The Takeaway:
1. Our Pick: Homelegance Bayshore Swivel Counter Chair
2. Runner Up: Powell Furniture’s Big &Tall Bar Chair
3. Budget Pick: Powell Furniture’s Davis Counter Stool
Are you big and tall? Big-boned? A bit on the heavy side? Fluffy?
Whatever term you use to describe it, you’re certainly not alone, and if you fall into that category, then you already know that finding great-looking furniture that’s robust enough to support you properly can be a daunting challenge.
The problem is that most of the major brands selling today tend to focus on the mass market. To that end, they make furniture that’s capable of supporting between 250-300 pounds. Sure, you’ll occasionally find something that can support more weight from the big national brands, but for the most part, they stick to the mainstream.
This, however, has created an opportunity that smaller brands have happily exploited. If you know where to look, there’s plenty of high-weight capacity furniture out there in just about every category. In this roundup review, we’re focused on high-weight capacity bar chairs and barstools, and we’ve scoured the internet looking for the best options available.
We found and evaluated several fantastic options, and from those, a clear winner emerged as the best high-weight capacity bar stool. We’ll introduce you to our winner and the bar chairs and stools it wound up competing against, but before we do that, let’s start by taking a high-level look at the various products we considered.
Comparison Table
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Our Pick
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$296.01
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$93.27
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$126.79
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Overall Dimensions:
20.5” x 23” x 41.2”
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Overall Dimensions:
19” x 20” x 42”
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Overall Dimensions:
19” x 21.5” x 39.5”
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Max. Supported Weight:
900 pounds
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Max. Supported Weight:
400 pounds
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Max. Supported Weight:
400 pounds
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Swivel Seat:
Yes
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Swivel Seat:
No
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Swivel Seat:
Yes
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Pros:
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Pros:
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Pros:
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Cons:
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Cons:
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Cons:
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Our Verdict:
Highly recommended.
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Our Verdict:
Highly recommended.
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Our Verdict:
Provisionally Recommended.
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- A beautiful design that’s as attractive as it is comfortable, and capable of supporting an astounding amount of weight.
- The upholstery isn’t terribly durable and will need to be replaced after about a year.
- A stunning design that looks great in just about any setting.
- The seat is clad in PU, which will start showing its age after about a year of moderate to heavy daily use.
- A surprisingly comfortable bar chair. Not really attractive, but delightfully unobtrusive. Blends in easily with most home décor schemes.
- The chair has more than its share of quality control issues, so assembly could be frustrating. The fabric is relatively low-end and will need to be replaced after about a year.
Author’s Note: I have a vested interest in this roundup review. As someone who is 6’6” tall and 340 pounds, I am a big and tall, heavier user myself. “Regular-sized” furniture is useless to me. I wrote this review for everyone in the same boat that I’m in. When I’m ready to buy new furniture, this roundup review will serve as a reference for me as well, so I have a personal stake in making sure it’s a good one.
Our Selection Criteria
Our big consideration for this roundup review was to find high weight capacity bar chairs and barstools, but that’s a “squishy,” non-specific term. For our purposes, then and given the amount of weight that “regular-sized furniture” supports, we decided that our minimum threshold in this category would be 400 pounds. The more supported weight, the better, naturally, but 400 pounds was our minimum.
Other than that, we also wanted furniture that was good-looking, versatile, and offered as many extras as we could get. Comfort was a minor consideration because let’s face it, nobody buys barstools for a luxurious seating experience. They’re occasional seating options designed to be used for short periods. You’re unlikely to run into a situation where you’ll be spending all day in one.
With those things in mind, let’s take a closer look at our winner and the other bar chairs and barstools it competed against to win top honors.
Our Pick: Bayshore Swivel Counter Chair by Homelegance
Recommended For: Anyone, but especially bigger, taller, or heavier folks as these chairs were specifically designed to support them.
*While aesthetics is a matter of taste, aesthetic flexibility is a measure of how easily a given design would fit into a wide range of home décor schemes.
** Brand Reliability is a measure of the strength and longevity of the brand, which by extension, is a measure of the level of support you can expect.
As bar chairs go, our top pick is amazing. It looks great, is surprisingly comfortable, and it supports a simply crazy amount of user weight. The designers did a fantastic job walking the line between casual and elegant aesthetics, giving you the best of both worlds in a single piece of furniture. Before we say more, though, let’s take a quick look at the basic stats of the model. Here they are:
The Bayshore is heavy for a bar chair. While it’s certainly possible to move it around if and as your needs change, it’s got some real heft to it and could pose a challenge for some. Fortunately, most people tend just to set them by the bar and leave them there, so unless you move, that’s not something you’ll typically have to worry about.
The rest of the stats are about what you’d expect from a bar chair, except for the supported user weight. Nine hundred pounds is off the chart. This stool can take pretty much anything you can throw at it and come back, asking for seconds. That’s not why it won top honors, but we have to admit that we love seeing such a rugged piece of furniture that’s also great looking.
The seat swivels and is surprisingly comfortable, to boot, although we were disappointed in the quality of the fabric Homelegance chose to cover the chair with (the company also offers an option upholstered in chocolate brown PU, which is a bit disappointing for the same reasons we’ll talk about next).
