Calculating the storage space needed for your stock of rental chairs and tables is an often overlooked, but extremely important part of successfully managing an event venue or party rental company. You need to make sure that you figure out how much space you need to store your inventory in between events while also ensuring you don’t shortchange yourself when it comes to the number of rental chairs, tables, tablecloths, patio heaters, and anything else you want to provide your customers.
To figure out how much room you need to hold your rental stock, you need to know how much room these items take up. Here’s a handy table of dimensions that you can refer to when determining the storage space square footage for your rental chairs (Part 2 covering table square footage coming soon).
Chiavari chairs take up approximately half a square foot per chair. Since you can stack Chiavari rental chairs 7-8 chairs high and each chair is around 36” high with a footprint of 16.5” x 26.5” (give or take), that means that 200 Chiavari chairs will take up roughly 100 square feet.
If you also provide Chiavari cushions with your rental chairs, bags of 10 cushions take up around 16” x 16” x 18”, but they can also be stored on top of the stacks of Chiavari chairs to save space. (Think higher, not wider!)
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Cross Back Chairs
Cross back chairs measure 35” (height) x 19” (width) x 21” (depth) and weigh approximately 11 lbs. each, which means you can safely stack these rental chairs 7 high. For storage, a stack of 7 takes up around 5 square feet, which means that 200 cross back chairs will take up approximately 150 square feet.
These measurements do not apply to Cross Back Barstools, which can only be stacked up to 5 stools high due to their much taller construction.
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Plastic Folding Chairs
Plastic rental folding chairs are some of the most space-efficient items you can offer. They can be stacked up to 50 chairs high and you can even store them directly on a folding chair dolly for quick transport to and from events.
Individual plastic folding chairs have a footprint of around 18’’ x 39’’, which comes in at slightly under 5 square feet (if you are not using a dolly cart). 200 plastic folding rental chairs will take up around 20 square feet, so they are a great option if you’re short on storage space but still want to provide options that will maximize your return on investment.
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Resin & Wood Folding Chairs
Folding rental chairs in materials other than plastic are slightly larger, but still take up less storage space than larger-framed rental chairs like Chiavaris. Their 18” x 36” footprint means that 200 chairs take up around 36 square feet: less than cross backs or Chiavari chairs, but slightly more than plastic folding rental chairs.
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Do you have other rental items that you’d like to know how much space they require during storage? Give us a call at 866-360-4642 and we can help you calculate the space that you need.