The glide is the cheapest part that fails first
One glide costs cents and decides how a room sounds, how the floor wears and how often a chair goes back to the workshop. It is the most overlooked line on a chair specification.
Published by JPChairs · Chair manufacturer in Foshan, China · 2026-10-14
Why glides wear out before anything else
Restaurant chairs are dragged, not lifted. At 200 to 300 sittings a week per seat, the glide travels several hundred metres a year across the floor while carrying a point load that spikes past 100 kg every time a guest sits. Nothing else on the chair sees that combination of abrasion and impact.
It is also the last item specified, often written simply as "standard black nylon" with no diameter, no material grade and no pull-out rating. Six months later the nylon has worn through, the steel insert behind it is scoring the floor, and the room is measurably louder.
The four glide types, and where each belongs
- Nylon, PA6 or PA66 — the default. Hard wearing, low friction on vinyl and concrete, and cheap at roughly USD 0.02 to 0.06 per unit. It marks polished timber and laminate, and it is audible on hard floors.
- Felt — the quietest option and the kindest to wood, engineered timber and LVT. Usually 3 to 5 mm wool blend at USD 0.05 to 0.12. It wears: expect 6 to 12 months in restaurant service before the felt thins and starts holding grit.
- PTFE and UHMWPE — a coefficient of friction around 0.05 to 0.10 against nylon at 0.20 to 0.30, which is why they suit heavy chairs on carpet tile and LVT. USD 0.30 to 0.60, worth it where staff reset the room constantly.
- Metal-capped or adjustable — a steel or chrome cap with a replaceable insert, or a spring-loaded leveller with 10 to 15 mm of travel. USD 1.20 to 2.50, and standard on banquet and conference seating where floors are never level.
Choose by floor first and budget second. The wrong glide costs more in a single refinishing cycle than the right one costs across a container.
Matching the glide to the floor
- Polished concrete, tile, terrazzo — soft nylon or PTFE. Felt shreds within weeks.
- Engineered wood, laminate, solid timber — felt, or PTFE if chairs are dragged constantly. Never bare nylon and never a steel cup.
- LVT and sheet vinyl — PTFE or soft nylon. Some felts and rubbers leave a plasticiser stain, so load a sample on the floor for 48 hours and check before committing.
- Carpet and carpet tile — hard nylon, or a wide PTFE foot. Going from a 16 mm glide to a 25 to 30 mm foot roughly halves how far the chair sinks into the pile.
- Decking and stone outdoors — UV-stabilised nylon with a stainless insert, because a rusting shank seizes inside the leg and takes the leg with it.
Fixing method: what actually stays in the leg
Glides that wear out are fine; one that falls out is not, because then the leg itself is on the floor.
- Nail-in, wood legs — a barbed shank, usually 8 to 10 mm diameter, driven into a pre-drilled pilot hole. Specify a pull-out force of at least 150 N in oak and beech.
- Screw-in, wood legs — the better choice on rubberwood and pine, where a barbed shank loosens after a few hundred dragging cycles.
- Push-in ribbed insert, metal tube — sized to the tube: 19 mm, 22 mm and 25 mm are the common outer diameters at 1.2 to 2.0 mm wall. The flange must sit flush, or the tube edge cuts the floor.
- Threaded stem, M6 or M8 — for adjustable levellers, with a locking nut on metal frames.
Ask for the pull-out result measured on the actual leg material. A glide rated at 200 N in steel tube will not reach that figure in pine.
Specify the number, then stock the spares
Three lines settle the specification: glide diameter and material, fixing type with pull-out rating, and spare quantity. Order 3 to 5 per cent spare glides with the container — on 400 chairs that is 12 to 20 sets, enough for two replacement cycles.
Replacement intervals we see in service: felt every 6 to 12 months, nylon every 12 to 24 months, PTFE 24 to 36 months, adjustable levellers beyond 36 months with occasional thread cleaning.
Standardising on one glide across a venue matters more than picking the theoretically best one. Two glide types means two stock items, two replacement schedules and a floor that wears unevenly.
The noise test worth doing before you buy
Drag a sample chair 2 m across a sample of your real floor and measure at 1 m height. Worn steel on concrete reads 78 to 85 dB. The same chair with new soft nylon reads 62 to 68 dB. Felt brings it to 55 to 60 dB. That 15 to 20 dB gap is the difference between a room people call lively and one they call loud.
Run the test with the chair loaded to 75 kg rather than empty. Glides that are silent under a light chair often chatter once a guest sits down.
The frames and leg options these glides fit are in the solid wood chair frames, and the floor-protection questions we field most often are answered on the floor protection FAQ.
