Before you buy a dining chair, consider this: you need this chair to be both comfortable and stylish. Comfortable, because a dining table is where people gather around to eat, work, and have conversations. Stylish, because you want it to look good and reflect your style. Consider also that you will be choosing from a dizzying variety of styles, materials, colors, and brands.
But when it actually comes to choosing and then buying a dining room chair, it boils down to only a few factors. Once you've made a decision about these, it's relatively easy to pick out the one that's best for you.
Measure for Size
Maybe size often gets neglected because it is the least glamorous part of the furniture buying process. However, this cannot be stressed enough: before you even go looking for dining chairs, determine the size you will need. For this, you have to consider the size of the room, and the room around your table.
Arms or Armless?
It is entirely up to you to determine whether your dining chairs have arms or not. It has been customary to have armchairs at the head of the table, and armless chairs on the sides, but depending on your space and decorating style you can choose to have armchairs all around.
Depending on your space and style you may also want to go armless all around. Armless dining chairs do take up less space than armchairs, visually as well as in the actual space you have.
Pick a Style
You can go and pick out a dining room set, or decide to buy your dining table and chairs separately. Before you do either of those things, consider your style. Consider whether you want it to be formal or informal.
There are open back chairs and there are chairs with solid backs, both upholstered or in metal, wood or acrylic. Look at the angles that make up the back, legs and arms and seats, and determine what looks good in your room and around your table. A smaller space might call for a more delicate, open style, while a large space might look good with larger more well-defined shapes.