Collection: Furniture
Seating for the corner that never quite justified an armchair. Hammocks and lounge pieces that come down as easily as they go up, for rooms where the furniture has to be able to leave again.
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Macrame Hanging Hammock Chair with Wood Bar
Regular price $235.97 USDRegular price -
Inflatable Lounge Chair and Footstool Set
Regular price $69.00 USDRegular price
A small collection, and deliberately so
This is not a furniture store. There are no sofas here, no beds, no dining chairs and nothing that arrives on a pallet with two people and a dolly. What is here is seating that can leave again: a hanging hammock chair that comes down to a bundle of rope and a spreader bar, and an inflatable lounge chair that folds into a drawer once the air is out of it.
That is a narrow definition of furniture and it is the one that fits the rest of the catalog. Everything else on this site is small, movable and bought without measuring a doorway. These two pieces are the point where seating meets the same rule, and the rule is that the piece has to be able to go away.
So read this page as a guide to one specific decision: what to put in a corner that has never justified a real armchair, in a room you may not be living in next year.
The corner that never justified an armchair
A standard armchair takes about 32 by 34 in (81 by 86 cm) of floor and needs another 18 in in front of it to be usable. In a 10 by 11 ft bedroom, that is a meaningful share of the walkable floor, occupied full time by something that gets sat in for twenty minutes a day.
The two alternatives here dodge that in different directions. A hanging chair moves the load to the ceiling, so it occupies air rather than floor and can be unhooked in ten seconds when the room needs to be a room again. An inflatable lounge chair still uses the floor, and sits wider and lower than an armchair does, but it goes from furniture to a folded rectangle in a closet in about two minutes.
Neither one is a replacement for a chair you sit in eight hours a day, and it is worth being blunt about that. Both are seating for reading, for a phone call, for a spare room that is mostly a spare room. Buy one expecting that and it works. Buy one expecting a recliner and it does not.
Hanging a chair is a load question before it is a decor question
Everything about a hanging chair comes down to one point in your ceiling. The rope carries the seat, the hardware carries the rope, the fixing carries the hardware, and the building carries the fixing. Whichever of those four is weakest sets the real limit, and it is almost never the rope.
Fix into a joist, always. Find it with a stud finder, then confirm with a small drill bit: solid wood resists the whole way, a cavity gives after half an inch. Joists usually run at 16 in centers, sometimes 24. Use a rated eye bolt or hook with a lag thread of at least 3/8 in (10 mm) diameter, driven so that a minimum of 2 in (5 cm) of thread bites solid timber. If the spot you want falls between two joists, screw a length of 2x6 lumber across both and hang from the middle of that.
The load is not your body weight. A person swinging generates two to three times their static weight at the fixing point, and the peak arrives at the bottom of every arc. Size the hardware for that number rather than for the number on the bathroom scale. And leave the space: 24 in (60 cm) of clearance around the seat in every direction, a seat height of 16 to 24 in off the floor, and a ceiling of at least 8 ft for most chairs to hang correctly.
| What is above you | How to fix into it | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Timber ceiling joist | Rated eye lag, 3/8 in thread, at least 2 in into solid wood | The standard answer. Locate it properly and confirm by drilling |
| Exposed beam | A strap or a through bolt around the beam rather than a screw into it | The strongest option, and it leaves the least damage |
| Concrete ceiling | A rated concrete anchor sized to the load, drilled with a masonry bit | Works, but this is the one worth asking a professional about |
| Plasterboard with nothing behind it | Nothing. No toggle or expanding anchor is rated for a swinging person | Never. This is the failure people post photographs of |
| A rented ceiling you cannot drill | A freestanding hammock chair stand, weighted at the base | Costs more and takes floor space, but you leave no holes |
What a weight limit is actually telling you
Hammock chairs are usually rated somewhere between 250 and 330 lb (113 to 150 kg), and a few heavy duty ones go to 500 lb. That figure describes the seat: the rope, the knots and the spreader bar, tested statically. It says nothing at all about your ceiling.
Read it as a ceiling rather than a target. A 300 lb rating with a 180 lb person in the seat leaves headroom for the swing multiplier, which is exactly what you want. The same rating with a 280 lb person is technically within spec and has nothing left for the dynamic load, and that is where cotton rope starts to creep at the knots over months rather than failing outright.
Two people in one hammock chair is the situation that breaks them, usually not by snapping the rope but by pulling the hardware out of a ceiling that was fixed for one. Treat any hanging seat as a single occupancy object and it will outlast the room.
Inflatable seating: what it does well, and what it does not
The honest case for an inflatable lounge chair is storage. It goes flat, it weighs a couple of pounds, and a spare room can have seating for guests without having seating the other fifty weeks. Flocked tops make it tolerable against bare skin, which the plain vinyl versions from twenty years ago were not.
The honest case against it is that it is air. It sits low, so getting out of one is a floor exercise. It never gives the back support a framed chair does. And it goes soft, which is the complaint that generates most of the reviews and is usually misdiagnosed. Air contracts as it cools, so a chair filled to firm at 75 F in the evening reads noticeably soft at 60 F the next morning. That is temperature, not a puncture. Top it up and see whether it holds through a stable day before you go looking for a hole.
