, it is a nice-to-have.
Either way, the number to check is the one nobody publishes: how tall the footstool is. It wants to sit a little below the seat, so your legs slope gently down. Level with the seat or higher and it tips your knees above your hips, which undoes the whole point.
| Chair | Seat | Footstool | Drop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emma with Ottoman | 45.5 cm | 35 cm | 10.5 cm |
| Olivia Linen with Ottoman | 45.5 cm | 34 cm | 11.5 cm |
| Olivia Velvet with Ottoman | 44 cm | 30 cm | 14 cm |
Worth a look at that last row. Same chair name, two fabrics — and the velvet's footstool sits 4 cm lower than the linen's. If you are buying for a particular pair of legs, check the colour, not the series.
Rocking, swivel, or fixed?
Fixed or rocking. Not swivel.
That goes against our own interests, because we stock eight swivel chairs and would rather sell you one than not. But a swivel base exists so you can turn towards something — a TV, a conversation, a view. Reading is the one activity in a chair where turning is not the point, and a base that drifts under you every time you shift is a low-grade irritation for the whole evening.
Rocking is different, and it splits people. Some read better with slight movement; some find it impossible. You probably already know which you are. The practical catch is space — a rocker needs clearance behind it through its full arc, which quietly rules it out of the tight corner you were picturing.
One thing to watch while you browse: only seven of our eight swivel chairs have "swivel" in the name. The eighth is the Arcus, where it only shows up in the description. Same lesson as the back height — search on what the chair does, not what it is called.
What we will not tell you
Three numbers you will see on other furniture pages are missing from ours on purpose.
We do not publish a weight rating for most of these chairs, because we have not load-tested them. Ten of them carry a figure from the manufacturer and the rest do not, so we have not used it to compare anything here. It is a fair question to put to any retailer, us included: how was that number arrived at?
We do not quote fabric rub counts. We will tell you it is linen, velvet, bouclé, chenille, corduroy, PU or air leather. We do not have the abrasion data, so we do not pretend to.
And we do not name a "most comfortable" chair, because comfort is a fit between a chair and a body. The three measurements above are how you work out the fit. A superlative is just someone else's body.
So which one?
Start from where the chair is going and how long you sit in it.
By a window, an hour at a time. You will want to move it as the light moves, so weight matters more than back height. Our lightest are the two Laze chairs at 8 kg — genuinely liftable with one hand under each arm.
Long evenings. Head support and somewhere for your feet. That means 50 cm or more of back above the seat, plus a footstool — the Wing for the back, an Emma or Olivia pair for the feet.
A bedroom corner. Measure the corner first, skirting board included. Our narrowest start in the high 50s, so it is usually workable — but if you are drawn to a rocker, add the clearance behind it before you commit.
Feeding a baby at 2am. One of the twelve rockers. Check the seat height against your own knee crease first — with a baby in your arms you cannot brace with your hands, and feet flat on the floor stops mattering theoretically and starts mattering a lot.
Renting, moving every year. About a third of the range is under 10 kg and goes in a car. At the other extreme we sell a 42.5 kg sofa bed. Same collection, entirely different day.
All of them are in the armchair range, and every one has a dimension diagram in its photos — the drawing with the arrows. That is where the seat height lives while we work through adding it to the specification tables.
We sell online only, which is exactly why we lead with numbers instead of adjectives: you are choosing from a drawing rather than sitting in the thing first. Delivery goes to your door, and the shipping cost for your address shows at checkout before you commit to anything.
Common questions
What seat height should a reading chair be?
No higher than the crease behind your knee with your feet flat on the floor — measure it on yourself rather than looking for a standard. For scale, ours run 38 cm to 59 cm, with most sitting between 41 cm and 45 cm.
What is the most comfortable reading chair?
There is no single answer, and any chair named as "the most comfortable" is being described rather than measured. Comfort for reading is three fits: seat height against the crease behind your knee, seat depth against your thigh, and back height against whether you want your head supported.
What is a reading nook?
A small part of a room set aside for reading — usually a chair, a light, and somewhere to put a cup down. It is defined by what happens there rather than by size. A corner of a bedroom counts.
How do you make a reading nook?
Pick the spot by where the light already is, then fit the chair to the spot rather than the other way round. Measure the floor area first, including clearance behind the chair if it rocks, then check seat height, seat depth and back height. A side table and a lamp finish it.
Should a reading corner have a light?
Yes, its own. Overhead lighting sits behind you once you are seated and throws your shadow across the page. A floor or table lamp beside the chair, around shoulder height when sitting, puts the light where the words are.
Do I need an ottoman with a reading chair?
Only if the seat is taller than your knee crease — then it is doing real work rather than looking nice. If you buy one, check its height. Ours sit 30–35 cm, which is 10.5–14 cm below the seats they pair with, so legs slope gently downward.
Is a rocking chair good for reading?
It suits some readers and not others — slight movement helps some people concentrate and distracts others. The practical constraint is space: a rocker needs clearance behind it through its full arc, which often rules it out of a tight corner.
Can a reading chair fit in a bedroom corner?
Usually, but measure first. Our narrowest chairs start in the high 50s, so a tight corner is workable. Measure including the skirting board, and add clearance behind if the chair rocks.
How much space do you need around a reading chair?
Enough to walk past, and enough to stand up — a fixed chair needs its footprint plus room to push back as you rise. A rocker needs clearance behind it through the full arc, so check the rocking depth rather than assuming the static depth covers it.
How deep should a reading chair be?
Shallow enough that your back reaches the backrest while your feet stay on the floor. Anything past about 55 cm tends to need a cushion behind your lower back if you want to sit upright and read.
Written by Eric. Twenty years buying furniture — long enough to know that a product name and a measured specification are not always the same thing, and that the number worth trusting is the one you can check yourself.
Where these numbers come from. Seat, depth and back measurements are read off the dimension diagrams on our own product pages; weights and overall sizes come from the specification tables. Figures describe our armchair range as it stood on 13 August 2026. We hold a seat height for 87 of the 89 chairs and a seat depth for 83 — where one is missing it is because we do not have it, not because we are holding it back. Stock changes, so if you are reading this a long way past that date, treat the product page as current and this guide as the method. Last updated 15 August 2026.
