The dining chair is one of the hardest pieces to get right in a home. It has to earn its place on two levels at once, looking good in the room and actually being comfortable enough that people want to sit in it for longer than one course. Too often people buy chairs that look perfect in a showroom and feel awkward around their actual table, or they go purely practical and end up with something that drags the whole room down. We’ve been looking at chairs that solve both problems without requiring you to redecorate around them. Chairs that work with a plain wooden table, with a painted one, in a kitchen that doubles as everything else. We’ve thought about seat height, about whether the back gives enough support, about how they read when pushed in and when pulled out. Some are classic, some are more interesting than that. All of them earn their place without making you work for it.