9 Sustainable Dining Chairs Made From Thoughtful Materials
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Our editors have filled their homes with sustainable furniture for a decade. These are our favorite dining chairs that are safely and sustainably made and built to last.
Dining tables seem to get all the glory. Home life centers around the dining table, bringing families together for mealtimes — but you have to sit somewhere, too. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of our favorite dining chairs below, to go around our favorite dining tables.
While dining tables come in plenty of different styles, they don’t have as much variation as dining chairs — which is where you can really show your interior design style. Maybe you want funky, eye-catching chairs to complement a super simple table. Maybe your favorite chair styles are more classic and timeless, or maybe you even want to mix and match dining chairs for a farmhouse vibe. Either way, investing in wooden dining chairs, rather than those made of synthetic materials, will lower your environmental footprint and ensure your furniture lasts for years to come.
Why should you consider sustainable furniture?
When shopping for wooden furniture, choosing ethical manufacturers is key as the mass production of cheap wooden furniture can have devastating environmental ramifications. Higher quality recycled and/or thoughtfully sourced materials ensure that you’re lessening your environmental impact and ending up with a durable and comfortable product, too. Sustainable furniture is also usually made without harmful chemicals like VOCs so you can keep your indoor environment as safe and healthy as possible.
Always keep your eyes peeled for the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) logo, which ensures that a company’s wood comes from responsibly managed forests. Another wood certification to look for is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), while other, more general certifications to keep in mind when shopping for home goods include B Corp certification, Fair Trade, Made Safe, and Greenguard.
And remember, the most sustainable way to shop is for used, second hand furniture whenever possible! We’ve included options on this list so you can consider doing just that.
Our criteria:
Our editors have filled our homes with safe, sustainable furniture for over a decade. We’ve rounded up our favorite wooden dining chairs that are sustainable, eco-friendly, and made to last. We regularly add new options to this list when they meet the following criteria.
- SUSTAINABLE | We love to feature brands that have solid third-party certifications to back up their sustainability claims. Each brand on this list prioritizes ethically produced furniture, providing details about where and how their products are made, and you’ll find third-party certs like FSC, Greenguard, and Fair Trade.
- NATURAL & RECYCLED MATERIALS | Each chair is made of real, natural wood, which ages beautifully and is easy to refinish and repair. We keep an eye out for supplementary materials that are also natural — like cotton upholstery, natural latex cushions, and wool. Some options on the list use recycled or reclaimed materials, too.
- AFFORDABLE | Furniture can be a huge investment, which is why we’ve included a range of price points, here — so some options are easier on the wallet.
Check out our favorite wooden dining tables, too, to place your new wooden chairs around. And if you’re furnishing more rooms, read our complete sustainable furniture guide.
Best Overall | Best Secondhand | Most Affordable
1. Medley
Best For | Comfort
Price Starting At | $709
For a dining chair that’s all about comfort, check out Medley’s Jasmi dining chair. Its sleek, Danish-style wooden frame is compact, minimal, and has rounded corners. And it’s cushioned on both the seat and the bed, combining form and function. GOLS-certified organic natural latex foam makes up its seat cushions, giving you an impressive twenty years (!) of spring back — much better than petroleum-based foams can do. The back cushions are filled with Oeko-Tex Standard 100-certified wool, and breathable cotton makes up the upholstery. The chairs are each handmade in California, and, like all Medley pieces, are made-to-order of the best natural and organic materials and are designed to last a lifetime.
2. GreenRow
Best For | Traditional designs
Price Starting At | $349
Williams-Sonoma’s new line of sustainable furniture, GreenRow, crafts thoughtfully made furniture of sustainable materials that are designed to last — they back up those claims with certifications like Fair Trade, FSC, Greenguard, and many more, and they use reclaimed wood, too. Their chair designs range from simple to showy, with lots of traditional styles and farmhouse vibes. The Windsor wood dining chair is a classic option, made of solid beechwood and rubberwood with mortise and tenon joinery for durability, while the Verbena cane dining chair collection embodies country elegance with FSC-certified mango wood frames and cushions made of natural latex and upholstery in cotton and linen. Each chair purchase even plants a tree in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation.
