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Church Chairs Buyers Guide

Gone are the days of hard benches and wooden pews for many places of worship. Today, church chairs are cushioned and comfortable with fabric upholstery in a wide array of stylish colors. They're versatile and can be arranged and rearranged for many different functions.

Your House of Worship is your spiritual home and you want to foster a real sense of community and fellowship among your members. Not only a place to worship and learn together, but also to share your lives with each other. Celebrating special events or simply gathering for a meal gives people the opportunity to connect and get to know each other on a more personal level. In addition, your church, temple or synagogue has essential work to do; a mission and a message to deliver.

Here are some questions to assist you in choosing the right chair for your needs.

How quickly do you need your new church chairs?

Quick Ship Church Chairs are usually shipped out the next business day after you place your order. We maintain a large inventory of our best-selling church chairs in the most popular colors; including burgundy, beige, grey, black, green, navy and purple. With thousands of quick ship church chairs in stock and ready to ship, you simply choose the chair style and fabric, without sacrificing quality. No order is too large or too small!

How important is comfort to your congregation?

We know the comfort and well-being of your congregation is a priority for you. That's why church chairs come in two seat widths, 18.5" and 21". Obviously, the wider seats (21") are a little roomier. If space is not an issue and your sanctuary is large enough to accommodate everyone with seats to spare, wider seats are a great way to go. If you have limited square footage, a growing congregation and every seat counts, 18" wide seats might be a better fit. With cushion thicknesses up to 4.5 inches, your new chairs will be comfortable through the entire service, no matter how long it runs.

What is your worship center's style?

Available with metal and wood frames, the frame you choose for your church chairs depends on your worship center's decor, your budget and how soon you need them. Both wood and metal frame chairs are available with or without arms. And both are stackable for times you just need them out of the way.

Church chair frames are available in many wood finishes; including oak, red oak, cherry, natural, walnut, mahogany, maple and teak and a large variety of upholstery fabrics. Most wood frame chairs are assembled and fully finished with a high quality finishing process. Wood frame chairs usually ship in 4-6 weeks.

Metal frame options are gold, black and silver vein. This type of finish is created by spraying positively charged powder over the frame. The frame is baked in an oven, causing the resin and pigment to melt together to form a continuous coat over the entire frame. This oven baked electrostatically applied powder coat finish is corrosion resistant, durable and hard to chip. Metal frame chairs usually ship in 1-2 business days and require minimal assembly.

Do you want your welcome materials to be front and center?

Having bibles, hymn books and guest cards available in book pockets and book racks makes your members and visitors feel welcome and included. Under seat and back book racks are optional features on wood frame chairs. The book pocket comes standard with most metal frame church chair models and the book rack is optional. Stacking chairs with book racks under the seat is not recommended as the book racks can be damaged.

Looking for a chair that makes a statement?

Upholstery - If you want a more unique look or to use a special fabric, you can custom order your chairs. Our Custom Upholstery Department provides expert, quality workmanship and specializes in bringing your vision to life. With more than 100 different fabric options to choose from, we may very well have just the pattern, texture and color you're looking for. We're always happy to send a fabric swatch so you can make sure your new chairs will match your décor. If you've already found something you love, our professional upholsters will estimate the yards of fabric needed to cover all of your chairs.

Embroidery - With 300 thread colors in stock, our Embroidery Production Department turns your church chairs into beautiful works of art. Using 6 embroidery machines with 16 thread color capacity, our professional embroiderers can stitch a picture or logo alone, an image with text or text alone onto the front or back of your chairs. You can choose from among 24 fonts, 45 thread colors and 2,000 pre-made images, or provide your own design. For customer supplied logos and art, permission from the graphics' owner is required. Artwork must be submitted in vector format (Ai, EPS, CDR or PDF) for conversion into digital code that is read by the embroidery machines. For more detailed information, read our Digitizing Services Guide.

Custom orders usually ship 5-7 business days after you place your order.

Do you like to keep your rows nice and straight?

Ganging clips attach chairs together with a hooking mechanism on either side of the seat cushion, maintaining a continuous straight row. If you want to keep your rows nice and neat, most church chairs with metal frames have built-in ganging clips. The clips are an available option for wooden frame chairs. When ganged together, chairs take up a bit more space, 1-2" between chairs. You will want to add this to your calculations when determining how many chairs will fit in your worship center.

Want to easily transition your meeting space?

Stackable church chairs save space and provide the flexibility you need for a multi-purpose room, banquet hall or conference center. Their lightweight design makes them easy to stack, store and set up. You can quickly and easily transition your sanctuary from Sabbath or Sunday services to Wednesday Night Suppers, Bible Studies or Bingo.

A Stack Chair Dolly makes moving stackable chairs even easier with wheels to roll them into a corner or closet for storage until they're needed again. Made from 16 gauge steel tubing, the stack chair dolly can easily hold 8-10 chairs. Most of our stacking church chairs come with a free dolly when you purchase 50 or more chairs.

In addition to an extensive inventory of church chairs and furniture, we carry pulpit chairs, podiums and lecterns and office furniture.

If you have a specific question or need more information, call one of our knowledgeable customer service representatives at 800.924.2472. To visit our showroom, please call for an appointment.