How we check our numbers

Furniture specifications get copied from listing to listing without anyone checking them, and they are wrong more often than you would expect. A chair sold by six retailers will often carry three different weight ratings. Before we publish a figure, we do four things.

We compare every source we can find

The manufacturer's own materials, the supplier's data, other retailers carrying the same model. Where they all agree, we tell you the figure is corroborated. Where they disagree, we show you each number and say who published it, rather than quietly picking one.

We check the specifications against each other

Measurements have to be physically possible. A shipping box cannot be smaller than the item inside it. A seat cannot be wider than the chair it belongs to. A height range has to run from a smaller number to a larger one. A weight rating has to be plausible for the base, the cylinder and the frame material underneath it. Listings fail these checks regularly. When one does, we say so on the product page instead of passing the error along.

We look up claimed certifications

If a manufacturer states a BIFMA, GREENGUARD or similar certification, we search the public register for it and report whether we found a matching record.

We say when we do not know

If a figure is not published anywhere we can find, the specification table reads "not published by manufacturer". We would rather show you a gap than a guess.

What we do not do

We do not currently test products in a laboratory, and we do not yet measure them ourselves. Any site that tells you it has personally tested every item in a large catalogue is describing something that did not happen. When we begin taking our own measurements, they will appear here with the method described and the date attached, and they will be labelled so you can tell them apart from the manufacturer's figures.

Everything on this site is sourced. You should always be able to see where a number came from.