Molded Plastic Chairs for Every Style and Budget (and In Our Dining Room, Too!)

Over the holiday break, we got new dining room chairs! We were hosting my whole family on the 26th and our old dining set we bought when we got married was in rough shape. The table has scratches and paint on it, but even worse, the chairs were starting to break and a couple cross braces were missing. It was time! Hysterically (kind of) the chairs didn't make it to our home until the 27th (!!) but we have been enjoying them very much since. We have plans to make a new table soon, but it's crazy what an improvement the chairs made. Here's how the setup looked beforehand:

A few things we were looking for in new chairs were: 1. Wipeability. We are in the deep of child rearing and I am not interested in babying upholstered chairs while eating. 2. Comfort. We host a lot of dinner parties that sometimes last for hours. No one wants to be sitting on a hard chair for that long! 3. Lower profile. Our old dining room chairs had really tall backs which cut into the openness of the great room.

We looked at a ton of different options, but pretty quickly settled on a molded plastic chair style. I have heard great things about the comfort level, the all-one-piece molded plastic could not be easier to wipe down with kids and they have a lower backs. Not to mention, my pins were crawling with them. Although we settled in on this style after only a couple days into our search--there were still so many options! The original and ever-classic Eames one was out of the budget, but fortunately there are a lot of comparable knockoffs in our range.

one | two | three | four | five | six

These were a few of our top contenders, all from Wayfair, that we loved for so many different reasons. After we gathered a few styles and prices, I was leaning toward a white shell with dowel legs. We slept on it, and then I felt like white would be way too stark in our place. And then we nixed a black shell because we are planning on black cabinets in the kitchen. A tan shell was becoming more and more appealing. I love the mix of tan and black (love!) even more than white and black, really. The only problem was option six had a faux wood grain in the plastic we weren't crazy about. I kept looking and discovered that our number one option came in a lot of different intriguing colors, including beige, but there were no pictures online!! So I googled. I googled the crap out of pictures of beige molded plastic chairs and there wasn't one that I didn't like. We went for it, sight unseen.

When we opened the box, we both let out a sigh of relief. The color was just what we were hoping for. A warm light beige. The chairs were a cinch to put together and opened up the great room so much. It's amazing what getting rid of those tall backed chairs did. It's easier to place food on the table, see the girls play in the living room from the kitchen, and although our kitchen isn't much to look at right now, once we complete the renovations, I'm sure we'll appreciate the clear sight line even more.

What we heard about the comfort of this style of chair was true. We were apprehensive, especially Chris, but we are both believers now. They are very ergonomic and even have quite a bit of give to lean back in.

We are still designing our new table and trying to be mindful of future surrounding finishes while doing so. In the meantime, these chairs are doing a good job at making our table look 10x better than it did. My mom actually asked if we had gotten a new table, too…and then I pointed out the old paint splatters. Ha! If you are on the fence about molded plastic chairs, we're new fans but would definitely recommend them. And in beige--so sophisticated!