Antique Bedroom Chairs
Small, low or armless seating made for bedrooms and dressing rooms, from plain single side chairs to hold clothes to upholstered nursing and slipper chairs built low enough to sit and dress in.
Antique Bedroom Chairs
The heading covers occasional seating sold for bedrooms, dressing rooms and boudoirs, together with the light armchairs and salon chairs dealers list alongside them. Frames are named by timber in most titles: mahogany leads, then walnut and rosewood, with oak, beech and satinwood turning up less often, and carving, inlay, paint, ebonising and gilding all recur.
The chair you'll meet most often is a Victorian or Edwardian upholstered side chair in mahogany or walnut, offered singly or as one of a pair. Pairs are the natural unit: "pair" appears in 262 of 837 titles on Sellingantiques, and sets of three and four turn up often enough to be unremarkable.
Beyond that, the listings break into small open armchairs, elbow, tub and corner chairs, which make up around a sixth to a fifth of the category and are rising in live stock; salon and dining sets sold under the bedroom heading; French, boudoir and giltwood chairs, about a tenth; and a spread of painted, ebonised, papier-mâché and faux-bamboo decorative chairs. The nursing chair is the single most-named specific type.
Dating runs 1800 to 1940, but much of it is broad. "Victorian" and "19th Century" together outnumber every decade bucket, so a large share of the category is dated only to a reign or a century. Where decades are given they cluster mid-to-late Victorian, with a solid Edwardian block and a 1920s tail. A single odd outlier date is dealer shorthand rather than a verified year.
Where The Range Splits
The top of the range is occupied almost entirely by pairs and slipper chairs carrying a named London maker, and a single unnamed Victorian or Edwardian side chair sits at the bottom. No maker cleared three dealers, so none of the names is a category-wide presence; where they appear it is as a stamp, a label, or an attribution in the title.
Timber and decorative work move a chair up the range. Figured and burr walnut, rosewood and satinwood with marquetry or mother-of-pearl inlay run well above plain beech, pine or stained frames, and carving and inlay are named in a similar number of titles. Papier-mâché with mother-of-pearl is the scarcest material in the archive, in only a handful of titles.
Two other things count. Arms and scale: armchair and tub titles concentrate above the middle, while small chairs, low seats and children's chairs sit lower. And surface: giltwood, gilded and original-painted Regency and French chairs reach the top brackets, with scumble-glazed and stained examples near the bottom.
Antique Bedroom Chairs Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for bedroom chairs, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Bedroom chairs have been listed on Sellingantiques since 2009, with more than two hundred passing through since then.
The Antique Bedroom Chairs Glossary
- Side chair
- A chair without arms, and the plainest description in the category. "Side" runs through 114 titles, "side chairs" through 56 of them.
- Nursing chair
- A low-seated, usually armless upholstered chair. Named in 69 titles, which makes it the most-cited specific form under this heading.
- Button back
- Upholstery drawn into buttons across the back, listed in 32 titles. Often paired with velvet in the same description.
- Slipper chair
- A low chair for dressing, in 34 titles. Slipper chairs also sit at the top of the range when they carry a maker's name.
- Prie dieu
- A tall-backed, low-seated prayer chair that recurs from the bottom of the range to the top.
- Showood
- The polished timber left visible around the upholstery, sometimes written as show frame. Balloon back and spoon back describe how that frame is shaped.
Antique Bedroom Chairs: Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as a bedroom chair?
Small, low or armless occasional seating made for bedrooms, dressing rooms and boudoirs, plus the light armchairs and salon chairs dealers place alongside them.
In practice that means single side chairs and nursing chairs, upholstered button-back and spoon-back forms, small open armchairs and tub chairs, and pairs or sets of matching salon and side chairs.
Are these chairs usually sold in pairs?
Pairs are the natural unit. The word "pair" appears in 262 of 837 titles on Sellingantiques, and sets of three and four turn up often enough to pass without comment.
Single chairs are common too, and a single unnamed Victorian or Edwardian side chair sits at the bottom of the range.
Which timbers turn up most?
Mahogany leads with 152 titles, followed by walnut at 125 and rosewood at 61.
Oak appears in 22, and beech, satinwood, maple, pine, kingwood, goncalo alves and fruitwood each show up only occasionally. Frames are very often carved, inlaid, painted, ebonised or gilded.
How old are most of these chairs?
The dated field spans 1800 to 1940, with 296 of the 837 listings carrying a clean year.
"Victorian" and "19th Century" between them outnumber every decade bucket. Where decades are given they cluster mid-to-late Victorian, with a solid Edwardian and 1900s block and a smaller 1920s group. Regency accounts for a few dozen.
Do French chairs appear under this heading?
Yes. "French" is in 84 titles, and the French, boudoir and giltwood group makes up about a tenth of the category.
Gilt and giltwood titles, along with Louis-style descriptions, sit in this branch, and gilded or original-painted examples reach the top brackets.
What unusual forms show up in the archive?
The named forms run far past the plain bedroom chair: nursing, slipper, prie dieu, gossip, spinning, boudoir, corner, tub, hall, cocktail and window seat all appear.
Chairs made for children are a small but persistent thread, from single childs' chairs to a pair of French gilded and painted children's salon chairs.
Two one-offs: a chair fitted with a trouser press, and an "antique five-legged bedroom chair". Each appears once.