Pick the perfect highchair
From around 6 months, your baby’s probably ready to start eating with the rest of the family – and before long, to be feeding themselves! Time then to find a seat that allows them to dine in comfort like everyone else.
Always think about how much space you have available and whether you’ll want to use the highchair at the family table in the dining room, kitchen or anywhere else. And if you’d like to find a highchair that blends in with your furnishings, traditional or modern, that’s become a whole lot easier; take a look at the bloom range for example, for amazing contemporary looks, or East Coast for traditional wood.
Consider also whether you’ll want to transport the highchair to family and friends. If so, you’ll want a highchair that folds flat to put in the car, or maybe to opt for a portable booster seat that fits to an adult chair.
Without wishing to state the obvious, weaning for the majority of babies is a very messy process, so the easy-clean potential of the chair will make life much easier. Some highchairs have various height settings, so you can feed your baby easily in different locations, either at the table, or sat on a sofa or bar stool.
Here’s some of my current favourites:
The simple, sleek design of the bloom Nano Urban highchair has great style and features, and it comes in 4 colours. It’s lightweight and folds flat for storage, though only has the 1 height position. Its leatherette seat upholstery makes for easy cleaning, and the tray has a good deep lip to prevent spills. Suitable from 6 months.
The BabyDan Dan Chair, made from sustainable rubberwood, is an excellent choice for your baby to sit with the family around the table. This highchair is also good for baby’s posture, as they sit upright. You can change the highchair to a toddler chair, and then later change it again to an adult chair. The highchair comes with a harness and waist bar for extra safety, and you can buy an extra comfy cushion separately. At £68 it’s a really good price for a long life highchair. Suitable from 6 months.
This Totseat baby seat is washable, squashable and very portable. Some restaurants and cafés are pretty poor at laying on highchairs, but this great value Totseat will fit almost every chair anywhere, and is made of robust machine washable polycotton. It’s great value for money, and suitable from 8 months.
Whichever highchair you choose, it might be worth investing in a plastic mat for the floor to catch the bits that never make it into baby’s mouth or are lobbed out of tiny hands! The John Lewis Baby High Fruits splash mat is a good choice, while our Furnishing Fabrics departments sell patterned wipe clean plastic fabric on the roll in lots of colourful designs.
Bon appetit!
