How many seats fit, and which tables to buy

Eighteen inches behind a chair. Thirty-six inches down a service aisle. About twenty-four inches of table edge for each guest. Those figures do most of the work when you sketch a room, and a patio follows the same arithmetic with fewer walls and more weather. Use this page for early planning: a seat count, a table mix, a purchase list. Local code limits come first, and your architect or designer should check building, fire and accessibility rules before anything is ordered.

How much room each guest gets

Measure the dining area in square feet, then divide by the room each guest gets. Where that figure lands depends on the room, and the numbers below are square feet per guest. Fine dining spreads out at 18 to 20. The usual full-service floor is 12 to 15. Rooms with counter service or fast casual pack in at 11 to 14. Event and banquet halls go tighter still at 10 to 11. Bars and lounges hover around 10 to 12. Treat these as planning ranges. When code allows fewer heads than the arithmetic does, code wins.

Take a full-service room of 2,400 square feet at 13 square feet per guest: 2,400 divided by 13 comes to about 185 seats.

Turn seats into tables

A seat count is not a purchase list yet. Split it by table type. Plan for 184 of those seats: thirty two-tops hold 60, twenty-five four-tops hold 100, and four 48-inch rounds seat six apiece for 24. That makes 59 tables, so the list reads 59 tops, 59 bases and 184 chairs, plus whatever spares you want on a shelf. Give each table type its own line with size, shape, height and base, so every quantity on the order traces back to the drawing. A line is one configuration, and two finishes of one chair are two lines.

Table sizes by party

The smallest two-top is 24 by 24 inches. A 24 by 30 is the standard size, and 30 by 30 gives the plates some room. For four guests, choose a 30 by 30 when space is tight, a 36 by 36 when it is not, or a 30 by 48 rectangle. Among rounds, a 36-inch top serves four who do not mind a squeeze, a 42 or 48-inch top takes four to six, and a 60-inch top takes eight. Each diner needs about 24 inches of table edge, and 18 is the tightest squeeze.

A round top needs a base that spreads at least two thirds of its diameter, so a 48-inch top wants a spread of 32 inches or more. Shop round table bases with that number in hand. Two-tops that slide together also turn into a table for four or six when a bigger party walks in.

Heights come in families

Pair the heights before you pair the styles. Dining is the lowest family: a table of about 29 to 30 inches and a seat of 17 to 19. Counter height rises to about 34 to 36 inches, with stools of 24 to 26. Bar height stands near 40 to 42 inches and asks for stools from 29 to 31. Between seat and tabletop, knees want a gap of 10 to 12 inches. Order bases by finished height, since bar-height table bases and standard ones are different parts.

Aisles and elbow room

A chair pulled back needs 18 to 24 inches behind it. A service aisle wants about 36 inches. Draw the fixed things before you place a single table, because they will not move for you: columns, the host stand, the service station, and every door along with the arc it swings through.

Outside, the fixed things change. Before the first table goes down on a patio drawing, mark:

• Gates and doors, and the swing of each
• Planters, downspouts and drains
• The base of every umbrella, and any heater with its clearances
• The route a server walks from the kitchen door
• The corner where the chairs rest in stacks after closing

The bar, the counter and the rail

Stools need 24 to 30 inches between centers. To count them, turn the length of the run into inches and divide by the spacing you picked, dropping any fraction. A 16-foot rail is 192 inches, which at 26 inches a stool is seven. See bar stools for the indoor counter and patio bar stools for the rail outside.

Patios, terraces and rooftops

Plan outside at a looser count than inside. Guests drag a chair toward the shade, umbrellas need head room and a heavy base, and a server needs a lane that does not run through anyone's lap. Patio tables with an umbrella hole fold the shade into the table. Heaters carry labeled clearances, so read them before the drawing is final. Patio partitions mark a boundary where you need one. On a rooftop, the lightest chairs travel first when the wind picks up, so weight and stack height deserve a place in the plan. Leave a path for rain to run off, and a dry spot where the furniture spends the winter.

Accessible seating

Build accessibility into the first sketch. These are general figures from the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, so look up the current standard and the code that governs your own building. Section 902.3 puts dining surfaces 28 to 34 inches high, measured from the floor. Underneath, the knee space measures at least 27 inches high by 30 wide by 19 deep (section 306). Beside each accessible position the floor must stay clear in a 30 by 48 inch rectangle, and the way in is a route 36 inches wide at the least (section 403.5.1). Five percent of the dining seats, at the least, belong at accessible surfaces (section 226.1).

Put it in a patio plan

Once the arithmetic holds, build it in Patio plans. Keep one plan for each space: the front sidewalk, the back deck, the rooftop, the dining room. Each plan keeps your configured pieces with their quantities and notes, plus a saved price for every line. The plans live in the browser you used on this website, with no sign-in, and you can keep up to 30. Clear your cookies or change browsers and the plans stay behind, out of reach. Moving a plan to the basket reprices it against the current catalog, and you can download a project sheet when someone else has to approve the list. Start with the biggest space, then copy that plan for the next.