Reap the Benefits of Commercial Banquette Seating: 4 Key Considerations

Banquette Seatings

Designing seating within commercial spaces requires a balance of planned usage, budgets and style preferences. Bench, booth and banquette seating (terms which are often used interchangeably) provide practical and stylish solutions for all kinds of commercial spaces, including restaurants, cafes, bars and nightclubs. 

Banquette seating offers the benefits of saving space, allowing more people to fit around tables, and out-doing free-standing seating options. They can also create intimate, private seating booths, enabling distinct dining or lingering experiences within larger commercial spaces. Often, commercial spaces will use a mixture of banquette seating and free-standing chairs to create different seating combinations. Read on for our tips for making the most of banquette seating options within your commercial space. 

 

Consider the movements of foot traffic

Banquette seating can double as a differentiator when it comes to directing foot traffic. This is beneficial not only for guiding customers through the space in the intended direction of travel but also for hotel or hospitality staff, who need to be able to move freely and efficiently in order to deliver the highest level of service. 

If you’re designing a commercial space, consider where you’d like foot traffic to flow. For example, if you’d like to separate a sit-down dining area from a stand-up bar area, banquette seating can help to create an easy visual distinction that immediately communicates this to your guests.

 

Pay attention to material choices

There’s a wide range of materials that can be used to create banquette seating. Choosing appropriate upholstery is important for many outcomes, including longevity, comfort and how it ties into your overall commercial space aesthetic. 

As it’s common for food and drink to be consumed by people sitting on banquette seating, looking at materials that are easily cleaned can also save time and money over the course of daily use.

 

Incorporate soft furnishings or lighting features

Invested in beautiful banquette seating, and you want it to pop? Throw pillows, lamps or overhead lights can serve to maximise the impact of your design choices. Large pendant fittings over banquette seating are often used for restaurants that are looking to create a soft, warm glow. Table lamps can also further create a sense of private dining spaces within a larger restaurant or cafe. 

 

Consider the number of occupants

How many people do you need to cater for across your seating needs? As banquette seating is often complemented by free-standing chairs, planning any banquette seating design needs to be done with a careful understanding of how many people need to be seated in total. 

Banquette seating is a great solution to both the practical needs of commercial spaces and the design intentions. With all kinds of fabric options on the market, you can find the perfect fit for your space. Chat to Sydney Upholstery today to find out more.