It looks good, but it’s not very durable and is only single-stitched. After about a year’s worth of moderate to heavy use, you’re almost certain to see some of the stitching break loose or start seeing tears in the fabric. If you get the PU version, you’ll begin noticing peeling and cracking after about a year.
At that point, you’ll have to spend a bit of money to have the stool reupholstered, and since the arms and back are covered, it will be relatively more expensive to do that.
It’s well worth the expense, however. The frame itself is incredibly rugged, and with proper care, it will last you for years. Consider the fabric that comes on the stool to be your “starter kit” that will get you through a year or so, at which point you can pick something more long-lasting and get it re-padded to boot, perhaps even investing in a small amount of memory foam to further enhance its comfort.
If you decide you want one, you can order yours in either bar or pub height and either upholstered with your choice of fabric or PU (just one color option in each category). It’s not hard to find bar chairs or bar stools that offer more variety on this front, but the choices offered by Homelegance are neutral colors that blend easily into most environments.
While it would be overselling it to call this an heirloom piece, it is a piece of furniture that will last for years, so you may have to reupholster two or three times before the frame starts showing its age.
One thing to note about the Bayshore, though: The company doesn’t sell these stools individually. If you decide to buy, you have to buy at least two as the company only sells them in pairs. That’s not a deal-breaker for most people, but it is something to be mindful of. In any case, we love this bar chair, and we think you will too. It is well-deserving of top honors here in our roundup review of the best high weight capacity bar stools.
Runner Up: Powell Furniture’s Big &Tall Bar Chair
Recommended For: Anyone, but given the impressive amount of weight it supports, it is of special interest to big and tall folk.
Powell furniture dominates our list of finalists with two entries. This one only lost out to the Bayshore by the smallest of margins, and it shares many things in common with our top pick. The biggest one being the styling. Like the Bayshore, it manages to walk a fine line between casual and elegance, though in this case, it tends a bit more toward the elegant side of the equation.
There’s no fabric upholstery option for this chair. The seat is padded with PU, which is the same material the Bayshore offers on one of its two options and suffers from the same limitations. The upholstery won’t last nearly as long as the frame. So after about a year, you’ll need to start thinking in terms of having it re-covered.
Although this piece is stylistically similar to our top pick, there are some differences as well. To highlight them, let’s take a look at the stats for this model:
As you can see, this is a much lighter bar chair than the Bayshore, and it can only support about half the user’s weight. Another key difference, this one not reflected in the numbers, is the fact that Powell offers a number of slight variations on the theme here.
If you’re not completely sold on the look and feel of this particular bar chair, you’ll find a few others on the company’s brand page on Amazon, and one of those may be more to your liking.
For such an elegant-looking piece, it’s surprisingly rugged and durable, and with proper care, you can expect to use this bar chair for years to come. Although not quite as comfortable as our top pick for the best bar stool with high weight capacity, depending on your tastes and preferences, this one could easily swap places with the Bayshore. It’s an impressive piece of furniture for the money, and we highly recommend it.
Budget Pick: Powell Furniture’s Davis Counter Stool
Recommended For: Anyone who’s big and tall, and looking for an understated bar chair that won’t stand out in whatever room you place it in.
If you pull up the Davis and look at it side by side with our top pick, you can see the look that the designers of this bar chair were going for. Unfortunately, they didn’t quite get there. The Davis lacks that polished look of refinement that the Bayshore has and honestly comes off looking a bit crude and clunky by comparison.
That’s not to say that it’s an ugly chair, it’s just unobtrusive. As such, and given the neutral color of the fabric it’s clad in, it blends politely into the background of just about any room you put it in. This isn’t the bar chair you want if you’re looking to make a statement. It’s much more about function over form.
As we’ve done thus far before we go further, let’s take a quick look at the core stats that define this model:
As you can see, it’s broadly similar to Powell Furniture’s other offering on our list of finalists of best bar stool for heavy person, but it has the distinction of being fabric-clad and a bit more comfortable. It’s similarly sized, though, and supports the same amount of user weight.
It also suffers from the same problem our top two picks have, which is the fact that the fabric is single-stitched and of relatively low quality. It looks good, but it’s not all that durable. So, after about a year, you’ll have to spend some money to have it reupholstered to keep it looking good. And, since the seatback is padded, it will be relatively more expensive to re-cover than the other Powell bar chair we talked about. That’s not the end of the world, but it is something to be mindful of.
The other thing to mention here, though, is this: Smaller brands do tend to have quality control problems, and the Davis has had more than their fair share of them. If you decide you want one, you may get lucky, and when you go to put your bar chair together, everything will line up just as it should.
A fair number of users have complained, though, that the holes don’t line up properly with this model, which makes the assembly process more time-consuming and frustrating than it should be. If that proves to be the case, once you do get the stool put together, though, it will serve you well enough. Be aware that this model has had persistent QC issues, so be ready to do some sweating and grunting during the assembly if you decide you’ve just got to have one.
