Booth vs Banquette – What’s the difference?

It’s easy to see why – both are referring to built-in, upholstered seating often installed in dining environments. They have great benefits, like maximising space efficiencies, increasing diner comfort, creating a canvas for style and attitude as well as offering acoustic insulation. However there is a distinct difference between a banquette and a booth, and we’ve defined it for you to make it simple.

Banquette Seating is a type of seat that you sit ON, and Booth Seating is a type of space that you sit IN.

Still confused?

The concept of a booth is to provide a comfortable, intimate and semi-enclosed space for smaller groups of people. A booth’s intention is to provide a room within a room, creating a private space within a greater space. This is achieved by configuring one or more banquette seats in a horseshoe, U-shape or face to face.

Commonly booths are arranged back to back to maximise space usage and create that desired feeling of privacy. This form of soft seating is commonly found in cafes, food courts and smaller restaurants as they don’t accommodate large groups of customers and typically occupied for a shorter period of time.

If you peel it back one step, a banquette is what makes up a booth. It is a section of upholstered bench and has applications all throughout a fit out, not just to create booths. It is versatile and can be configured into almost any shape, offering the impression of both grandeur and cosiness. It is often configured in long straight sections to run along walls, offering maximum flexibility in service layouts, accommodating small or large groups as you push pedestal tables together or apart, and improving floor space usage so you don’t need to allow wait staff access to walk behind the configurations. Designed as either stand-alone or against a wall, banquettes offer a higher level of flexibility and social interaction, which is what makes them so popular in the hospitality industry.

Whether you’re seeking a banquette or a booth, all of these options can be designed to fulfil your exact requirements, from fitting a certain space right down to the fabric used to upholster them, allowing you to use them to great advantage providing a statement piece in any space.