3. Maiden Home
Best For | Durability
Price Starting At | $485
Meticulously designed in their New York studio, all of Maiden Home’s furniture is handcrafted to order by their artisan partners in North Carolina. Because of that, expect to wait at least five weeks to receive a Maiden Home order — because it’s being crafted to stand the test of time. They make a handful of dining chair options, each made of a solid wood frame with upholstery. Their simplest model, the Allen chair, has a sturdy, kiln-dried ash frame with mortise and tenon joints and glides so its legs won’t scratch your floors. We also love the Cooper dining chair for its mid-century design, curved back, clean lines, and super soft seat — and all of their fabrics are made without flame retardants or antifungal additives.
4. West Elm
Best For | Lots of vriety
Price Starting At | $129
Because it’s such a big company, West Elm has so much variety when it comes to their dining chairs — which means it has some of the most affordable options on this list, too. The specs for each chair model vary, so take a look at the materials details before purchasing. The Russo dining chair, for example, is made of an FSC-certified solid rubberwood frame and backrest, while its legs are engineered wood. West Elm has so many chic designs that we’re obsessed with — like the timeless simplicity of this Berkshire stacking chair or the Rhodes solid wood dining chair with a seagrass seat. Some of their chairs come in sets of two, also, so you get an even better deal.
5. Etsy
Best For | Independent artisans
Price Starting At | Price varies
Don’t sleep on Etsy when you’re shopping for furniture! Plenty of small, American artisans sell their wares through the site, and it’s also a great place to find second-hand furniture. Some of our current faves include this solid ash wood chair handmade by Connecticut-based Fahr Fine Furnishing which uses locally salvaged lumber, or these classic wood chairs by Brick Mill Co, based in Pennsylvania — you can order them in one of four different wood types (oak, walnut, maple, or cherry), and note that they take up to 16 weeks since they’re all made-to-order. What We Make, based in Chicago, also has a lineup of handmade-to-order furniture.
6. MasayaCo
Best For | Woven cord
Price Starting At | $445
MasayaCo crafts what they call “seed to seat” furniture — they oversee responsibly maintained forests from which they harvest the wood for their furniture, and they even keep 40% of their forests untouched. They plant thousands of trees each year — more than they harvest — and even their scrap wood is sent to a biogenerator and turned into sustainable energy. The dining chairs they craft are one-of-a-kind. They’re each made of solid teakwood frames with hand-woven polyester cord seats and backs. They come in plenty of different colors, inducing solid neutrals, but we’re a fan of their models with colorful, eye-catching designs.
7. House of Léon
Best For | Elegant designs
Price Starting At | $690
House of Léon crafts high-end, well-made wooden furniture in Los Angeles, and their dining chairs are no exception. They combine trendiness with elegance, crafting pieces that feel fresh and modern but will never go out of style. The simplicity of their Nonna dining chair makes it feel like it’s straight out of the European countryside, and it’s made of a solid white oak. The Charlie dining chair is all about comfort, with its upholstery made of acrylic boucle fibers that won’t absorb spills and smells from the dining room, and it has a playful, mid-century design to it. And the Teddy chair’s clean, classic look goes with any space.
8. Urban Natural
Best For | Furniture marketplace
Price Starting At | $329
A furniture marketplace, Urban Natural is kind of like Etsy — but exclusively for sustainably made furniture. They partner with artisans around the country to gather handmade wooden furniture together in one place, so you’ll find a great variety of options. Dining chair designs range from the simple and classic, like this Taiga dining chair or this Coventry side chair, to trendier options, too. We especially love this elegant, sculptural dining chair by Mater, which crafts all of its sustainable furniture in Europe, and the Bok chair, with a simple yet sophisticated mid-century design. And note that 90% of Urban Naturals’ partners craft their furniture in the US!
9. Sundays
Best For | Designed for longevity
Price Starting At | $330
Sundays’ wooden furniture is all about simplicity, timelessness, and durability. They have some of the more affordable options on this list, too, since their most popular models come in sets of two. We love the classic look of the Dinner Guest chair, made of solid oak and sustainably sourced, handwoven paper cord. The Plane dining chairs are conveniently stackable, made of either solid oak or solid walnut, and built to last. They make some nice upholstered chairs, too, that look so much more expensive than they really are. Founded by four friends, the brand aims to make furniture that’s timeless, durable, and accessible, for designer quality without the designer price tag.
Featured image is from Sundays
Natalie Gale is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a Boston-based freelance journalist. When she’s not writing about art, food, or sustainability, you can find her biking to the farmers’ market, baking, sewing, or planning her next Halloween costume. Say hi on Instagram!