In our view, it’s a solid design despite these flaws and limitations, and its relative comfort and nice roomy seat make it well-deserving of a third-place entry in our list of the best heavy weight capacity bar stools.
Overall, though, we regard the bar chairs we’ve talked about before this one as being clearly superior to the Davis. That said, depending on your tastes and preferences, this may be a great choice for you. We provisionally recommend this model.
Also Great
Flash Furniture’s Hercules Restaurant Barstool
Recommended For: Big and tall users with casual or industrial décor schemes in their homes.
Flash Furniture is such a great company. Their chairs are featured regularly on our roundup reviews, where they often manage to steal spots from much larger and better-established brands. Their entire Hercules line of furniture, of which these bar stools are a part, is incredibly impressive.
The Hercules line was designed with two goals in mind: To support a lot of user weight and to be rugged enough to stand up to just about anything you can throw at them. This model lives up to both of those expectations, and then some. Here are the basic stats of the chair:
These are good numbers. The stool is lightweight yet capable of supporting an impressive amount of user weight. While it would be overselling it to call this a beautiful bar stool, you can tell that at least some effort went into aesthetics, and they are handsome in a vaguely industrial way.
They were made primarily to be marketed to restaurants, but Flash does sell these stools individually. So, you can order exactly the number you want, which isn’t true of some of the other products we’ve talked about to this point.
Even better, Flash is good about offering lots of colors and finish options, and you’ve got about half a dozen options to choose from where the Hercules bar stool is concerned. The company sells this stool with both wooden and padded seats.
Although the wooden seats aren’t as comfortable, we regard them as being generally superior to their padded counterparts because the padded seats are covered with PU. As we’ve mentioned previously, PU just doesn’t age well.
Long before the frame of the Hercules starts showing its age, you’ll have to have your padded seats reupholstered. With proper care, the wooden seat variants will last for years without you having to do much of anything.
Having said that, not everyone is going to be a fan of the vaguely industrial aesthetic this model is designed around, which does limit its appeal somewhat.
That, more than anything else, is the reason this stool didn’t earn a higher spot on our list of the best heavy weight bar stools. But if you’re a fan of the look, then this is an excellent option that will serve you well for years to come. On that basis, we provisionally recommend it.
Topower American Vintage Bar Stool
Recommended For: anyone whose home is decorated in a vintage or industrial style. Otherwise, these will seem out of place.
We didn’t feel that this roundup review of the best heavy duty bar stools would be complete without giving a mention to Topower’s American Vintage Bar Stool. This rugged piece of cast iron is a fantastic piece of furniture with a look we absolutely love.
Unfortunately, its aesthetic does tend to get in its own way. Unless you’re a huge fan of the vintage industrial look, this one is probably going to be off-putting to you. It wouldn’t look out of place at a Steam Punk fair, but unless your house is decorated in a similar style, it’s going to clash. And that, unfortunately, limits its appeal.
Before we go further, let’s do as we have been and take a quick look at the core stats that define this model:
Don’t let its smallish size fool you; this stool is capable of supporting an impressive amount of user weight. On top of that, the cast iron construction will probably outlast you. So as long as your tastes and preferences don’t change from an appreciation of the aesthetic, you can count on having this stool in your life for years, if not decades.
Topower offers a few variants of this design. Two with wooden seats and one padded option. We regard the padded variant to be decidedly inferior to the other two because it’s upholstered in PU, which just won’t last.
We understand the rationale. PU was undoubtedly used in a bid to keep the total cost of the stool low, but it’s a jarring contrast to see such a rugged piece of furniture saddled with upholstery that won’t hold up much beyond a year.
If you decide to buy the padded variant, you’ll definitely have to reupholster it to keep the stool looking good and usable over the long term.
Also, note that this is the only option on our list of finalists with an adjustable seat. You can set the height where you want it in a range that starts at 24.21” and runs all the way to 28.15”, making it useful as both a bar and a club stool, which is handy. If and as your needs change, the stool can adapt to you, and that’s pretty cool.
We like everything about this model, but we have to admit that it is somewhat narrowly focused. You’re either going to fall in love with the aesthetic and have to have one, or it’s going to be a non-starter.
One way or another, most people tend to have strong opinions about this piece, which limits its appeal. On that basis, we provisionally recommend it.
Best High Weight Capacity Bar Stools Roundup Review 2023 Conclusion
As you can see, there are some surprisingly great, robust options available in the world of high weight capacity bar chairs and bar stools. While we stand by the Bayshore as our top pick, we understand that opinions will vary, and our top pick may not be yours. Here, then, are some reasons you might settle on one of the other options we’ve presented in this review of the best high-weight capacity bar stools:
Ultimately, it comes down to what your tastes, preferences, and needs are, but our hope is that one of these will wind up being the perfect bar chair for you.
REFERENCES & RESOURCES
- Homelegance, Official Brand Website.
- Flash Furniture, Official Brand Website.
- Powell Home Fashions, Official Brand Website.
- Flash Furniture Hercules Restaurant Barstool.
- Wrought Iron Bar Stools, Timeless Wrought Iron.
- The Benefits of Having and Using a Wooden Bar Stool, Simply Barstools.