Camping chair size guide: the four dimensions that decide whether it fits

The four numbers that matter

Camp chair listings publish between two and nine dimensions, in no consistent order, with no consistent names. Four of them decide whether the chair works for you, and the rest are noise:

1. Seat height — the distance from the ground to the top of the seat fabric. This is the number that decides how hard the chair is to get out of, and it is the one most often missing.
2. Seat width — the usable width between the armrests or across the fabric. Decides whether you fit and whether you can shift position.
3. Overall height — ground to the top of the backrest. Decides whether the chair supports your lower back only, your shoulders, or your head.
4. Folded length — the long dimension of the packed chair. Decides whether it goes in your car.

Seat depth, open footprint and backrest height measured from the seat are useful extras, and nothing to base a purchase on. If a listing gives you only an open footprint — “34 x 25 x 37 in” — you are being told the overall height and nothing about where you will actually be sitting.

The full published range

These are the extremes across every camp chair we score, each figure as the maker publishes it. They are a useful reality check against a listing that claims to be oversized or compact:

• Seat height: 13.5 in (Kelty Low Loveseat) to 22 in (Guide Gear Oversized Tall Director's). Most car-camping chairs cluster at 17 to 20 in.
• Seat width: 15 in (Crazy Creek HEX 2.0, a frameless seat) to 26.5 in (LivingXL 1000-lb chair). Mainstream quads run 23 to 24 in.
• Overall height: 25 in (Helinox Chair Zero) to 47.2 in (KingCamp Orchid C20, a recliner). Standard quads are 36 to 39 in.
• Folded length: 14 in (Helinox Chair Zero and Chair One) to 47 in (ALPS Rocking Chair). A normal steel quad is 38 to 43 in.

Seat height: the number that decides whether you can stand back up

Standing up out of a camp chair is the part that gets harder with age, with a bad back, and after four hours. It is governed by seat height and by whether the armrests are rigid enough to push off.

• Under 15 in is a ground chair. The Kelty Low Loveseat at 13.5 in and the Big Agnes Skyline UL at 15 in are deliberately low, which is right for a concert lawn and wrong for anyone with a knee problem.
• 15 to 17 in is a campfire height. Comfortable, sociable, and a push to get out of.
• 17 to 19 in is a dining chair height and the single most common band in the category — roughly where a kitchen chair sits.
• 19 to 22 in is a high seat. The ALPS King Kong at 19 in, Guide Gear's Oversized Camp at 20 in and its Tall Director's at 22 in let you stand up by leaning forward rather than pushing up. That is the whole argument of our high-seat camping chairs page.

One wrinkle: rockers and footrest chairs publish a sloped seat. ALPS's Rocking Chair is 21 inches at the front and 16 at the back; its Escape Chair is 17.5 front and 14 back. The front figure is what your knees feel and the back figure is where your weight ends up, so a sloped seat always sits lower than its headline number suggests.

Seat width: the one people guess at

Nobody measures their hips before buying a chair, which is how a 20-inch seat ends up being returned. The useful reference is that a standard dining chair is around 16 to 18 inches between the arms, and camp chairs are generally wider than that because you sit in them in a jacket.

In our registry, 23 to 24 inches is mainstream (STRONGBACK Elite 23, Guide Gear Oversized Camp 23, ALPS King Kong 24, Coleman Big & Tall 24, Coleman Cooler Quad 24, Kijaro XXL 24). Below that you are in compact territory: the ALPS Rocking Chair publishes 19 inches, the Crazy Creek HEX 15. Above it, the LivingXL 1000-lb chair publishes a 26.5-inch seat, and the Helinox Beach Chair (re) a 26-inch seat width at a 29-inch depth.

Beware a listing that gives you “seat dimensions 20 x 21 in” — as Guide Gear does for the Club chair — without telling you which figure is the width. On most quads the wider number is the width and the narrower one is depth, but that is an inference, not a specification.

Back height, and why the label matters

There are two ways to publish a backrest and they differ by about 17 inches. Overall height is from the ground. Backrest height is from the seat. ALPS publishes a 22-inch backrest height for the King Kong and no overall figure at all; Kelty publishes 20.5 inches of back above the seat on the Deluxe Lounge and 37.5 inches overall. Both are honest; mixing them up is how you end up with a chair that is a foot shorter than you expected.

As a rule of thumb for overall heights: under about 32 inches supports your lower back only (every packable chair and the GCI Kickback Rocker at 31.7 in). 36 to 39 inches reaches most people's shoulders — this is the mainstream quad band. Above 40 inches you are into recliners, where 41 to 47.2 inches buys actual head support.

Folded size: the number the trunk decides

This is where most size disappointment actually happens, because a chair that fits you may not fit your car. The spread is enormous: the Helinox Chair Zero packs to 14 x 4 x 4 inches in a cinch bag; the ALPS Rocking Chair folds to 47 x 24 x 6 inches, which will not lie flat across a sedan trunk. In between, a typical steel quad is 38 to 43 inches long (Coleman Cooler Quad 38.3, ALPS King Kong 40, ALPS Escape 42, Guide Gear Club 42.1, YETI Trailhead 43.0), and the flat-fold rockers trade length for thinness — the GCI Freestyle folds flat to 5.5 inches thick, the Stowaway to 3.5 inches.

Measure the shortest usable span in your trunk, not the longest. Then subtract two inches for the carry bag, which nobody includes. Four chairs in our registry publish no packed size at all — the Kijaro XXL, both Guide Gear oversized chairs and the STRONGBACK Elite — so for those you are buying on faith.

What size chair for your height and weight

• Up to about 5 ft 8 in: any mainstream quad works. A 36-to-37-inch overall height reaches your shoulders and an 18-inch seat suits you.
• 5 ft 9 in to 6 ft 2 in: look for a 38-inch-plus overall height and a 19-to-20-inch seat, so your knees are not above your hips. The Kijaro XXL at 38.98 in and the Guide Gear Oversized Camp at 39 in are the mainstream answers; the full ranking is in best camping chairs for tall people.
• Over 6 ft 2 in: you want 39 inches or more of back, a 20-inch-plus seat height and a deep seat. Very few camp chairs publish a seat depth over 21 inches.
• Over 250 lb: stop reading dimensions and read ratings first. The chairs with 23-to-26.5-inch seats are nearly all in the 400-to-1000 lb class — see best heavy-duty camping chairs and camping chair weight limits.
• Children: a kids' chair is genuinely smaller, not just lighter — the Coleman Kids Quad publishes a 24-inch width with a lower seat. An adult chair with a 17-inch seat leaves a six-year-old's feet dangling. The options are in best kids camping chairs.

When the maker publishes nothing

It happens constantly, and it should cost the chair your business rather than your benefit of the doubt. Helinox publishes no seat height or seat width for the Chair One, Chair Zero or Chair One XL — only an overall height and an assembled footprint. ALPS publishes no overall height for the King Kong. Kelty publishes no seat width for the Deluxe Lounge or the Low Loveseat. GCI publishes no seat width for any rocker.

Two workarounds. First, the open footprint is a ceiling on the seat: a chair with a 20.5-inch assembled width cannot have a 22-inch seat. Second, measure a chair you already own and like, write the four numbers on a card, and shop against that rather than against adjectives. “Oversized” is not a dimension.

One chair per size problem