Furniture decides how people behave on your stand
Every piece of furniture on a stand is an instruction. A bar stool at a poseur table says this will be a short, upright conversation. A low sofa says settle in. A row of chairs facing the aisle says sit and watch. Most exhibitors choose furniture on looks and then wonder why the stand does not behave as they expected.
The useful question is not what looks good in the render. It is how long you want a conversation to last, and whether you want people standing or sitting while they have it.
Poseur height
Bar tables and stools. Upright, brief, easy to leave. Best for busy trade shows.
Dining height
Bistro tables and chairs. For demos, sign-ups and anything involving paperwork.
Lounge height
Sofas and coffee tables. Long conversations with people who already know you.
Mixing heights
Fine if zoned deliberately. Random mixing is what makes a stand feel unplanned.
The three seating heights, and what each one does
Almost all exhibition furniture falls into three heights, and the height matters far more than the style. Mixing them without thinking is the most common reason a stand feels uncomfortable to be on.
How much furniture do you actually need?
Less than most people order. Furniture eats floor space that visitors need in order to walk on, and an over-furnished stand reads as full even when nobody is on it — which discourages people from stepping aboard.
A reasonable starting point is one seating position per member of staff on the stand, plus one spare. If you have four people working the stand, four or five seats is plenty. Beyond that you are furnishing for a crowd that will not all sit at once, and you are paying floor space for the privilege. On smaller stands, one poseur table with two stools will out-perform a sofa and coffee table almost every time, because it keeps conversations short and the space open.
What to order by stand size
Rough starting points rather than rules. Adjust for how many staff you have and whether your conversations are two minutes or twenty.
3m × 3m
One poseur table, two stools. A sofa will swallow the stand.
6m × 3m
Two poseur tables with stools, or one bistro set plus a small display piece.
6m × 4m
A zoned mix: poseur at the front edge, seated area further back.
Larger islands
Separate zones for greeting, demonstrating and sitting down properly.
The counter question
A counter is the most-ordered and least-examined item in exhibition furniture. It gives you storage, a branded surface and somewhere to put literature — and it puts a physical barrier between your staff and the people you want to talk to.
On a large stand with plenty of open frontage, that is fine: the counter becomes a reception point and there is room to walk around it. On a 3m by 3m stand, a counter is often a third of your usable floor and a wall across the front. If storage is what you actually need, a lockable cupboard built into the stand structure does the same job without occupying the space where a conversation should happen.
Somewhere to put coats and bags
Without it, they end up on the seating you paid for.
Bins
Cups accumulate faster than anyone expects across a two-day show.
Charging
If people sit for twenty minutes, they will want a socket.
Access route
Measure the door and lift before ordering anything large or rigid.
Details that get missed
None of these are expensive to fix in advance and all of them are irritating to discover on the morning of the show.
Matching furniture to the rest of the stand
Hire furniture comes in a finite number of finishes, and the fastest way to make a stand look thrown together is to specify a colour that nearly matches your brand rather than one that clearly contrasts with it. A near-miss reads as a mistake; a deliberate contrast reads as a decision.
White and black are safe because they disappear and let the graphics do the work. If you want the furniture to carry brand colour, it is usually better to do it through one or two accent pieces than to try to match everything. We also build bespoke pieces where a specific finish genuinely matters.
What we hire
All of it is listed with prices on our hire pages, so you can put a figure together before speaking to anybody. Prices cover the full duration of your event rather than being charged per day, and delivery, installation and collection are handled by us.
Chairs, stools and bar stools
A wide range of styles across all three seating heights.
Bistro, bar and coffee tables
Poseur, dining and low heights in several finishes.
Lounge seating
Sofas and soft seating for stands with room to use them properly.
Bespoke pieces
Made in our workshop when a specific finish or size genuinely matters.
Hiring furniture without a full stand build
You do not need us to build the stand. A lot of exhibitors take a shell scheme from their show organiser and hire furniture separately, which is normally cheaper than the organiser's own furniture package and gives you a far wider choice — helped by the fact that our prices cover the whole event rather than being charged by the day.
We deliver to the hall, place it where you want it and collect it after breakdown, so it is one less thing on your list for build day. If we are also building the stand, furniture gets specified alongside the design, which avoids the common problem of ordering a sofa that will not fit through the access route.
Stand size and layout
Including which sides are open, since that dictates circulation space.
How many staff
The simplest guide to how many seats you actually need.
Show, venue and dates
So we can confirm delivery windows and access.
Any brand colours
Helps us steer you towards contrast rather than a near-miss.
What to tell us when you enquire
Four things are enough for us to check availability and price it up.
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8 September 2026
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