When there is a real leak, it is almost always a seam or a valve rather than the middle of a panel. Inflate it, brush soapy water over the seams and around the valve base, and watch for the bubbles. Patch kits work on vinyl, and they work far better on a clean, dry, fully deflated surface than on a half inflated one you are wrestling with.
| Hanging hammock chair | Inflatable lounge chair | |
|---|---|---|
| Floor space used | None, once it is up | Roughly an armchair and a half, plus the ottoman |
| Getting it in place | Drilling, a stud finder, rated hardware | A pump and two minutes |
| Putting it away | Unhook it, coil the ropes, the hook stays in the ceiling | Deflate, fold, into a drawer |
| Suits a rental | Only with a stand, or with the landlord's blessing | Yes, with nothing to repair on the way out |
| What fails first | The ceiling fixing, then the knots, years later | A seam or the valve, and both are patchable |
| Sitting for an hour | Comfortable, with a cushion in the small of the back | Workable. Getting up again is the hard part |
Cotton rope, flocking and sunlight
Cotton macrame is comfortable because cotton is soft, and cotton is soft because it absorbs. That is the whole maintenance story. Spot clean with mild soap and a cloth, and keep the whole chair out of the washing machine, whatever the internet says. A drum full of wet knotted cotton stretches unevenly, tightens some knots and loosens others, and then takes two or three days to dry through the thick parts. Damp cotton left folded goes mildewed, and mildew does not come out of natural rope.
If it genuinely needs a full wash, do it by hand in a tub and dry it flat in shade rather than hanging it wet, since a soaked chair stretches every rope under the weight of its own water. Direct sun is the other enemy: UV breaks down cotton fiber over a season, so a chair left outside all summer feels chalky and weaker by autumn. Bring it in, or accept it as a two year object.
Flocked inflatable seating asks for less. Wipe the flocking with a damp cloth and let it dry fully before the air comes out, then store it loosely rolled rather than pressed into the same sharp fold every time, since a repeated crease is where vinyl eventually splits. Keep it away from cats, which is advice nobody follows and everybody should.
Seating that can leave again
Every other category on this site is defined by what it holds, and seating is the odd one out only because what it holds is a person. The rest of the logic carries over. A hanging chair holds a body from one point in a ceiling. An inflatable one holds a body on a volume of air. Both are honest about being temporary in a way an armchair never is.
That suits a particular situation: a rented room, a box room, the corner of a bedroom that is also where the laundry rack goes. If your seating problem is the main sofa in the main room, this collection is not the answer and nobody should talk you into pretending otherwise.
If it is the other problem, where a corner has sat empty for two years because nothing that fits is worth the floor it costs, then a chair that hangs from a hook or folds into a drawer is a different answer rather than a smaller version of the same one.
Common questions
Can you hang a hammock chair from the ceiling?
Yes, as long as you fix into structure rather than into the ceiling surface. That means a timber joist, an exposed beam, or a properly anchored concrete slab. Plasterboard on its own carries nothing, and no toggle or expanding anchor sold for it is rated for a person swinging. Find the joist with a stud finder, confirm it with a small drill bit, and use a rated eye lag rather than a hook from a hardware bin.
How do I know if my ceiling can support a hanging chair?
You are testing the fixing, not the ceiling as a whole. A 3/8 in lag with at least 2 in of thread in a solid timber joist is the normal standard and is comfortably strong for one adult in a chair. The way to be confident is to confirm you are actually in the joist: drill a pilot hole and feel whether the bit meets resistance all the way through, since a bit that suddenly drops into a cavity means you missed.
How much weight can I hang from my ceiling?
The relevant number is not your body weight. Swinging generates roughly two to three times the static load at the anchor point, with the peak at the bottom of each arc, so a 200 lb person should be treated as a 400 to 600 lb intermittent load. Rated hanging hardware states its working load limit on the packet. Choose one comfortably above that figure rather than close to it.
How can I hang a swing from the ceiling without drilling?
You cannot do it safely, so change the approach instead. A freestanding hammock chair stand takes the load through its own weighted frame, needs no fixings at all, and can be moved between rooms or taken to a new place entirely. It costs more than a hook and it uses floor space, which is the trade you make for leaving a rented ceiling untouched.
Can a hammock go in the washing machine?
A fabric hammock sometimes can, on a gentle cycle in a mesh bag with the spreader bars removed. A cotton macrame chair should not. The knots tighten unevenly in a drum, the ropes stretch while soaked, and the thick sections stay damp for days afterward, which is how mildew gets into natural rope. Spot clean it, or hand wash in a tub and dry it flat in shade.
How long do rope hammocks last?
Indoors and out of direct sun, cotton rope lasts many years and usually gets retired for looking tired rather than for failing. Left outside year round, expect two or three seasons: UV breaks down cotton fiber, damp encourages mildew, and both make the rope chalky and weaker at the knots. Bringing it in over winter roughly doubles the useful life for the effort of one trip to a closet.
Is inflatable furniture worth it?
It is worth it for a specific job: seating you need occasionally and cannot store the rest of the year. It packs to nothing, it inflates in about two minutes, and a flocked surface is bearable against skin. It is not worth it as your main chair, because it sits low, gives no lumbar support, and softens whenever the room cools. Judge it as a guest bed judges itself, and it does fine.
