Stylish Solid Wood Bench Seating Is Back: 5 Reasons Why Benches Work
There is a simple purity, a grand country casual elegance about bench seating, especially when crafted from solid hardwoods by superb furniture builders like the Amish. Bench seats were most likely the second evolution of personal seating, the first being the stool. From huge banquet hall in the Middle Ages to large farm family’s daily dining, the addition of a bench or benches just made the most sense. Sturdy, very cost effective, practical and efficient, the bench as a dining room or kitchen table option is back.
Modern home owners know that today the heart of the family is centered around the kitchen, dining and great room areas. This is the “activity rooms’’ of your home – full of fast paced mornings and evenings filled with meals, bill paying, homework and school projects, office work and even crafting. Many contemporary restaurants have added bench seating, most in a gesture to create communal dining in the hopes of bonding strangers sharing a common bench, if only for one night.
Benches have:
1. Durability -
Benches built by Amish craftsmen are only crafted from 100% solid wood, never pressed board. Checking for construction details like mortise and tenon joinery, which adds strength to designs, will insure a long life for your well used bench seating.
2. Versatile Style –
Take for instance the trestle style bench, one of the most popular bench designs because it goes very well with almost any table design. The trestle style can be added along one side or two with the option of end chairs added at the head of the table.
Remember that high quality woodworkers will offer a variety of customizing options, like wood type and stain color. Be sure they offer variations of wood like red oak, cherry, maple, quarter sawn white oak, hickory and brown maple to be sure you get a great match for your table. Lodge, cabin, adirondack and country homes are not the only styles that bench seating works with. A black locker style works well in modern contemporary or Asian Oriental designs.
3. Kid-friendly -
Benches should be built sturdy enough to take a good beating from young children. Let’s face it, kids climb and wiggle more than they sit. With a bench you will have fewer worries about the trauma inflicted by those little feet and hands.
4. Space friendly -
It is quite a space saving phenomenon to use benches as primary seating in a kitchen or dining room space. There is an unbelievable amount of floor space consumed by the average or oversized dining room chair. The ease of sliding a bench under the table for storage opens up a room for easy passage. When it is time to mop, sweep or vacuum one bench sliding out of the way is a breeze compared to multiple and often heavy chairs.
5. Cost -
The cost of the average solid wood dining room chair for one person is about $200.00. A 72” bench, on the other hand, seats an average of 3-4 and costs about $175.00.
On a final note, the most exciting development in bench fabrication since, well, the bench itself, is a product known as Extenda Bench. This is a solid wood bench that starts out life as a 48″ wide seat. With the addition of any of the four 12″ leaves it will extend the bench seating to a full eight feet in length. This bench is perfect for almost any size and style of table and best of all can grow as your family and guest list grows.
Tags: Amish Furniture Styles, bench seating, bench seats, Benches, Chairs, country homes, Dining Room, Dining Room Chair, Kitchen Table, Wood Bench
